Happy Thanksgiving!

I thought this would be a fitting day to do my final post from India.  I leave on Saturday to meet my Mom, Aunt Terry, and cousin Kathleen in Paris for a week and then head back home.  For a quick update on my project – we finished all of the analysis and submitted an abstract to the Pediatric Academic Society, which holds a conference in Boston every year on current pediatric research.  I will continue working on writing the paper back in Boston for the analysis we’ve completed here, so while my time in Nagpur is coming to an end my practicum continues!

There are a lot of things that I am thankful for this Thanksgiving.  I am thankful for having the opportunity to come here and learn so much – academically, culturally, and personally.  Both of my supervisors have taught me a lot about conducting research.  They took the time to explain things to me and have helped to really improve my public health knowledge and research skills, and have been very patient with me and all of my questions.  It has been really exciting and enlightening to see how international health research is conducted, it is one thing to learn about it in a classroom but another to be immersed in it.  I am also thankful for all of the people in my office.  I have formed some great friendships and learned so much from them, not only about research, but also about Indian culture, religions, and family life.  And I am very thankful for my host family, the Khannas.  They welcomed me into their home with such warmth and openness, treating me as a member of the family right from the start.  I will really miss them and our family dinners together!

We had some trouble getting a group photo

Last but certainly not least I am thankful for all of you!  This is the farthest from home that I’ve been and living here for the past 3 months has helped me to appreciate even more my family and friends back home.  Thank you to everyone for staying connected through emails and skype, it really helped when I was missing home to be able to talk to you all.  I am looking forward to seeing everyone soon!

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving – eat an extra piece of pie for me :)

My last day at work

Delhi Day 2

Sorry for the long delay in posting.   Things are very quickly coming to an end here in Nagpur and a couple of things came up: 1. My computer died – but don’t worry it’s back! 2. We turned in an abstract on Friday for work that kept me busy the past couple of weeks. 

But back to Delhi.. on Thursday I had a night flight back to Nagpur so I got up and out early to go see some more of the city.  I went to the Qutub Minar complex and really enjoyed walking around all the ancient ruins and reading about the history!

Afterwards I went over to Khan Market and picked up some beautiful scarves from Kashmir, a region of northern India.  I noticed when I was bargaining with one of the shopkeepers how much my sense of money has shifted over here.  I’ll spend 5 minutes bargaining over 200 rupees (about $4) and things that I might spend $10 on at home I’ll leave behind if I can’t get a price lowered to half of that.  I have a feeling that I’m going to be horrified the first time I have to buy something back in the US.

After that I went back to the Khannas’ son’s home for some lunch before heading to the airport.  It was really amazing to fly out of Delhi at night.  I got to see from a birds-eye view the lights of the villages as we flew over India.  It would be completely dark and then a small cluster of lights and a little further away another cluster.  And as it was still Diwali time, there were occasional fireworks – it was cool to look down on them instead of up!