The most exciting week yet...

Michelle: This week Ryan and I found out that we will be going to Omaha, NE for Ryan's residency. Ryan was so excited he walked around the house singing the Air Force song all night. We are really excited. Then if that were not enough, Saturday was Ryan's birthday and we were treated to a camel ride ($6.25). To top that off Ryan got a chocolate cake with a giant singing lotus blossom candle/fireworks display that he had to blow out without singeing his eyebrows off.

On Thursday I had a nervous moment in the market. Mom and I are looking for a sari to go around the base of the Christmas tree and we had asked one of the store owners if he had any. He said no and then he said "Follow me, madame." He took us through a row of motorbikes, a deserted restaurant and then up a skinny wooden staircase. I thought to myself, "This is how people disappear." (By the way, I wouldn't recommend doing this in Colombia.) Luckily the owner just wanted to show us the sari shop on the second floor. This was my first sari shop experience. You have to take your shoes off outside and then you sit on mattresses while the vendor pulls sari after sari off his shelf. Sometimes he listens to the specifications you give him, sometimes he takes a little creative license. Luckily he didn't have what we are looking for so we will get to explore more sari shops this week.

Ryan: I have two exciting video clips to share that I hope will make India come alive for you. In the first clip, I take you inside a moving rickshaw as I take my morning ride to the hospital. These little golf-cart-sized vehicles are the taxies of India, and they’re small enough to squeeze between all the cars, bicycles, motorcycles, and trucks swarming the streets. In the second video you’ll see Michelle & I riding on a camel down the streets of Pune. I felt just like Lawrence of Arabia! For novice camel riders, the most important advice is to hold on tight when the camel either stands up from its kneeling position or kneels to let you off. The camel straightens its back legs first when standing up, putting its back at a steep angle. If you’re not holding on when this happens, you’ll definitely tumble head-first onto the ground in front of the camel – a very embarrassing and painful way to start journey across the Sahara.

Week two in India

This week I was busted. Before we came to India, Ryan had me look over all the parasites that a person could possibly get. His take home message was that I was not to eat street food, which, if I am being totally honest, I have been known to do in the past. Last night I went for a walk with Dad and we came across a man grilling corn on the cob. Dad couldn't resist it so he got some with lemon and some sort of chili powder. I was being really strong and not eating any, but then my curiousity and hunger got the best of me and I tried a bite. Just then we saw Ryan and the driver pulled over 15 feet in front of us. I quickly gave the corn back to Dad but it was too late. What are the chances that Ryan would be driving by in my moment of weakness? The good news is that I am still okay, I think that grilled corn is pretty benign.

Ryan has had an exciting week at the hospital. He lucked out and saw leprosy and a viper bite (actually just the results of said viper bite) all in one day. Really could life get better than that?He also got to go see a sad government hospital and meet the with students working over there. Lunch has proved to be equally exciting for him. None of the Indian menus have any descriptions of what the food actually is so Ryan armed himself with a list of food words that he carries around in his medical notebook. Usually everything is almost like he expects, but one day he ordered a kashmere rice and it turned out to be a tropical fruit salad type of rice. He said that it didn't go so well with his curried vegetables.

<== Michelle & a stone crocodillian; Ryan sees his sizzling brownie. Click to see more.

Namaste (Hello) from India

Hello from the other side of the Earth! A week into our visit to Pune, we’re still healthy and having fun. We had only a few snags on our arrival: a delayed flight left us in Newark, NJ, for Thanksgiving, and one of our suitcases took an extra day to make it to India.

Pune is on India’s western coast, about a 4 hour drive on a winding mountain highway from India’s largest city, Mumbai (i.e. Bombay). The monsoon season is over now and the cool season has begun, meaning the sun is always up and the temperature in the 70’s. Pune used to be a quiet town for vacationers and retirees from Mumbai, but a boom in manufacturing and the tech industry over the last decade has made the population swell to 4 million. John Deere built a plant here recently, and Michelle’s dad is here to work on a transmission for a new India-specific tractor. The Johnsons have been in Pune since February and in addition to giving us a room and meals, have been excellent tour guides and culture advisors.

If you ask me, I think all of Pune’s 4 million citizens like to drive on the street at once. I’m fascinated by the traffic here, and I’ll try and post a video clip soon so you can see what it’s like. My first fascination is with the sheer variety of things all sharing the road: bicycles, cars, countless motorcycles, innumerable rickshaws, stray horses, wandering cows, oxen pulling carts, men pushing carts, camels, and even herds of goats. My second fascination is how they all share the narrow roads with so little injury day after day. I think their key to success is liberal use of the horn and 100% defensive driving. Lucky for us, the Johnson’s Indian driver, Feroz, knows the unwritten rules of the road here and gets us safely where we need to go.

Michelle has adjusted to the new time zone and established a good schedule of a mandatory morning hour for dissertation writing, a full day of shopping with her mom, and an evening of teasing Hannah. I’d better let her tell you her favorite parts about her market trips herself: “Hmmm, well Ryan, one of my favorite parts of the markets has been the clothing shops. I really appreciate their love of all things bright and shiny. All of my favorite colors are still in style here and frequently worn together- hot orange, lime green, bright magenta. I also like the food market, and lucky for me we get to go once a week. I have taken it upon myself to reintroduce everyone to the vegetables in season here. So far the asparagus got one star and the parsnips got two. Next week I think that we are going to try kohlrabi and eggplant. The ratings can’t really go down so we might as well keep trying new things. Dad is convinced that we need to try some of the seafood from the market, but I am not so sure that is the best idea. Something about the vultures frequenting that area of the market makes me nervous. Back to you Ryan.”

I get to spend my day seeing patients with Dr. R.S. Wadia, a neurologist at Ruby Hall Clinic just down the road. Ruby Hall is the best hospital in Pune with excellent facilities and a reputation that attracts the wealthy in town. It also has a large general ward for the underserved. The result is that I get to learn from excellent physicians and see the diseases affecting all levels of society. Dr. Wadia is a kind soft-spoken man who takes every opportunity to explain and educate me on the patients we see. He’s taught me more about stroke, seizure, and movement disorders this first week than I learned in my month of neurology at OSU, all on account of his passion for teaching. With him I’ve also seen some rarer diseases: Dangue encephalitis – a tropical viral disease of the brain, SSPE – a rare late-effect of measles that makes your body jerk every 10 seconds, and Tuberculosis of the spine.

Click on the photos to see more, and you can read more stories from this week on the Johnson’s blog: http://lucindajohnson.blogspot.com/. The only place with all the details though is Hannah’s journal and that is strictly confidential. We miss you all, though we don’t miss the cold weather and snow. Please enjoy the Christmas music on the radio and in the stores there for us, and we’ll be in touch.