Another Lab Week

Monday 7/2/12

Monday morning we went into the B/TB lab to process samples from the weekend.  We sorted all of the samples out and did all of the preliminary tests.   In the afternoon, we were supposed to go back to the lab and process more tests in the afternoon, but there was a quick “Indian” change of plans – apparently there is always a plan “B.” We were going to process samples in the afternoon, but we were shuttled to the university farms again to interview more about mastitis and collect samples for students of mastitic milk. While out at the farms, we got to see emus and 2 more ostriches (at a different university farm than the first).  This was exciting and a nice change-up from the lab work and interviewing!

A demonstration on the proper way to catch and restrain an emu

A baby water buffalo at the university farms - soooo cute!

Tuesday 7/3/12

Tuesday, we spent the whole day in the lab, mainly working on running ELISA tests.  This was my first time doing this test, so I was a little nervous that my technique would be bad or my eyes would bug out from staring at teensy-weensy plate with just under 100 wells.  I actually ended up getting my plate to work, and it was the only one so far to work!  It has been frustrating because we haven’t figured out why these tests are not working.  By the end of the day, we decided there was not necessarily human error, but that it was most likely the machine that reads the test that was causing the error in the plates.  Either way, I got a little bit of satisfaction out of the fact that mine appeared to work!

An example of the milk ring test - the middle sample is neg, and the 2 on either side are positive because they have a nice clear ring of pink on the top

Dr. Gunaseelan is the man in charge of the B/TB lab that we are working on.  When we first got to India, he was trying to remember all of our names (American names are actually hard for Indians because they are nothing like the Indian names), so he was assigning a celebrity to remember.  Audrey is Audrey Hepburn, for example.  When he got to me, guess what he picked as my name?  Jim Carrey.  Well, this is not exactly any Carrie/Kari/Kerry I know, and, well, technically this is a man and I am clearly not a man (even with the shorter hair, I’m pretty sure I look like a girl), but I just kind of laughed and went with it.  As the days progressed, he continued to call me Jim Carrey.  After a few days without stopping, I told him “You know, it’s actually kind of funny you call me Jim Carrey because I have a boyfriend back home, and his name is Jim, so people have referenced Jim Carrey around me before.”  He seemed to just eat that up, thinking that he was psychic or something and knew the connection without actually knowing.  So from then on, I have conned the nickname “Jim Carey” with just about everyone because he will literally introduce me as Jim Carrey.  When we were talking to Dr. Gunaseelan, he was talking about how my test worked and he called me Jim.  Just plain Jim, no Carrey tacked on.  So apparently now I have only one name and am a man in one man’s eyes.

Wednesday 7/4/12

This morning, we headed to the lab (again) to run the ELISA for the 4^th time since we think we know what the issue is.  For lunch, Dr. Mohan ordered a catered 4^th of July celebration to celebrate with all of our professors, fellow student “helpers,” and Virginia Tech students.  It was not quite your typical 4^th lunch being that it consisted of all Indian food, but it was a special gesture to try to celebrate and acknowledge our holiday.  In the afternoon we went back to the lab to finish the tests.  After the lab, we went to the field at the college and played some cricket, along with the guy who came from Virginia Tech.  For dinner, the cooks made a real great effort to make an American-type dinner, which was very nice and an awesome gesture!  It wasn’t your burgers and dogs, but an Indian version, I guess.  They actually found some corn on the cob for us too, which was a special treat.  Even though it reminded me of Halloween corn, it was amazing after missing so many things about the USA!

Thursday 7/5/12

Thursday morning, we spent our time back in the lab.  This was a chance to get the rest of our results verified and talk with the professors about any last questions we had for the research projects.  At 10:30, Pamela was supposed to head over to talk with the mastitis project leader, but we had only been over there once, so someone was supposed to come and lead her over there.  Well, surprise surprise, nobody showed up.  At 10:40 I figured I could probably find us our way back there or at least get us close, so we headed over there and found it!  The professor was like “Dr. Mohan told me you would be here at 10:30.”  It was frustrating trying to apologize and let him know it was not our fault we were late, but communication issues hindered that and we just had to deal with the fact that he thought we were late and incompetent.  It was exciting to know that this was the last day we would really be in the lab – all of the tests had been completed, and we would just put our results together when we returned from our weekend trip.  Yay!

