First Day in Dehradun

Not sure how long I can write for because it is getting late here.

Last night I met up with the rest of the students at the Airport Hotel. On the way, my taxi got a flat tire and we were stuck on the side of the freeway for over an hour. Nevertheless, I made it back safely to...ummmm...the airport hotel. All of the people on the program are very nice--but it makes me miss all of the people I was in Durban with! During the middle of the night my roommate for the night, Will came in from his flight and at this point I realized I had a bug bite on my eyelid. I woke up this morning to my eye being completely swollen: So now I will be known as "that tall girl with the swollen eye." Of course the one medicine I forgot to bring was Benadryl...oh well.

Benadryl would have been helpful on the 10 hour bus ride from Delhi to Dehradun today though. We left at 5:30am on a bus--all 24 of us and 10 hours later reached our destination. We saw so much of the country side, it was incredible. The roads were basically okay most of the time (AKA paved) and a bit sketchy when we were going up the mountain, but passable for a bus so clearly not that bad.

Myself and three other students are staying in one homestay in Dehradun and another four are at another homestay. The rest of the group are at other clinical sites. This week I will be rotating with two cardiologists (my favorite first!) with a pre-med student Leigh (who is also an EMT).

The family we are staying with is very nice and tonight we had an excellent dinner of rice with vegetables, spicy green beans, chick peas in a curry, cucumber and watermelon (because those have a peel and the knives are sterile). It was amazing. I am not sure what to expect tomorrow at clinic, this will be quite different from South Africa in the lack of focus on HIV/AIDS health care but I do not doubt it will be just as interesting.

My 25th birthday in on Tuesday, if anyone wants to call me in India we are 12.5 hrs ahead and my number is 091 931 909 6146 or of course an email would also suffice. Miss you all, thanks for the emails and comments.