India-pendence

After a weekend of being mostly in the house, it was so refreshing to explore the city yesterday. We got off early from class around 2 and were set free to do an assignment for our research methods class; to sit somewhere and observe (people, built environment, behavior, smells, trends, stream of consciousness stuff). My friend Emily and I strategically decided to go to the local museum/zoo park in the nice government and university district of Kerala. We got there and walked around the 1/3rd a mile loop that allowed access to a gorgeous museum, the zoo and an art gallery on the perimeter. It was so amazing to just sit and watch the beautiful people walk by and listen to the buzz of the city. Some psychology professor came up to us and was extremely interested in what we were writing, explained that he has a spot in the park where he loves to sit and write and invited us to join him for some collaborative research and chatting. We politely declined, but that started a chain reaction of inquisitive locals. Even though we noticed that no one was using the park as an exercise facility, we had brought our running gear along for a steamy afternoon jog. After 2 miles we were dying, grabbed water and took a rickshaw to our group yoga class- where literally half of the students fell asleep in shavasana. Unfortunately the CMR (critter mortality rate) increased last night when we came home to a massive spider and had to resort to a joint combat scheme using a shower head and notebook.

Today we had half of our classes outside (blackouts in the college= reaaally hot classrooms), accompanied by many stray dogs and other curious medical college students. A group of us went to the central train station to reserve tickets for our vacation, and were weclomed with a DMV-esque room packed with people, and 100 ticket numbers to wait through.. but thankfully got our tickets purchased for Kochi and Delhi! Had a delish dinner of Egg curry and large Appam (crispy, airy bread that you swirl in a frying pan like a crepe). Going to work on my presentation for tomorrow about the evolution of Epedimiology and the Web of Causation then get to sleep in for a day of later classes!