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Helloooo. Some more random stuff to write and travel/work update. Also, I added some photos in both the old album and the new one, as well as some videos..I think. =p
Travel: Nate and I met with a travel agent yesterday through one of our internship contacts. This guy set us up with an awesome itinerary for a 9-10 day trip in November. He's working out the details to e-mail to us, but the plan is to train around India - first to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and stuff, then over to a tiger reserve near the HIMALAYAS. =D We are hoping to see all the cool animals there that we have been missing out on. Then we will travel to Calcutta, because I really want to see all of the historical Mother Teresa sites there. It will be a fast trip and we will spent most of it on the train I think, but we should be able to see some good sights! We're excited!
Work: We still haven't been able to be very productive at CFI, as the doctor we were hoping to work with doing children's health check-ups has been home sick. We were assigned a project by the doctor in charge at CFI and have been working on that, but have been having some communication issues. Today we found out that we will be able to find social workers on Monday to work with to find out information for this project, which is aimed at assessing the food intake of children in the villages where food is provided by CFI. We need to talk with individuals in the villages to find out what kind of food children are getting from home, school, etc. Hopefully we will make some progress on this and the check-up project next week!
We also spent a day at the CFI hospital this week. That was quite the experience. We waited around for quite a while so that we could see a couple of surgeries. The "family planning" project here in India involves government funding and compensation for sterilization procedures as a means of population control. As we've learned so far, this basically involves men sending their wives in to get sterilization procedures done so that they can collect the money that the government pays them for this. So, we stood in on an ATL (abdominal tubal ligation) procedure. With an almost empty stomach and really strong chemical fumes upon entering the balmy operating room, I didn't think I was going to be able to handle it well. I've seen many operations and procedures in the U.S., but this was quite different. Only the surgeon wore scrubs and a mask and few other precautions were taken besides sterilization of instruments. There was a local anesthetic used at the site of the operation and a sedative had been used early on. However, when Nate and I entered the room, the patient was still fully aware and responsive. We were pretty shocked as they cut into her and she responded to the pain. At the point when the surgeon was digging around inside her to get to the right organs for the procedure and she still winced at his every move and slice of the scalpel, I opted to leave the room. That was hard to take and I didn't want to give them another patient to tend to if I konked out in the operating room. At the end of the procedure, the patient walked out of the operating room without assistance.... Women are hardcore here. I'm a bit relieved that we've spent most of our time with the mobile health van at this point, as I'm not sure I could become accustomed to this type of surgery.
Random Stuff: I will save for another time...this is long! =p
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