In the afternoon, I went up on the roof and laid out for about an hour reading.  I don’t really like to lie out in the sun (I get bored easy) and I need to put sooo much sun screen on.  The weather channel said it was 99 degrees felt like 104 with humidity.  Yuck!  On the roof, I finished my book that I had been reading – The Help.  I enjoyed it, just wasn’t entirely satisfied with the ending.  But it really was a great book.   For dinner, instead of eating at the guest house, we were invited to eat at another professor’s house – the warden of the hostel in charge of us.  The food was very good and we had some new things, so I ate quite a lot actually, which was a big change for me!  Too bad our professor wasn’t there to witness it – he still thinks I’m starving myself apparently.

Friday 7/6/12

On Friday, we woke up early to hit the road for a big event put on by the college - World Zoonosis Day.  This is a day when the zoonotic diseases department picks a village to travel to.  They provide free vaccinations and other simple care to the farmers in the area.  In addition, they locate a school and educate the children about zoonotic diseases so that they are more aware and can be more cautious about them.  This was a great experience!  I enjoyed working with the children the most – they were super excited to sing in English for us, answer our math questions, and tell us the English word for animals.  The thing they were most fascinated with was our cameras – they all wanted us to take pictures of them and with them, which was great! In walking around to do some work with the animals, it was interesting to see the different animals and how they are housed.  The vet students wouldn't let us do much in treating or restraining the animals which was a bummer, but it was still educational.  It was a very hot day, and I had my undershirt, my scrub shirt, and a heavy-duty jersey shirt on, so I got hot very quickly.  This was the first time the head had truly bothered me, and I was starting to feel some heat stress.  Thankfully, I was able to head back to the school, drink some water, and sit in the shade when we were done, and I started to feel much better.

On the trip back home, we packed 16 adults into a van for a 2 ½ hour car ride.  When we were introducing ourselves to the students traveling with us, when I said my name, I got the response, “Ahh, yes, The Mask.”  Apparently India knows Jim Carrey very well!  When we got back to the hostel, we quickly packed and headed off for our travel to Tip of India!  We took a semi-sleeper bus, and we were in the back row, so our chairs didn’t recline very much.  Long story short, I could NOT get comfortable at all (I can’t sleep on my back or sitting up), so I only got about 2 hours of sleep.  The rest of the time I was “tossing and turning”, getting more and more fed up with the way people drive in India and the jerking/slamming on the breaks that made us fly around in our seats.  How anybody got any sleep is beyond me!

Village Trip #2

PICTURES TO FOLLOW: INTERNET HAS BEEN TOO SLOW TO UPLOAD PICTURES :(

Friday 6/29/12

This morning we were invited to breakfast by a professor who lives in another one of the hostels just across from ours.  There were 3 veterinarians from the college there to talk with us and make us feel welcome.  We had some different breakfast foods, so it was good to mix it up, but they were all a little spicy for me!  It was fun to learn about some of the different things going on in the college that we weren’t aware of, learn about the professors, and teach them a little bit about American culture, too!  Then we went back to our hostel and packed for our weekend trip to Dharmapuri. 

We traveled by air conditioned train.  The trains in India, at least where we were sitting, were totally different from American trains!  They had “bunk beds” that you reserved, but there were three per wall, so there was very little space for lying down.  The middle bed folded down so that people could just sit on the bottom bed as seats if nobody wanted to sleep, which is what we did since it was a day trip.  I brought my book with me, but it was hard to read with the noise.  It got pretty crowded in our cubby at times – at one point there were 8 adults and 2 children in a space reserved for 6 people!  That’s India for you!  I’ve learned that the idea of personal space does not exist in India, and that people are rude.  Most people are very nice when they talk to you, but if you are in their way, you must move NOW even though there’s no room for you to move anywhere!  In check-out lines, there is no concept of lines.  It is whoever can throw their items and money at the cashier the fastest.  I would be so stressed out at a cashier with arms and money flailing everywhere.  I find myself getting very upset when I get pushed or get passed up when I was clearly waiting in a line.  I guess when you live in a country with 1.2 billion people, you have to learn to push your way around and fend for yourself!

