Saturday 7/7/12
We arrived at the tip of India and
loaded into a very nice car – a change from our full size vans we’ve been
traveling in so far. The issue, though,
was that there were only 5 seats and there are 6 of us, so we had to rotate who
got to straddle the two captain’s chairs in the middle row of seats. The suspension on this car was much nicer
than what we were used to!
Definitely made for a nicer ride, but my car sickness (that I’ve really
never had until India) still persisted at times. I’m thinking that the car sickness is partly
due to the malaria meds, partly due to the way they drive in India, but I know
it isn’t much fun. Never actually got
sick, just felt nauseous a lot. We drove
about a half hour to check into our hotel, which was a very nice. At the end of the hall, we had a BEAUTIFUL
view of the tri-seas and the monuments that we would later visit.
The southernmost tip of India is
the only place in the world where three bodies of water meet – the Indian
Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea.
It is known as the tri-seas area.
It was amazing to realize I was in such a cool place. Once we were settled into the hotel, we went
and had a buffet breakfast in the hotel.
We then headed down to a boat which took us over to an island where a
few temples stood. There is another
island right next to it with a huge statue on it. It is a 133-foot-tall sculpture of the Tamil
poet and saint Thiruvalluvar, in Kanyakumari.
We related this statue to our Statue of Liberty because it was so large
and surrounded by water. Loading the
boat, I felt a little bit like the Titanic because we all had to grab a life
vest from a huge pile on the shore. I’m
not sure I trusted the boats 100%, but it’s all about the experience. The temples were neat, but I enjoyed the
breeze and the water more. It was easily
10 degrees cooler at the tip, and I just love being on the water, watching the
waves, and smelling the fresh(er) air. 
After the trip to the island, we journeyed to a super-high bridge that we walked across. On the way there, we passed some rubber tree farms, so we got out and examined the "sap" collection of the rubber. Amazingly, when we got to the bridge I was ok with the height because there were rails that went across the bridge, but Daryl was not and basically could not look over the edge. It was a beautiful view, but it was about to storm, so the skies were not clear. After we crossed the bridge, we got to try some fruits and even learned where an almond comes from!
After this, we
traveled to a wooden palace nearby.
This was very interesting to look at the intricacy of the architecture
and all of the different materials they used to build the palace. Very royal!
For lunch, we got to have my
favorite - flaky bread (paratha)!! Apparently this is something that you can
only get in southern India, so sadly I won’t be having any when I go experience
American Indian food. After lunch, we
headed back to the hotel to check out and get a few souvenirs made. We drove to a spot on the beach for the
sunset, and there were a ton of people there.
Unfortunately, it was a little cloudy, but the sun still set and it was
beautiful. We got to stand in the water
where all three seas meet – something I’ll never be able to do again. 
We headed for a bus ride home at
8. We had a sleeper bus again, which was
great because it meant I could actually get some sleep! I was sharing the bunk with Pamela, and we
woke up about an hour into the trip, both needing to use the restroom. Every hour the bus would stop, but it was on
the side of the road. So the men would
get out and pee on the side of the bus, but the women couldn’t do
anything! (As a side note, I should
mention that for all the traveling we did, we RARELY saw women traveling with
us – we were usually the few, if not the only women traveling.) After 3 or 4 stops, we couldn’t wait any
longer. We tried to wake up our
professor to get him to tell the driver to stop, but he was sound asleep in a
double bed with some Indian man we didn’t know.
We tried calling his phone since he wasn’t waking up, but it was turned
off. I tried shouting over the man, who
had JUST been out to use the bathroom, but he pretended he was asleep and
wouldn’t help me by tapping our professor next to him. I obviously would feel weird reaching over
the man to tap our professor, so it was up to us to solve our own
problems. We could no longer lay down
because that increased the urgency to go somehow, so we were sitting up in our
beds dying. We realized our only option
was to bother the driver, which we didn’t want to do because, well, he was
driving a huge bus in Indian traffic! “Bathroom?”
We questioned him. Most likely, he
didn’t understand English, so we decided as few words as possible would be
best. He looked at us like we were crazy
and he had no clue what we were saying.
We figured we were out of luck, and decided the next side of the road
place we stopped, we would just have to squat next to the bus and shield each
other – Julia also had to use the bathroom by now. All of a sudden, about 1:15, we started to
pull into a gas station-type area where there was a bathroom! Halleluiah!
