Halfway There....

Apparently we're both half way through our elective and half way through our total time in India. Wow that has gone by fast! It has been such an experience.. and im looking forward to more of the same in the next few weeks. I was saying to alex last night that im really starting to like the place... at the beginning, it was hard to get past the smell, heat, food, dirt, poverty, transport... but once you get over that, its great!

I was really struck at the beginning by noticing that in the first few days i had presumed that living in conditions like this, somehow made the people here less civilised, and its very easy to unwittingly judge them. But it only took a day or so to realise that the way of life here, and the people generally, are so much more genuine and real than most back at home, and this prejudice quickly disappears. If they want to talk to you (and a lot of them do), they will just come up and say 'Hi Sir' and shake your hand (usually followed by all of their friends doing the same). And if they havn't seen white people before, they will point and stare. After a while, you realise just how refreshing this is. If no-one is pointing, no-one is looking... simple!

So.. this week. I started Cardio on monday morning... it was a bit rubbish! Just outpatients again, not even any ward rounds. So it was all in Tamil and the drugs that they give are all the cheap ones (rather than the ones with less side effects that we give back in the UK), so it was hard to get anything useful out of it. So i'm filling the rest of the week up with bits and bobs that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Like a bit of Obs and Gynae, Orthopaedics, more Surgery and stuff like that. It's been pretty interesting, was in theatre this morning, and will be going back in half an hour or so, so its keeping me busy too.

We're planning our next trip too.. we are all going to Kerala on friday evening. so looking forward to that big time!