We checked into our hotel, which was an old palace.  It was not quite what I was expecting, but we got a little taste of Indian royalty =P.  We traveled to some waterfalls that were about an hour away and got there just as the sun was starting to set.  On our way, we saw some wild monkeys for the first time which we were very excited about.  The area was gorgeous!  We rented these woven-boats and had a little Maid of the Mist-type tour around and under the falls.  To get down to the river in the canyon, though, we had to climb down these extremely steep steps.  I learned a few years ago that I am a bit afraid of heights, so this was a huge challenge for me, but I did it!  It was an amazing experience between the cliffs, and absolutely beautiful (perfect romantic float on the river in the canyon).  I described it as the Indian version of gondolas.  It was extremely relaxing.  There were some caves in the canyons, and the boat “captain” let us get out and climb around in them for a few minutes.  On our way back to shore, it was getting rather dark.  We looked up and saw all of these animals flying around in the sky.  They were bigger than any of the large crows we’d seen, so we couldn’t believe how big the birds were.  Then we realized that they were bats!  These are the largest bats I have ever seen, and they were flying in hundreds right above us!  Really neat – I wish I could have captured it with my camera, but it doesn’t have night vision.  Bummer!  We went back to the hotel and slept like babies (once we shut our bathroom door because our toilet had the habit of flushing itself every 2 minutes!!)

Saturday 6/30/12

Saturday was a day full of sample collection.  We visited numerous small dairy farms in the morning where we collected samples and some information for our mastitis project.  We had a veterinarian from the area accompanying us around to the different areas because she knew the farmers personally.  After some of the dairies, we went and visited one man’s chicken farm.  The chickens were housed in cages very similar to laying hens in the US right now.  He seemed rather innovative with his practices and is making quite a fortune off of the birds.  He grows his own feed on his land, which helps keep costs down too.  We had the “privilege” of watching semen collection for Artificial Insemination (AI) in the chickens and actually got to perform the AI ourselves.  After we saw all the baby chicks, we enjoyed some jack-fruit.  This fruit was extremely sweet, but then it left a strange after-taste in my mouth that I didn’t care for.  Otherwise, it was pretty good and a lot of the students really enjoyed it. 

We traveled back to the hotel for lunch, checked out of the hotel, and traveled back to areas with farms in the afternoon.  We collected samples from areas where there were a lot of farmers within walking distance of each other who all owned one or two cows.  We had a few crazy cows there – one of which we truly couldn’t draw any blood from because when we tried, it reared up on its back legs a few times like a horse.  I’ve NEVER seen a cow do that!  Especially when she’s supposed to be 8 months pregnant! In these areas, we started to get a crowd of children following us around.  Most were way too shy to talk to us, they would just look at us and giggle.   It was rewarding when we actually got to talk to them a little bit (some know English fairly well because it is taught in the schools) and got to take pictures with them.  They LOVED seeing their picture on the camera after we’d take it! Once we were finished in the villages, we went back to the hotel restaurant for a light dinner and waited in the bus office for our bus home. 

These buses are air conditioned and semi-sleepers – they lounge pretty far back!  They do not, however, have a bathroom so we try to avoid traveling in them if we can.  We knew this beforehand, so we all took a bathroom break before getting on the bus.  It was dark and relatively quiet, so I was laying there trying to go to sleep, and all of a sudden my stomach did a huge flip-flop and I felt sick.  Like stomach, I’m-going-to-throw-up sick.  And then the panic set in.  I’m in a bus with NO BATHROOM.  I’m in a bus where no one around me speaks English except my group, who are all asleep by now.  If I had to throw up, would I have enough time to run up to the driver and tell him to pull over on the side of the expressway?  Can he even do that? Would I fall over people's luggage in the isle on my way up and vomit right in the isle?  If I made it to the driver, would he know English well enough to know what I’m trying to say?  Would he understand my violent vomiting motions?  Or would I be up there, trying to tell him what’s about to happen, and it takes him too long to understand and he gets covered with my vomit?  Then I’d have a mad Indian driver on my hands, plus a mad bus because the whole bus would smell.  I laid there, just in sheer panic, all the while the pain and gurgling getting worse.  I finally decided my best option would be to open my backpack and get my tennis shoe ready.  That is the only container-type thing I could think of that I could use.  And then I spent about 2 hours “tossing and turning” in my chair, trying to tell myself that it’s all in my head and if I fall asleep, I’ll feel better.  Luckily, I did end up falling asleep and when we were at our stop in the morning, I felt much better! 

