we reached dindigul early this morning... took a train overnight and slept on it. was qt cool! my first time on a sleeper. its actually pretty comfy :) so anyway, we reahed the hospital and all today and....... there are sitting toilets!!!!! its attached to our room summore :) the hospital is REALLY nice and the people are super nice too! when we were driving in, me and char were commenting that this place looks really poor and that it looks even poorer than china but apparently this is one of the richest towns in the area! so u can imagine how poor they are. oh speaking of that, yst we went to the tsunami hi areas in chennai. becuase of some barriers and walls and stuff, chennai itself wasnt tt badly hit, so only abt 200 people died there. (compared to thousands elsewhere) we saw like the beach with ships thrown onto it and lik debris and broken bits of boats all arnd. it was really sad cos like the refugees and suff had to stay along the roads and they thought we were there to give aid so they cowded arnd us but we had to turn them away. but apparently frm the newspapers and oso frm the people living there, alot of aid that has come in has been wasted. aunty cleo told us that like she saw 2 truckloads of food left to rot becuase they didnt get any orders as to where t distribute. the newspapers were also recounting stories of how poeple lied that they were affected so that they could recieve the aid and sell it for themselves. we also saw some people doing just that. it was qt bad lah but i guess thats what poverty does to you?

odenchattram has a internet shop but the connection is SUPER slow haha. anyway, the hospital is a really pretty place cos like got jungle and hills and stuff. its cool cos all the doctors stay in the hospital compound itself. its a really wonderful place because they give priority to the poor and waive fees if they feel the patient is too poor to pay. the doctors were saying tt the hospital stays in the black purely by God's grace beacuse so many of ther patients cannot afford to pay for thier care. we followed the surgical doctors arnd on thier ward rounds and they were telling us all the ailments and showed us thier teatment and stuff and it was REALLY a super good learning experience. learned alot jst by following them! and they are all really helpful and kind and were very patient in explaining the illnesses to me and char. but cos we dun speak tamil and arent doctors (obviously) we probably wun be helping the doctors in thier rounds too often lah. today was like orientation day so i hope we will be able to do ore hands-on stuff tml!oh. saw a pair of premature twins and they were SO SMALL and cute haha. took fotos of them... so cuteeeee. gosh. i wanna help deliver a baby! i hope that we cannnnnnn :)

this hospital was started by this guyy 50 years ago.. and at the age of 85 he is still seeing patients! hes a really great man and has really cute specs! heh.