Saturday began very early for Danielle and I. Dr. Rohini Stephen pulled some strings
and arranged for us to see a kidney transplant beginning at 6:30am. Despite the early hour, we were pretty
excited. The transplant turned out
to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen. We spent half the procedure in the donor’s operating room
and half in the recipient’s operating room. We watched as surgeons extracted a kidney from a woman and
then sewed it into her husband (I don’t think any couple can beat that kind of
commitment). The surgeon (Dr. Rohini’s friend of a friend) walked us through
everything he was doing. We
literally got to watch a kidney work. I was pretty grateful for that Human
Systems Physiology course—the kidney is an incredible organ!
After the surgery, Danielle and I grabbed the others and
went shopping. We bought all sorts of loot and spent many hours doing it.After shopping, we went to a restaurant we had been dying to
try (its near where Em works and we pass it every day). It was awesome! Some of the best Indian
food we’ve had for sure.
When we got back to campus a professor from the social work
department took us out to a rural village. The village we visited is one that Bishop Heber (the college
I am with) works with closely.
Bishop Heber sends their social work students out to do programs and
teach people in the village about health and safety. It was really cool to see how many Indians live outside of
the busy cities we are used to.
The kids were awesome. They
followed us around and begged us to take their picture (and made it pretty hard
to take a pic of anything but them).
The group of kids in the picture with us below was the same group that
followed our every step through the village- imagine walking around with that
herd at your heels! As you can imagine, we were exhausted when our day was
finished! We ended it by watching
a movie (on our laptop) and munching on some Indian snacks.
Sunday morning began with a visit to the world's largest Hindu
temple, Srirangam. The architecture was so detailed and the colors were beautiful. The
temple is massive- every turn led to a spot we hadn’t yet seen.
After the temple we went to a big grocery store and bought all
sorts of goodies to bring home and enjoy in our last few days here.
By the way, our internet is broken...sorry for anyone thats been trying to reach me. We have resorted to walking to the computer science block in attempts to get online but the connection isn't strong enough to add any pictures. Hopefully I can post some later tonight (or at least this week)
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