Sunday 7/1/12

We walked home from the stop at 5am.  It was the first time I had been out on the streets of India without a huge hustle-and-bustle happening.  We got back to the hostel, spent a little time online, and then went back to bed.  We skipped breakfast to sleep in and had lunch at 11.  For the rest of the day, it was relax/catch-up/post pictures/research.  We met our neighbors who had arrived over the weekend – VA Tech.  We weren’t aware that they were coming until a few weeks ago.  It’s nice to have some fellow Americans around!  We’re not the only ones getting stared at anymore!  I think there are a total of 5 Universities here now – lots of students from all over!  It truly feels like an International area now, with so many foreigners!  

In the evening, we got all dressed up in our saris again and attended a dance recital.  This was traditional Indian dancing, and it was the girl’s first solo performance.  It was wonderful to watch the different dances she did and was extremely impressive how long she could dance for (one dance was at least a half hour long!)  I really enjoyed this and appreciated her talent – I just wish I knew more about what the different dances/rhythms/moves meant.  After the dance recital, we went out to dinner at a pizza place to celebrate one of the professors, Dr. Kunnan’s, promotion he recently received.  It was a Papa John’s, and it was amazing!  They had the garlic butter sauce just like in the US!!  Delicioso! 

Can We Ride The Ostriches?

Tuesday 6/26/12

In the morning, we went into the lab to get more information and get some experience with PCR and elisas.  We split into two groups – one went to the Brucellosis/Tuberculosis (B/TB) lab and one went to the Newcastle lab.  I was in the Newcastle group, so we worked on extracting DNA for a PCR that was going to be run in the afternoon. 

When we were headed to our van to drive home, Daryl was pulled aside by a man with tea in his hand, so we thought he was a legit guy from the vet school.  He didn’t know English, so he told us to come with him and he was going to show us.  Daryl must have thought he was saying “Dean” because that’s where he took us – to the Dean’s office.  He had us all put our names on a piece of paper.  Everyone around was laughing at us, and I know they spoke English better than him, but no one was saying anything.  Daryl asked for tea, but then he tried to charge us so we didn’t get it.  When the dean walked by, he didn’t even acknowledge us.  Apparently, the Dean did not need to see us, so we had no clue why we were being held by some strange man who worked there.  We had to call our professor to come save us because he wouldn’t let us leave.  Being abducted in a foreign country? Check.

In the afternoon, the B/TB lab didn’t have any more samples to run and our professor was super busy, so we stayed around the Hostel. 

Wednesday 6/27/12

Wednesday morning we went into the lab for a lecture about Rabies.  Since we don’t have much rabies in the US in our pets anymore, they had some videos to show us that we wouldn’t see in the US.  We then reviewed our B/TB data, planned how to put our presentations together, and listened to another lecture on alternative forms of milk.  From the research, they found many different things being added to milk to get better prices or make it cheaper for themselves.  That lecture made me realize that I never want to drink the milk in India!! 

After lunch, we travelled to a peripheral vet clinic that is associated with the TANUVAS veterinary college.  We visited various farmers and their farms, interviewing them for our economic losses of mastitis project.  Two of the people from the B/TB lab had to come with us as our translators because none of the farmers spoke any English.  It was frustrating because it took a very long time due to issues with translation and understanding. 

A crowd of cows.

Some of the farms had 100+ cows!  

I just love these cows!

Thursday 6/28/12

The entire day of Thursday was spent traveling to and visiting the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) farm.  This farm is set up as an example for farmers in the area.  This is the same farm we started at for the chicken collections, but this time we actually got to see the other animals.  We saw cattle, water buffalo, goats, sheep, pigs, and ostriches.  This is the only larger-scale ostrich farm in India.  They were huge!  And we got to pet them!  We didn’t get to ride them, however, because they are not considered tame yet and are still pretty wild.  Bummer!  For lunch, we had a variety of Indian rice and other side dishes, which were all way too spicy for me.  We had rabbit and pork as well.  I actually did try the rabbit, but it was way too chewy for me, too spicy, and when I ran into a who-knows-what bone, I was done.  Then the girl next to me got a liver and I was definitely done eating the rabbit.  One bite was sufficient to know that it’s not going to be my favorite meat!  In the afternoon we collected milk samples for the B/TB project and then headed back to the hostel.

