A Day in the Life...

Ready for our first day in the hospital!

Now we're starting to get more used to the hospital we thought we'd share some of our day to day experiences here. So far every morning we've woken up to the sound of (very loud!) bells at 5.30am, then at 6.30am the chapel service outside our window has very loud hymn singing through a microphone, which wakes Emma up again although Michaela manages to sleep straight through it! We have all meals provided in the canteen in the hospital, and luckily there's a choice for breakfast of "western style" i.e. toast or traditional. So far neither of us have been brave enough to face spicy food first thing in the morning but we'll get there I'm sure! Michaela has managed to convert Emma to the joys of chai - Indian tea made with sweetened milk and spiced, we're going to have to learn how to make it back home.

Then we head to our respective departments, and If we're lucky our department will sometimes get chai and snacks for a mid morning break, which all seem to involve bread, spiced potato and a lot of deep frying.
We then meet up again for lunch, which consists of dhal, a vegetarian dish with either spinach or potatoes, and a meat dish, served with rice and chapatis. The usual working day is over by 4 so we have plenty of time to wander around the streets close to the hospital, or head to a nearby market on the metro or tuk-tuk, before heading back for dinner, a very similar meal to lunch but with pudding. So far our favourite has been bananas and custard, but hopefully we'll get to try some more traditional desserts!

Us with Cleopatra - one of our Zimbabwean dentistry student friends, at dinner time. The food is amazing!

 Then we head back to our accommodation and try to stay warm, it's winter at the moment in Delhi but it's a little different to British winter, the sun is still shining and daytime temperatures are around 18°, but at night it does go down to around 5°. The doctors have been horrified when we've told them that often during summer in England it can be similar to the daytime here, we've seen many of them wearing gloves, scarves and even bobble hats on the wards as it's so cold at the moment for them! Then the next challenge is trying to get to sleep with the noise of traffic and car horns constantly hooting, interspersed with regular loud train honks (Emma's description), but we're getting used to it! 

We're still trying to decide what to do this weekend, we may go to church with our Zimbabwean friends to see what a service is like here, so we will let you know!

As promised - here are a few more photos of our last few days. Enjoy! 

Emma and MoreBlessing on our first tuk-tuk journey.

Michaela and Cleopatra hanging on to the tuk-tuk!

Janpath - a street packed full of shops and stalls selling all kinds of handicrafts.

Haggling to get a tuk-tuk home.

This is the monkey that lives just outside our room. The hospital hire him, and keep him on a leash so that he will scare off other monkeys, as here monkeys are pests. The locals give us very funny looks when we stop to look at him and take pictures!