We literally ran to the bathroom – one of the best things ever. Only the three of us and one Indian woman got
off of the bus to use the bathroom.
Sunday 7/8/12
We arrived back to the hostel at
9am. We had breakfast, and when we got
back, we noticed a note laying there – the care package my parents sent had
arrived and was ready for pick-up at the post office! Sadly, the post office is closed on Sunday,
so I would have to wait until Monday to get the package, but I was sooooo
excited!! For the rest of the day we
rested around the hostel and got caught up on a few things. A few of us headed to the mall for some last
minute shopping. For dinner, Dr. Kannan took us out to a nice place with his
family and the Gunaseelans (from the lab).
I was introduced to Dr. Gunaseelan’s family as Jim Carrey again – what a
surprise. Everything I thought looked
good was apparently very spicy, so I couldn’t order it. Dr. Mohan ordered me some sort of vegetable
dish (stir-fry?) with bread, and it was decent, but a lot of food so I couldn’t
finish the whole meal – imagine that. I
also bit into some sort of spice that I must not have been supposed to eat
(Indian dishes commonly have extremely hot peppers, cinnamon bark, or other
spices that are in the dish for flavor, but you are not supposed to eat. I usually get a late memo on this, and
therefore eat things I shouldn’t). This
particular spice tasted like I bit into a huge chunk of incense at Church. Yuck!
That kind of spoiled my appetite for the dish after that because that
was ALL I could taste, and I had no clue what it looked like to know what I was
supposed to avoid.
Monday 7/9/12
Monday morning we were able to
relax. Our task for the day was to
finish our abstracts and work on our powerpoint presentations for the
International conference we were to present at.
We all had to split up the research projects so that we all had an
abstract to write, so my specific abstract was “Evaluating the incidence of
Tuberculosis amongst organized and unorganized farms in Tamil Nadu, India.” In research, you don’t always know what your
results are going to be, and for my research, we assumed that we would find
some tuberculosis positive cases, especially in the unorganized farms, because
we had found a few in clinical samples.
However, all of the cows in these farms that we tested were negative for
tuberculosis. This is good for the area,
showing potential that preventative measures are being taken, but it did not
make my results very exciting!
In the afternoon, we had some time
to run some errands. We got our pictures
printed for the picture frames we were going to give as gifts, and it was at a
photo printing company – there is no CVS or Walgreens photo printing computer
where you do it yourself – here, you go to a man with your memory drive from
your camera, he loads them on his computer, and you tell him how many of each
picture you would like. Our driver came
to try to help us translate, but it was still a bit of a process. Next, we went to go pick up my package at the
Indian post office. Wow, this was
something else. It was located in what I
can try to describe as an extremely run-down strip mall, and the post office
was a stretch of 3 doors/offices on the second floor. There were basically no signs, and definitely
none that looked anything like what I’m used to post office signs looking like. After waiting for the employees to finish
their lunch, one man helped me get my package.
He had to go in a wooden trunk that was locked to get it, and when he
gave it to me, I had to sign for it and give a phone number and such. The package looked like it had gone through
hell and back – wrapped with rope that I know my parents didn’t wrap it with,
beaten and bent in the corners, etc.
When we got it back to the hostel, I immediately opened it. Inside was lots of goodies from America, but
there was an issue – my mom sent individual jelly packets – the ones at the
tables in restaurants – and all of those burst open. That meant no PB&J (so sad) and also
meant that everything in the package was covered in sticky jelly. After cleaning up the mess, we all gazed at
the food that was so familiar, yet so unfamiliar to us now. Easy mac, miracle whip, pudding, applesauce,
tortilla chips, black olives, bean dip, taco seasoning, nacho cheese dip,
pancake mix, and syrup were some of the items included!! Such an exciting day!
We went to the vet school to edit
our abstracts with the professors and then attended some of Dr. Mohan’s anatomy
lecture where he was dissecting a dog.
We returned to the hostel early to help the kitchen staff make dinner
and make some of our very own American potato salad! We didn’t have mustard, though, so we had to
attempt to make some mustard from mustard seeds (which they use as seasoning in
a LOT of dishes)! It was an interesting
experience, but it worked out really well and everybody said it tasted great. That is, everybody but the Indians – they did
NOT like it, but I guess they aren’t really used to the taste of mayonnaise.