Little goat kisses!

Red sheep!

I LOVE piglets!  Babe!!

I wish we could have ridden them!  Still, the closest I've ever been!

Oh, The Adventures!

Saturday 6/23/12

This weekend is dedicated to sight-seeing around Chennai while our professor goes off for a weekend retreat at a temple.  Today we went to the shore temples in Mamalapuram.  These temples are all located apart from each other, and were all built around 1400 years ago.  They used to be active temples, but now they are more like monuments.  The salt breeze that blows from the Bay of Bengal and the waters that sometimes reach them have deteriorated them a little bit, but they are still in great condition.  We had a tour guide from the temples that spoke English very well, so we could understand most of the history of the temples.  Again, I’m not the biggest history buff, but they were very interesting to see and hear about! 

One of the coolest parts about the shore temples was that we were so close to the shore, we got to visit a beach of the Bay of Bengal for a few minutes.  We couldn't go in the water - couldn't even put our feet in - because it is so polluted and dirty, but I get to say I've been there!!! (I think that may have just been a story we were told though so we didn't go in the water...I'm not sure!  I can't imagine it's any more polluted than other bodies of water.)

Next, we went to a crocodile/snake park where there were a bunch of exhibits of different crocodiles.  Most of them were just floating in the water, so the biggest excitement was to see them move.  It was almost like a zoo, only just for crocs (and a couple alligators).  The snake part was closed for holiday, which I was bummed about because they catch cobras and such and show the audience how they make the anti-venom.  I saw something on TV a while ago about that, but I was excited to see it in real life.  Alas, no luck.  For lunch we ate out at a pizza place.  This was my first full meal since being sick, and I’m doing great!  (knock on wood!)  Then we went back to the hostel for the rest of the afternoon and got to relax. 

Sunday 6/24/12

Today we went to the National Shrine of St. Thomas Basilica.  This was quite a religious experience – once in a lifetime!  Only 3 Churches in the world are built over the tomb of an Apostle, and this is one of them.  When we got there, we went to a chapel where we meditated and prayed.  We could hear a mass in Tamil going on behind us in the Church.  At 9:30 we attended a mass in English which was very similar to the mass in America, but the music was more of an Indian flavor to it.  The priest spoke English very well, so we were able to understand most of mass.  Afterwards, we went to visit the tomb of St. Thomas and pray for a little bit there too.  We visited a small museum where they had very old writings, carvings, and even the arrowhead that killed St. Thomas.  I wanted to get some souvenirs, but they didn’t have a gift shop =(.  After church, we came back to the hostel, had lunch, and relaxed. 

 A few of us headed to one of the malls in the afternoon to do a little more shopping because we were starting to get tired of relaxing in the hostel.  I made a VERY good friend at one of the shops – he said we were his first customers and this was the first day his shop was open.  He just got married, and wanted us to look at the photo albums from his wedding.  Then, after we bought our things, he wanted to show me how to meditate with my bowl I bought.  He had me close my eyes, took my hand, and made the bowl “ohm.”  Then he wanted me to lay down and do it, but I told him I could do that at home.  He told me I should be thankful for a free meditation.  The others girls were watching and laughing the whole time.  When we were leaving, he wanted a picture of us and then wanted to get in the picture with us.  “I want picture next to my favorite” he said, and came and stood next to me and put his arm around my shoulder like we were good pals.  We took the picture, but then it was DEFINITELY time to leave!  An experience I won’t forget, that’s for sure!  After dinner, we got our internet fixed again, so we were able to go online.

