My first week as an Intern...

Well, what can I say? I’m living in the most amazing house with two amazing roommates. Our cook is named Sheetha, and she makes us three wonderful Indian meals a day. I wake up every morning at 6:30 and walk 10 minutes to a temple, where I take free yoga lessons. At 7:30, I walk back home and prepare for my day. Graciously, Sheetha cooks us breakfast and serves us chai, and sends us away with our lunch as we walk to the CFI (Children’s Future India) office every morning at 9:30. This is where we are interning! My two roommates are medical interns, and I am a social work intern. The first day, we were invited to the CFI hospital to watch a surgeon perform tubal ligations on six women. As I entered the room, I couldn’t believe what I saw. CFI provides free “family planning” surgeries (including vasectomy’s, tubal ligations, and abortions) for low-income families. Because these surgeries are free, the patients are given local anesthesia which means they are awake and can feel some pain. As I watched the surgeon dig into the women’s stomachs, pull out their fallopian tubes, tie them and cut them, I became quite nauseous. So, I left the room before he was finished and didn’t feel very good for the rest of the day! Good thing I’m not planning on being a doctor…

For the first week, we all observed the HIV/AIDS aspect of CFI. Every day, we traveled to different villages and observed HIV/AIDS awareness seminars, games, and teachings in the middle schools on HIV/AIDS. In all of these places, we were served so well. We were served juice, soda, chips, sweets, flowers, blessings, and love from every place we entered. I am in awe of their hospitality. The greatest challenge I have faced thus far has been the language barrier. I am learning more Hindi and Marathi, but slowly. I want to speak with the locals so much, but they know very little English and I know very little Marathi (the local language). BUT, I am determined to learn more!
I have weekends off, and this weekend I will be doing homework, writing reports for CFI on what I have observed, going to the movies (there is a new movie called Hadippa, which is a Bollywood film), and going to buy a sari! Tomorrow (Sunday), there is a gynecological camp that Jessica and I have been invited to, where we would assist the gynecologists in female check-ups and STI (STD) treatments. I hope I’m helpful! I’ll post again soon… wish me luck!!