homeward bound.

Jan 12
We are going to start our long journey home this evening, by taking a train back to Mumbai overnight (the hospital books it for the volunteers), about 15 hrs. Then Jamie and I fly out to Bangkok that tomorrow evening, where we have 24 hrs to wait until getting on our flight to Tokyo, then Seattle... hopefully it will all go smoothly.

Apparently today Bangkok has protestors outside the US embassy, but haven't heard of any problems at the airport yet, and no violence that I've seen in the news (although we are limited here with access to info) so hopefully we can slide in and out of town before things get too hairy.

We have seen and heard large military planes flying overhead here in Bidada (Mandvi), going toward the Pakastani border, but we haven't heard any concerns of immediate actions or plans of fighting. But it is hard to get any news here since the internet access is so infrequent (we took a rickshaw into town today to use it)

I will be sad to leave my India again, and this gorgeous weather, but will be happy to get my queasy bowels back in order soon (the camp food is tasty but not super agreeable to me), and happy to have a cup of Seattle coffee and pet my kitties :).

We felt we were really needed in x-ray for the first 6 days or so, then the patient load wasn't as great, and we were trying to do barium studies without any working fluoro equip, and no radiologist to help protocol and quality control, so we were of less help the last few days.

We did go out with the children's team a few times, and I gave out de-worming pills to each child (sometimes almost everyone in a town has worms), taught a Gujarati tooth-brushing song, and handed out tooth brushes. Fun to see the kids' schools and meet the teachers and such. An average teacher here makes about 2000 rupees a month, or about 40 dollars a month. The average child's parent at these schools has about a 7th grade education.

Ok, now getting ready to pack and take a 2 hr jeep to the train station.

Love you all, and I'll report when we finally make it to back to Seattle on the 16th! We're due in at 7:30am that day (and I do have a ride, thank you Pete)