Throughout our copious travels throughout India, we noticed large amounts of trash along the sides of the road. Their garbage policy is different than we see here in the US. We would also see spots of fire along the roads, where trash was being burned. Many of the streams or rivers were filled with plastic bottles and wrappers. As another piece of information, while we were in India, we only drank bottled water. We never knew if we would have electricity or running water while in our living quarters. We truly experienced a different way of life and experienced the way the locals live. While traveling on a trip like this, we are there to experience a life other than our own. We were not in a chain hotel or going to tourist areas. We were the only American people walking around wherever we would go. We may have been the first Americans some of the villagers had ever seen. We were out in the country, far from any major city. We 100% had a once in a lifetime experience, in which we would probably never have the opportunity to do outside of this Gannon led trip.

These are pictures from our last night in India. We conducted a question and answer dialogue between the Gannon nursing students and the nursing students from Sacred Heart. The occupational therapy students also took part. We were able to learn and reflect on our experiences throughout our time and interactions in India. The students from Sacred Heart also displayed beautiful chalk like art work and gave a performance consisting of dance and music.

If anyone was wondering, this is what a typical meal would look like that we were served on the plane. We had copious hours on the plane. Total travel included the 2 hour drive to Buffalo, the flight from Buffalo to JFK which was about 1 hour, the flight from NYC to Dubai which was about 12-14 hours, and the flight from Dubai to Chennai which was about 5 hours. We then had to drive from Chennai to our final destination which as about another 6 hours or so. Everyone held in there like a champ, and we were definitely professional travelers by the end of the trip :)

We went to three different types of hospitals while in India. We went to the hospital in a local village where those without money would attend. We then went to a government and private hospital. The pictures I have posted are from the hospitals located in the villages. All of us students on the trip were either juniors or seniors. We have all been at St. Vincent or Hamot multiple times for our clinical rotations. We were all shocked and had eye opening experiences to what we observed in the care settings we visited. Many things are done differently, such as in India they do not wear gloves with every patient interaction, unlike in the US where we wear them constantly. They also do not follow privacy rules like in the US, as we were allowed to take pictures in the village hospitals. When it comes to sanitation policies, hand washing and sanitizing was not as prominent as back here Erie where hand washing is drilled into out nursing careers from the beginning of our learning. We even get tested on how to wash. In India, when you graduate as a nurse, you also are a midwife. When people deliver, a physician is not present. Nurses are in control of the whole process. In the government hospital about 30 births are conducted daily. Here in the US, we are lucky if we can see one birth throughout our whole OB clinical rotation. As nursing students and professionals, we were all very lucky to have this eye opening experience and it will be carried with us throughout the rest of our careers.

So, we had some awesome food while in India. Typically our meals consisted of rice, some type of soup, various sauces that they called "gravy" (like a curry sauce), eggs or chicken, and always fruit. For breakfast they also had this awesome jelly that tasted like Twizzlers. They typically would not eat bread with jelly, but were very kind to have it available for a little taste of home for us. At the nursing school, they also raise turkeys, chickens, and other animals. We got to see the little baby chicks that were only about nine or ten days old as well. In some of these pictures, you see the nursing students preparing food for our last night in India in which they prepared our dinner. There were peeling hundreds of heads of garlic and onion, and multiple herbs. When entering the room, it smelled amazing. I am very big into farm to table cooking,and everything we ate was very fresh and non-processed. Coffee and tea time was also scheduled for around 4-4:30PM everyday. Their coffee reminded me of melted coffee ice cream. I was so delicious and almost like a dessert treat! We noticed that dinner time is scheduled for later than most people would eat in the US. We typically ate around 9PM. We were unsure if this was because of our busy schedules, afternoon tea or coffee, or if it was because it was too hot to eat earlier and they waited for it to cool off.