Monday 6/25/12

Today was one of the coolest days ever (cool as in awesome, not cool as in heat unfortunately).  It started like a lot of the days here have – dreaded getting out of bed, dreaded eating the same things for breakfast, etc.  We went over to the vet college to work in the lab, but we weren’t really sure what we would be doing since we finished up what needed to get done last week.  We arrived, and our professor said that they didn’t really have much planned for us.  Daryl asked “So we’re free to go to the zoo then?”  This had never been brought up before to the professor, and he was really just kidding, but our professor was like “Really?  You want to go to the zoo?  I’ll arrange it” and ran off.  We all sat there looking at each other, wondering if this was really happening.  He came back shortly and told us that everything was arranged – the zoo vet would arrange a trip around the zoo for us in a golf cart-type vehicle and if he was free, we could do a behind-the-scenes vet orientated trip.  Unfortunately, he was called off site by the time we got there, but we got to see a zoo in another country!  It was a lot nicer than I was expecting, and it was feeding time for a lot of the animals so most were way more active than I’ve seen at the zoos at home.  They had some types of animals here that we don’t have back in the states, so that was cool to see also.  We thought it was so cool that our research day in the lab turned into a spur of the moment field trip!  

We went to lunch at a restaurant nearby, and when Giri (one of the students that has traveled everywhere with us) called the vet, he was still unavailable.  He recommended that we go to a wildlife preserve/sanctuary nearby that was for lions and tigers.  It sounded cool, but we had no clue how cool it was going to be!  It was totally behind-the-scenes and the workers took us to see almost every animal!  They have individual runs and then they get called into a smaller pen for feedings and work.  They called a lot of the animals into their small pens, so it was literally a huge wild lion with nothing between us and him but a wire fence!  It was absolutely terrifying, especially when they would roar at the other lions or snap at the workers (who were actually trying to get that response from a few) but it was amazing at the same time.  I have never, ever been that close to a lion, or really even heard more than one roar.  Let me tell you: these cats are soooo much bigger than you think!  Those few hundred feet at the zoo distance makes them look way smaller than they are, and when they are roaring right into your face and you can FEEL their breath, it’s totally just something else.  They are such beautiful creatures, and it was so much easier to appreciate them up close – huge glassy eyes, monstrous paws, and teeth the size of my finger!  The tigers were not allowed to be brought into the small pens with us there because they are dangerous in small areas (like a lion isn’t?) but that was ok, because they came to see us at the end of their runs anyways.  One lunged at us twice, and it was terrifying, but awesome.  I can’t believe we got to have such a magnificent experience when all we were expecting to do for the day was work in the lab.  BEST.  RESEARCH.  DAY.  EVER.

Temples, Turkeys, and Toilets

The internet is SO slow here!  I've been trying to upload 2 pictures for an hour now.  I'm just going to post as is and will try to edit with the photos from the chicken trip later!

Saturday 6/16/12

On Saturday, we woke up early to check out of the hotel at 7.  We had breakfast, where I really just had a pancake-type thing (does not taste like a pancake at all) and jam, like a jelly roll-up…at least I tried.  It was not much food, and our professor called me out.  “Carrie is a very anti-Indian food person, I can tell” he says.  I told him that it’s not that I don’t like Indian food, I’ll try some and eat it for a while, but I can’t eat it repetitively day after day.  I basically feel like I ordered Chinese take-out (more like Indian take-out I guess), ate it for dinner, then heated it up for breakfast and lunch the next day.  I might try one or two new things, but most taste very similar.  Then, I ordered Indian again for dinner that night, and did the same re-heating process the next day, and so on and so forth.  Every day, the meals might change a little, but overall we are on repetition.  And I can do this, for like 3 days because it’s so new and it’s an adventure.  But when I’m eating the same type of bread and masala (liquidy) and sambar (liquidy) and rice, it gets old to my taste buds quick.   They (my taste buds) like variety – it’s just what they’re used to.  I’m not saying it’s bad, I just need to take breaks, and then I can eat the things again, after it’s been 4 or 5 days.  So I’m basically rotating – some meals, I can eat most of the things available, but then some meals I can only eat one thing because the other things we just had yesterday or the day before.  At home, I usually don’t eat leftovers for a day or two because I just had it the day before, so it hard to change once I’m here.  And I think he understands, he just gives me a hard time about it.

