First 5 Days in India

Today is my fifth day in India so I though I would write a little bit about my trip and Miraj, where I will be staying this month.  Miraj is a city in southern Maharashtra and has a population of around 355,000 people.  We took a 12 hour (!!!) train ride from Mumbai to Miraj the day after we arrived in India.  The train was very crowded and busy with many people getting on and off at each stop and men walking up and down the aisle selling chai and snacks.  When we got to our stop, we walked determinedly away from the man who had come to pick us up because we thought he was just bothering us, which was the case with all of the men at the train station in Mumbai.  But we eventually slowed down enough for him to introduce himself and he brought us safely back to the guesthouse.

The guesthouse where we are staying is called Fletcher Hall.  It's an old-fashioned building surrounded by houses for doctors at Wanless Hospital, where we are rotating, some in use and some abandoned.  My bed has a mosquito net and there are options for bucket and regular showers.
John, who picked us up from the train station, takes care of the house and cooks for us.  So far he has made a mix of Indian and Western food.  He makes the best lentils and okra and this morning he made us French toast!  If we are the house in the afternoon he makes tea and serves biscuits that taste like Ritz crackers and bananas.

Temple and cows

The hospital where we are rotating is named after a Presbyterian missionary who founded it in 1894.  It's a huge place with a maze of offices and departments and even more pictures of Jesus than St. Johns.  This week I am in the pediatrics department, but on our first day we observed an open repair of an atrial septal defect in a little boy, which was amazing.  While the surgery was very interesting, being in the operating room was very similar to being in the OR at home with the cardiothoracic surgeon was grumbling at the scrub tech and the anesthesiologist on his phone.  But, instead of Danskos everyone wore flip flops and through the window you could hear the traffic going by the hospital, which is very loud with constant honking horns.  I will try to document the traffic here this week via video, it involves cars, auto rickshaws, motor bikes and bicycles driving every which way with the occasional cow being herded across the road.
Thanks for reading and please comment!  Love, Aleze.

Pink house and auto rickshaw