Sunday in Pictures and Monday!

Hello friends!

As promised, I come bearing pictures! Below are pictures of the Srirangam temple. Tomorrow I will post pictures of the rural village we visited as well as Tuesday's events, and maybe a bonus post!

Here is part of the temple complex seen from just outside, as you can see, its huge (and that's not even the tallest tower)

Here is what we saw from our entrance of the temple complex

An example of the exquisite detailing on each tower and all throughout the temple. 

Not only was there detailed sculpture and painting, there was detailed stone carving all over that is hundreds to thousands of years old. It blew my mind!

Another example of the exquisite detailed carving seen throughout.

This is an example of what parts of the inner most areas of the temple looked like. They contained shrines or places to pray, and were incredibly ornate and colorful.

Unfortunately, unless we were Hindu, we were not allowed inside many of these areas and had to look from afar.

We also just took pictures of the ceiling outside the shrines instead. Holy crap color!

From farther down the way, we kept hearing these incredibly loud yelling that sounded like it was coming from a loud speaker. We then came upon these women screaming into this wall, which amplifies your voice and makes it bigger. Kavi, our guide that day, told us that if you scream in it loud enough you will have luck, fortune and favor. We just thought it was kind of loud. 

Another neat thing we saw, this is like a wishing well, but instead of throwing coins in a pond, you place a lock on this wreath of locks. We weren't entirely sure if there were stipulations on these wishes or what the purpose of the locks were, as our guide was unsure as well. 

This is an example showing this ancient temple juxtaposed with que lines for some of the buildings. Because this complex is such a large tour site, many areas looked almost like an amusement park area rather than a holy place of worship. 

That ends my pictures for the temple. I have many more, so if anyone is interested in seeing more pictures, email or facebook me and I will be sure to add more in the near future.

Now onto the present! For Monday, I started fresh once again with a new doctor to shadow, Dr. Sushila, Dr. Victoria's mother-in-law who also practices OB/GYN in Janet Nursing home. Dr. Sushila is an older doctor, and utilizes some older more traditional practices, which I found really cool. For instance, instead of a heartbeat doppler or ultrasound, Dr. Sushila uses a fetalscope, which essentially looks like an old fashioned ear trumpet that specializes in baby heartbeats. Its a nifty, non-electronic method of finding a baby's heartbeat, but in order to really find it, you have to press the scope really hard into the mother's stomach, which looks rather uncomfortable. But she really loves using it and let me listen in a couple times.

Even though she uses this very old method of finding the heartbeat, she also has a pocket ultrasound, which is a littler larger than the size of an iPhone. I thought it was really funny that on the one hand, this woman is using a very old piece of medical equipment, but then whips out a mobile ultrasound whenever she needs to. I found it really cool and interesting.

I find it really interesting how far advanced this country is in some ways, but is so behind in others. For example, this city has many supermarkets full of items you would find back in the United States. But you still get your meat and vegetables from this very old world looking market because the supermarkets don't sell these things. Or, the government handed out free televisions, mixers and food processors out to the needy in rural villages in Tamil Nadu, but many of these places don't even have electricity or running water to make them work or be handy in the home in the first place. Some of these things just fascinate me in terms of what has progressed and what has not.

Besides shadowing a new doctor, I have continued to make friends with the nurses at Janet, who seem to have a very different workplace environment than the one we see in the states. Many of the nurses are younger, and like to joke around and have fun or amuse themselves in the reception area, or go hang out in the ultrasound room when they don't have any iminent work. From what I have observed in the U.S, this is not the case really in any workplace environment, and especially not in a medical setting. Yes the nurses and doctors talk and crack jokes in the States, but they don't hang out during regular hours, or make jokes or pull pranks on each other to the degree they do here in India, and just have a stronger professional air about them. The nurses in Janet are still extremely productive, and help move more patients through that place in a day than many practices see in a week. I just thought it was a different way to approach the workplace environment, and it seems to be working very well here.

Well folks, that all I have for today - more tomorrow!