Friday Fives

This will be my last Friday Five post from India, which is really crazy. It's still hard to believe that I am leaving Loni today at 4 pm (India time) to start my traveling adventure back home to Iowa and will arrive in Des Moines Saturday at 7:40 pm as long as all of the flights are as scheduled. It's been a wonderful experience and over the next couple days I will post about my last week as well as what I learned from India as well as any other random thoughts that I have as I reflect on the 8 weeks I was here.

1. Spending this week hanging out with all of the wonderful people that I met in India. I spent more time this week talking with the interns from the west coast and so that was fun. I really enjoy talking with all of them. I also spent more time with Tanvi and enjoyed all of that time as well.
2. Getting mehndi done on Monday night and talking about India with the women who did an amazing job doing it for us.
3. Trying out new types of Indian food this week. We went to two new restaurants that we hadn't been before and had some really good food. We were wondering why we hadn't discovered them earlier.
4. Getting to go home. I really enjoyed my time in India, but I am also ready for the comforts of home.
5. The great opportunity that I had to do one of my rotations in India. I have met some amazing people, learned a lot about another culture, and have just enjoyed living in an unfamiliar place and discovering more about myself these past 8 weeks.

Friday Fives

1. Getting a package from my parents. I wasn't sure if it would ever arrive, but it did on Monday so that was a good start to my week
2. Breakfast at the hotel on Sunday. It's the simple things like having waffles for breakfast that can really make your day. I think the meal that I miss most from home is breakfast since it is so different in India.
3. Seeing the taj mahal. It was really amazing and I'm still just in awe that people were able to build that all by hand.
4. Chatting with Tanvi  in Courtney's room on Tuesday night. I just love when you can make friends and can talk about random things for hours on end and not even realize how much time went by. I think it's great that no matter what country I am in I can always find new friends.
5. Seeing the miracle of birth-getting to see 3 natural births and 1 c-section was truly amazing. Even though I was slightly grossed out by it all. It is still something that is very neat to see and so amazing that there is now a tiny baby that I watched come into the world. 

Friday Fives

It's crazy to me that this is the end of my 6th week in India and there are only 2 more weeks to go. It has gone really slow at times and really fast at others. I'm sure the next couple weeks will go pretty fast until the journey home when I just want to be there and traveling will take so long. Well anyway here are my Friday fives:

1. Getting my package from Chris. I had been waiting patiently for a couple of weeks for it to come and it finally did on Thursday so I was pretty excited about that. (I'm still waiting on the one my parents sent so we'll see when that gets here)
2. Having lunch with the pharmacology guys talking with them about America and India
3. Being posted in family medicine and actually having people talk to us and really explain what they were doing. I felt like I learned quite a bit from the doctor and interns in this department
4. Hanging out with Tanvi on both Saturday and Sunday night. She is really awesome and I love hearing about her life and talking with her. Courtney and I also made her a collage one night so it was fun to do.
5. Dinner on Tuesday with all of the international students. It was great just to all be together and enjoy trying out some Indian food that we hadn't had before.

Friday Fives

1. Going to Suguna's house and hanging out. It was so nice to look at wedding pictures, chat, try on sarees, and have a home cooked meal. 
2. Getting to skype with Erin. I sometimes forget how much I love to talk with her and so it was so nice to catch up on life with her and Courtney. The only thing that was missing was some nachos and juju juice from Jethros and it would have been perfect.
3. Great conversations after our time in Nashik. Talking with my mom after the first day really helped me process some things and then on Tuesday night Courtney and I had a really great conversation about the things that we saw as well as other issues. I like having real conversations with people that help me figure out my beliefs as well as how I'm feeling.
4. Shopping-going to Nashik on Sunday and buying some more clothes and food as well as going to the market on Wednesday and buying some stuff. Getting to go shopping always brightens my day.
5. Receiving packages. On Saturday I got a movie in the mail that Chris ordered for me. Then on Wednesday I got a call that Courtney and I had a package at the post office so to go ride a rickshaw there. We got there and had a character for a driver-he spoke really good English and then just said some crazy things so we laughed most of the way there. Once I got to the post office we found out that there was a package for Courtney and one for Wing Lee (sounds very similar to Emily) so we picked them both up. Courtney's parents sent tons of food so we won't be going hungry.
6. Bonus since last weeks Friday Fives were a little on the slacking side. Making collages with Courtney. I love cutting up random things from magazines and gluing them together. Courtney's not as much a fan so I appreciate that she did it with me and we made a collage for the other person.

Friday Fives

Since I forgot to post my Friday Fives yesterday I am posted them today.

1. Learning more about India and having better conversations with students, professors, and doctors in each of the departments we visited this week. 
2. Eating pizza and french fries for Courtney's birthday
3. Getting to talk to people from home on skype and facebook and gmail
4. Looking through pictures with Courtney from our friendship and having some solid laughter over how ridiculous we are (mainly I am in photos)
5. Getting to level 95 on candy crush

Sorry that some of these are repeats of last week (and very similar to Courtney's), but since we do similar things each week I had to get creative. This really was a good week in India and I'm really starting to like it here and feel like I'm seeing a lot of stuff that I wouldn't be seeing in the US. What are your Friday Fives?

Friday Fives

Friday Fives are something that Courtney and Shelley do every Friday. It is where you think about the past week and come up with 5 things that you enjoyed and were positive things to your week. When we got to India and were wondering how we would survive the next 8 weeks we decided that we would start doing them here.

I've still been struggling lately to really enjoy India. I tend to really dwell on the things that aren't going well and how my expectations of this experience aren't being met instead of thinking about all of the things that I'm enjoying. Thinking about the 5 things that I've really enjoyed is somewhat helping me see the good in this experience when I sometimes think it was a waste of a rotation to be in India.

I would encourage you to also come up with your Friday Fives (feel free to leave them in the comment section if you'd like):

Here are my Friday Fives:

1. Being in the radiology department and getting to see ultrasound after ultrasound. Being able to actually identify the parts of the growing baby was amazing.

2. In the pharmacology department today a PhD candidate showed us her wedding pictures and explained somewhat about weddings in Indian culture.

3. Being able to purchase food that is somewhat familiar to me when I need something from home. (oreos, kit kats, and chips plus appy fizz)

4. Traveling last weekend and being able to see sites around the area as well as shopping

5. Being able to skype and chat with my parents (plus Isaac for a bit), Chris, and Carina

Here are a few random photos from India so far that I don't think I've yet posted on the blog:

We never thought we'd be excited to eat sodexo, but the KFC had this sign when we walked in