We travelled to the Chola temples, which is relatively famous and has been there for more than 1,000 years.  It is made entirely of granite – including the stone pathways – and is extremely intricate.  Nobody knows how they built it without any machinery – a mystery like the pyramids.  We had an awesome tour guide from the college who told us interesting things about the temple.  One story he had was about the carvings of guards.  These guards are like soldiers – they are guarding the inside of the temple.  And each one is depicted stepping on something.  The one he showed us was stepping on an elephant, which was being eaten by a giant, giant cobra, and then his foot is huge compared to these.  This is supposed to remind us humans that we are so so small compared to the soldier’s body, and the soldier is so small compared to the god in the temple he is guarding.  Basically, don’t let anything get to your head, which is the message of the white ash Hindu Indians put on their forehead daily as a reminder.  “You came from ashes, and to ashes you will return.  Don’t let things get to your head.”  We went inside the temple and had them say a prayer for all of the veterinarians and the animals.  I don’t know what he was saying, but it sounded nice.  We all were given ash for our foreheads.  The best part was that pretty much all temples have temple elephants, and we got to sit on one!  It was incredibly scary - so high up!  (I'm a little scared of heights)  Their skin is so scaly and rough-haired.  It would sway, and I would freak out!  But it was soooooo cool!

I may have a smile on my face, but I am FREAKED out!  So exciting!

A huge sculputre of a cow!

One of the temple "guards."

The group in front of the temple

After the temple, we visited a very old library, where there were books and paintings from thousands of years ago.  It was interesting, but I’m not the biggest history buff.  Plus, most everything was in Tamil (the language that is spoken here in the state of Tamil Nadu), so we couldn’t read any of the writings, but we could tell they were very old.  Some of the manuscripts were written on “scrolls” of palm leaves, which was definitely different.

We had some time to kill, so we went to get some more ice cream and cool down.  We had lunch where Dr. Mohan ordered us all the same dish.  It was huge - with bread and rice and tons of small dishes with different sauces and such.  I definitely couldn’t eat it all!  After lunch, we went to the bus “station” and loaded a semi-sleeper bus where the chairs lounged back quite a bit, kind of like a lazy boy.  Because the trip was during the day (1:00pm until about 9:30pm) I couldn’t sleep, so I watched India outside the windows and saw various interesting things.  I loved just people watching because India is so different than the US.  I saw some wild pigs, tons of cows, tons of goats, and even a crocodile (or what I’m pretty sure was a croc!)  I saw more trash than I’d like to see in my lifetime, and I’m fairly certain that an area of water we passed over was so polluted, the white things floating were small fish, dead with their white bellies up.  This made me somewhat skeptical about the fish industry here, but I hope that, being right on the ocean, there are reliable places where good fresh fish is available.  There were 2 movies that played on a big screen on the bus, but they were in Tamil so we couldn’t understand them.  It was possible to follow the basic storyline, however, just based on body language and inflections.  When we got back to Chennai, we ate dinner quickly and ran off to bed.  That may have been my best night of sleep yet!

Sunday 6/17/12

Sunday was a day of rest and recuperation.  Pamela and I slept in and skipped breakfast (on purpose – we told them the night before).  It was so nice not to have to set any alarm, but I still woke up around 8:30.  Still, it was nice just to lay in bed.  We did some much-needed blogging and relaxed all morning.  I did a load of laundry also.  Laundry here is done by bucket.  There is a washing machine in our hostel, but it is broken, and it is so small it wouldn’t do much laundry anyways.  So we do it by hand.  It is then hung on a clothesline – I don’t think they own dryers – and because it is so hot, it dries relatively quickly.  It is just difficult to really get out any stains or soils you may have on your clothes because they are not agitating against each other very much, and then it is near impossible to get all of the laundry detergent out.  We haven’t been using any fabric softener, so the clothes dry pretty stiff.  It’s not really all that bad, though.

After lunch, we headed to the college “track” and we learned how to play cricket.  It wasn’t too complicated, but I’m sure there’s a lot about it I still don’t understand.  Each time I hit, I got out, so I don’t think I’m very good at it either.  I played catcher quite a bit, but I was getting pretty beat up back there.  Every time I’d try to catch the ball, it would bounce up and pelt my arm or my face.  I’m not a fan of many sports with balls.  Never have been, never will.  Afterwards, we were surprised to still have internet, so it was a great day to have off since we could have some solid internet time. 

Monday 6/18/12

Monday we spent the whole day in the brucellosis/tuberculosis lab running our 40+ samples we collected in the village.  There was some miscommunication in the lab in the afternoon which made things a little frustrating, but overall it was a productive day.  We went to the basketball court and played basketball a little before dinner.  After dinner, we watched some of My Best Friend’s Wedding.

