Second week in Bangalore

June 16-20

The second week of the wheelchair training course went quite quickly. We each built 2 chairs for 2 separate patients, and instructed them on how to use and maintain them. The photo on the left shows me drilling in full safety gear required by the course of safety goggles, closed toe shoes and ear protectors. We were given all the tools we used in the course to take home, which is useful, but I still can't image myself using ear protection to drill the four holes required to make the chair!

During the evenings, there was time to go into town. One night I managed to hit a good department store, and bought some nice kurta tops, as well as a sari! The prices are much cheaper in India, since most of the goods in Nepal come from here. The Indian rupee at 1.6 Nepali rupees, I was reminded of the calculations needed for cross boarder shopping from Canada 15 years ago, and that despite the exchange rate, many things were still cheaper. Here's a preview of me trying on my sari at Roz's in Kathmandu. It'll look even better when I have the blouse made, and it is put on correctly by a Nepali!

On Wednesday night, I went with a couple of guys from the class to the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. They were extensive, and impressive. One thing that particularly caught my attention is that included a huge outcropping of 'peninsular gneiss' rock. I might not have thought it extraordinary, except it had a plaque telling us all about it, and how this ancient type of rock draws scientists from around the world to study the formation of the earth's crust. Since gneiss (pronounced 'nice', and immortalized for me in Splendourbog's Don't take me for granite, I'm gneiss song) is what makes up much of the Canadian Shield – do scientists come from around the world to study it too? Speak up, my friends who are geologically inclined...