The weekend saw us take a road trip to Pondicherry. It has two halves an french quarter (the nicer half!) and the tamil/indian quarter. the french colonised this are for a while and relinquished control some 50 years ago or so. Whilst its on the coast its not somewhere that you want to swim- the waves crash in to rocks that look like a break-wall and then on top of that theres 2m of kitty litter sand! We came with about 12 others! There were 9 girls in one room and 4 boys in another- pretty squishy but cheap! The food was the best bit- due to the french influence we could indulge in something other than rice and give our tase-buds some relief from spicy! There were a few temples- one had an elephant that would bless you if you gave him money- i felt a bit bad for the poor thing. The ride from vellore was and interesting event- I don't reccommmend driving at night in india- es[ecially in the rain! I had to just close my eyes at times and look the other way. We passed a group of people standing on the side of the road on the way- the driver said it was a dead person......happens a lot and as soon as you get on a indian road you'll understand why.

We have been posted at the Rehab hospital for the last three days which has been by far the best- actually learnt something! Lots of spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries- major cause- MVA- surprise surprise...... We started in paeds last week- which was awful- definitely diffrernt to home- kids were hit regularly- again I had to put my blank stare on and ignore it- not much I can do to change it, unfortunately. Then we moved onto general wards. We moved from one extreme to another- from horribly dirty wards to brand new ones with polished marble floors wityh deluxe style hotel rooms for the rich. This describes india to a tee- the poor and the rich.

What we learnt thus week: EVERTHING takes forever- theres always something else you have to do before you can get one task finished- hence plan and allow plenty of tinme for seemingly easy tasks. Indians are experts at ripping you off- we have had to be on our toes at all times- basically trust no-one.

Next trip Mysore and Bangalore- more next week

Jess xo