down south!

Hello sports fans,

We flew into Chennai last night and drove to Vellore in the state of Tamil Nadu. We arrived at our hotel, the Darling Residency, at around 11 p.m. We were all exhausted - we are adjusted to the time change for the most part, but traveling is tiring no matter what!

Delhi was AWESOME - I will never forget some of the things we saw there, such as the morning bazaar and our walk along the narrow streets with all of the shops set up, the Taj Mahal, and just the overall bustling city with bikes riding alongside cars, constant honking, TONS of people and dogs walking along every street, etc. I am glad though that we are going to be in one place for the next 2.5 weeks and grateful we can kind of call Vellore home as opposed to moving hotel to hotel.

We explored a little bit this morning in the area around our hotel and found a supermarket just across the street (2L of bottled water cost only 28 rupees! What a steal! It cost 50 rupees for 1L in Delhi at certain restaurants!) We also found some boys playing cricket down the street. I have been asking everybody since we arrived about cricket because I am very curious about it and want to learn the rules. I have also been wanting to actually play, but the opportunity didn't present itself ....until today! I, being the SUPER shy one in the group (NOT), went up to the boys playing and started asking about the rules, then I asked if I could play and they thought it was hilarious that I wanted to, so they let me "bat" (I know it's called being the striker, I don't know if they call it "batting"). I am pretty sure they just laughed at me the whole time because I didn't have the correct form - I would just swing as hard as I could and send the ball flying baseball-style, but I think you're supposed to kind of block the pitch and just redirect the ball as opposed to whaling on it...I have a lot to learn. Needless to say, I plan on finding those boys either during the week at some point or next weekend and asking them if I can play again. My friend who I worked with all of last year, Rajiv, would be proud! P.s. Rajiv, we flew over Hyderabad last night and I thought of you!

The food, dress, and weather are all different in the South from what I have seen so far. I believe the dress code is more conservative, and the men wear skirts (I am pretty sure they aren't called skirts, but they are a skirt equivalent) instead of pants, and I have noticed a lot of the children have white lines on their forehead that is different colors - Rasika tells me this is ash and it is related to what God you worship, among other things. It is definitely more humid here - you step outside and immediately feel like there is a blanket of moisture on your face/body, but it is similar in temperature to Delhi. This morning at breakfast we discovered they serve very concentrated black coffee (we weren't sure if it was espresso) with hot water and hot milk, so we kind of just had to add our own amount of each element. Perhaps when we start working 8 hour days I will start adding more of the strong black coffee and less water/milk...Jen makes fun of Sarah, Shivani and I for always wanting coffee - what can I say, med school has opened the flood gates for caffeine/coffee addiction! I remember during high school my friend's (Natalie) dad, who is a neonatologist, asked me if I wanted coffee one day while shadowing him. I told him I didn't drink coffee and he chuckled and said ....you will soon. At the time, my thoughts were that I wasn't planning on starting to avoid getting hooked on it....oh, how wrong I was, and oh, how right you were, Dr. Relich!

We being working in the hospital tomorrow and we are all very excited to see what it will be like and to see how health care is delivered in another country, especially one so different from our own. I am interested to see what sort of patients will be at the hospital. Before we left, Dr. Chandrasekar said we should expect to see a lot of people from the rural areas who cannot even afford to pay, but the physicians will often still treat these patients (very unlike the states...). I will let you know what sorts of things we get to see later this week!

I'm not homesick yet, but I'll say this....I miss all of my American TV shows! My dad is probably uber frustrated at the 700 shows I DVR that are accumulating - sorry Dad! And Nick - if you delete Real World or Grey's, we will have beef when I get back! I also miss some American foods, but we got our fix of McDonalds in Delhi yesterday - no beef, but they have a really good spicy chicken sandwich on the menu!

Talk to you all soon! I hope the weather is nice and that those who are still in school are enjoying their summer vacation, and those who are working are enjoying the nice weather on the weekends!

Much love to all,
Alexis

P.s. I think all of our bags now weigh 10 pounds more after all of the shopping we did in Delhi...it is going to be like Christmas for everybody's families when we get home! We got some REALLY cool stuff and did a lot of bargaining while shopping in a market (called Janpath)...Yinan was a pro at getting the shopkeepers to lower their prices, I was awful! But in the end, if I could get somebody to bring their price down from 500 to 350 rupees, I was happy (after all, 350 rupees is only about $4...I forget this sometimes when I am hesitant to spend 50 rupees on water then realize it's only one U.S. dollar haha).