Tuesday 6/19/12

Tuesday we woke up early to travel to the Kancheepuram district to collect samples for our chicken research project.  We are testing the efficacy of a Newcastle Disease vaccination given in the form of a pellet.  The trip was about 2 hours either way by van, just because of traffic.  We had to draw blood on the chickens, which I’ve never done before.  There were a couple turkeys as well.  It was easier than I thought, but the small chickens with small veins got hematomas very easily, which is scary in a bird if the blood won’t clot.  All of the birds were a lot calmer than I was expecting, and the all of the people in the villages were very nice and very accepting of the free vaccine and letting us draw blood samples.  In one of the areas we visited the people are trying to become more advanced in agriculture, so we are trying to see what we can do as Michigan State University to adopt the village and help them get more resources to become more successful.  The day lasted pretty much all day.  Back in the hostel, we watched another movie and headed to bed.

Wednesday 6/20/12

Wednesday, we went into the lab in the morning.  We learned about the tests we will be doing for the Newcastle project (the one Lindsay and I are in charge of) and completed some of the preliminary work.  After lunch, while a few of us rested for a bit, some students went up on the roof to get some sun.  I said “No thank you – it is too hot!”  At 2:00pm, Dr. Kumar took us shopping. (Note: Dr. MohanKumar, Dr. Mohan, and Dr. Kumar are all the same person – I may refer to him by any of these names, but he is the professor from MSU who is from India).  At the first store, one of the students started feeling sick.  She was basically down for the count after that – we travelled to a drum store, Dr. Kumar’s music teacher’s house, and got ice cream, and the whole time she stayed in the hot van because she didn’t want to move.  She seemed absolutely miserable.  When we got back to the hostel, three more got sick within an hour.  Audrey and I were still feeling fine, so we went to dinner by ourselves.  It was very sad because it was an American-ish meal: “Chicken” patties (I’m not sure what was in those patties…couldn’t look at them) on bread to make a sandwich and we actually got some cheese on it!  It also had cucumbers and tomatoes on it.  It tasted really good!  Once we got back and went to bed, Audrey got sick right away.  I got no sleep because if all 5 were sick around me, time could only tell when I was going to get sick. I was dreading it all night, hoping it wasn’t true. 

Thursday 6/21/12

Had diarrhea a few times during the night, and at 6, I couldn’t take it anymore.  Things went downward from there on out.  We called our professor to tell him that we were all still not feeling well, so we had to cancel going to the wedding planned for this morning.  I was bummed about that because I was looking forward to seeing this other wedding - he said it was a going to be a much more traditional one and we could even talk to the priest about some of the different rituals.  Plus, I wanted to wear my sari again!  There's no way I could have lasted the ride, let alone the wedding or the food.  For me vomitting lasted all morning and diarrhea persisted.  We were taking medicine, but I couldn't keep it down, so I'm not sure how much it did for me.  All of the others felt decent during my worst time since I was the last one to get sick.  Our professor decided that our health was more important than the lab work scheduled for the afternoon, so we stayed in the hostel and relaxed all afternoon and night.  This was good, as I was nauseous all day long.   For dinner we had the same sandwiches as the day before, but all I could eat was a few cucumbers and a couple bites of bread.  An IT guy from MSU came into India today because he's here to work on a few things with our professor and the vet school here.  He was amazing with (hopefully) fixing our internet problems, so I'm hoping to have internet a lot more often now!

Friday 6/22/12

Today, I was feeling much better with my stomach (except what was coming out the other end, but I'd rather that than coming back out the way it came in).  I came down with a head cold, however.  I can't get a break!  One sickness after another.  I can't breathe all day long and was blowing my nose and sneezing all day.  We think we traced the bug we all got back to some fresh-squeezed lime juice we had at a restaurant in the chicken town.  Even our professor got a fever, which is sick for him in India! 

We spent the whole day in the lab.  We split half in half, some of us in the chicken lab and some in the brucellosis/tuberculosis lab.  In the chicken lab we ran two titer tests that should be interesting to compare to our samples we will get in a couple weeks.  Breakfast I couldn't eat anything but a granola bar.  For lunch we had spaghetti, so I was able to eat a little bit of that.  Dinner was veggie sandwiches which were decent and I ate about half.  Hopefully I'll get my appetite back soon!