Hindi movie and Domino's pizza

KC making dinner-potato parathas!

Week number 4~ crazy! Saturday was spent with me (Raina)all day in Casualty....doing what I usually do-sitting and talking to students. The nursing school kids here have class and "duty"(clinical) Monday-Saturday...but no afternoon classes on Saturday. Makes me very thankful for our whole weekends that we get. Saturday night, when I asked the girls what their plans were for the weekend...Pinky said-"Today is Saturday -I go to the Market!!!" So naturally I invited ourselves to go with them, and KC and I set off after 8 Indian girls to the market to buy ...whatever it is that they were going to buy. It turned out to be purses and jewelry so KC quit and went back to the house after about 15 minutes of girl time-he said it was too much :). The girls bought me some pink and gold bangle bracelets (the married women here wear a lot of bangles on their arms, so naturally I need some too) and the day was a success. We planned another time to go to the market to buy me a Saree. The nursing students are only allowed a "market pass" twice a month-every other Saturday. The rest of the time they are not allowed to leave DCH without special permission.
   Saturday night was another night of Hindi and Indian learning with Mrs.Lal. However, 10 minutes in we got a text message from Dr.Mousam saying 'code red: open knee fracture with lots of bleeding RUN to Casualty'. So-I ran to casualty and helped him with that-there were 2 other students there too , but it was nice of him to include me. The ortho doctor reduced the dislocation WITHOUT PAIN MEDICATION because it takes to long to wait on anesthesia there-that was a learning experience for me. We stitched it up and put it in a plaster splint....to do surgery several days later, instead of immediately to the OR like we would back at Mount Carmel. (partially because the patient/patient's family is responsible themselves to come up with blood to donate for the surgery, and money for the surgery before any surgery can be done-partially according to the doctor to let the leg "adjust" to the fracture) Interesting philosophy.

Me at the Magento mall

Sunday Dr.Mousam and his wife Dr.Shweta had told us that they would take us to Raipur. This had been talked about several times, but both in different scenarios. One person said we would spend the day with them-watch a movie and go to lunch with them, in another scenario they said they would drop us off at the market. As we were sitting at their house waiting to go we noticed that they were packing overnight bags.....that was the first clue we had no idea what was going on. The second was when KC said 'It will be nice not to take a bus this time' and Dr.Shweta said-yeah but you gotta take a bus back'. Oops...once again we had no idea what was going on in India! Turns out that they go home to their parents' houses in Raipur every Sunday and stay the night-and they were just taking us to Raipur to do some shopping and to get away from Dhamtari as a favor,  but we had to find our own way back. Because of this we were pretty much stuck there all day-at a MALL (found out that there are 4 malls in Raipur!) which was nice-but not really what we intended to do in India. We didn't really have any shopping to do (some of the stores were just as expensive as back home) and our food shopping took us 2 hours (we found their Walmart! It is called 'Easy Day'). We called him to tell him we were done-and he said he was coming to meet us one of the malls... but in 4 hours....& suggested we go watch a movie-also not something we wanted to do. They were all in Hindi. So we picked one that looked like it might be okay (it didn't say it was in Hindi like the others did), ate some lunch at DOMINO'S! woohoo (the pizza still has Indian cheese) and then watched Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji...which was 10% English, 90% Hindi. It ended up being kind of funny and we understood some of it. Then the Jefferins met us at one of the malls, and took us to the 'bus terminal' where we got on a BIG sleeper bus this time, and had a pleasant ride back to Dhamtari. All in all-what started as a very confusing day, ended up being good. Plus we had eaten so much pizza for lunch that we didn't need to waste any of our precious market food on dinner :).

KC at the 'Easy Day' (Walmart)

     I did end up going to the market to get a Saree yesterday-but not with anyone I knew. Because the students had already gone to the market twice that month, Pinky was not allowed to go-so she enlisted 2 staff nurses (both younger than me) to take me. They spoke understandable English, and were AMAZING bargainers in Hindi (one girl scared me sometimes yelling "SHE WANTS PINK ONLY" every time they tried to show me a different color) and were determined to find me a pink Saree for the graduation ceremony coming up this week, that would match my pink bangles. After striking a tough bargain (the girl threatened to leave if he didn't give it to us), they took me to little tiny hidden-in- an- ally tailor, and I will be picking up a completed Saree tomorrow! They then suggested I try Gup chup....a street vendor snack popular here with the girls also called Paani puri-before I knew it I was gobbling some sort of deep fried shell filled with a very spicy potato soup-whole ...and you just say "gup chup" to these vendors and hold out your dish for one after another until you are full. Then they made me promise not to tell any doctors that they fed me street food....I still don't know those girls names but I'd say we are friends. 
        KC started teaching English yesterday! We both told the respective teachers of our classes that we would like to sit in on a class and see how it is done before teaching. When he got to class and asked where the teacher was they said "you are the teacher" and made him stand up front. So-he was thrown into teaching immediately. It is a little nerve-wracking because they are so eager to please-they don't come into the classroom until you tell them too, they stand until you tell them to sit, and they all answer questions at once. But-they are eager to learn, and take notes at everything you say. He has been busy doing lesson plans for that. I also had no teacher when I got to the med-surg class that I am helping to teach (they said 'You can teach Trauma...but we don't have any Trauma books' so I am using our TNCC trauma manual....interesting) so I started right in on the different kinds of mechanisms of injury. I kept asking if they were bored...and they said NOOO MAM!(it is weird being called mam) Also these BSC kids stay in dorms off campus-at a village called Shanti Pur about 10km away, and they have already planned a weekend for us to come stay the night with them. We had to set some boundaries though-they wanted us out there for the next 2 weekends-from Saturday to Monday! We told them that this weekend we would like to go to Jagdalpur, a city about 5 hours away by bus. There is a waterfall near there called Chitrakote falls...one of India's biggest and nick-named India's Niagara Falls, and I think we are going to venture there on Saturday after KC's English class. It is far enough away that we will have to stay the night somewhere-so another adventure is coming!
Our days are becoming more hopeful-although still relaxed. For instance: the reason I have time to write this blog is because I went to surgery to assist with Mousam today-and his wife said that there are no ortho surgeries, nobody could afford to pay for them or to arrange blood. And, there were no patients in Casualty. So-back here to plan for my class that is not until 3 pm while KC takes a nap!

The cockroach battlefield

Everyday holds something different :)


Raina (and KC)


PS we have a bit of a cockroach problem-but KC is waging war