So, you ask, what am I actually doing?

Since monday, I have been going to the Dr. MGR Medical University here in Chennai Each day. This is a big Health Sciences research university, but with no affiliated hospital. I am sponsored by my University and our professional connections here with the Experimental Medicine Dept. I am spending the week here, getting to know what is going on prior to leaving for Namakkal (a small district hospital in the center of Tamil-Nadu) on Monday night. MGR is the reference laboratory for many of the PCR and serologic tests in the state as well as the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh and part of Karnataka (this is an area of about 100+million people). So I am just spending this week in the lab, watching the dark field analysis and serologic testing for leptospirosis ( a nasty bug that causes a fever disease from animal urine-contaminated water) as well as watching the advance testing for HIV done here. They do all of the early confirmatory and reference tests for babies born to HIV+ mothers, for example since this requires in depth and expensive procedures and not just a rapid test to be done on-site. These are all techniques I did a long time ago in college, but now I'm revisiting them and remembering the indications for each one, so that is good.

The people in the lab are technicians, PhD students, post-docs, and a few MDs and they are all very nice and very helpful (and are all still trying to feed me).

I take the train here from my lodging at the YWCA. It is a regular train, but operates like a subway. I walk 10 min to the station, buy a return ticket for 10 rp (about 30cents) and then wait for the train. I try to line up with the women and go in the women's only compartment. At first it upset me that it was segregated, but when I realized that it is wall to wall people and the elderly people just shove the younger people to make way, I found it reassuring that the only people patting my butt were other women. And I think it's probably safer as well. I ride the train past Chetpet, Nungenbakkem, Kondabakken, Mambalam, and Saidapet (I love these names) and get off at Guindy, walk another 5 minutes and I'm there....relatively stress-free and cheap compared to the autorickshaws who like to get you there faster by veering around the slow busses into oncoming traffic!