Hi all! Geneva here reporting on the last day of our trip 🙁 Today was the beginning of a long travel journey, so get ready for lots of anecdotes and pictures in today’s blog post!
We are so sad to be heading out today, but there’s no doubt that we have made unbelievable memories and friendships (both within our small group and with the Aravind students & hosts) that will be long lasting. We have already started talking about a BIO 70 reunion sometime soon!
As per our routine, we started the day with breakfast at the Inspiration Hostel. Here’s a picture of our last breakfast featuring crab claws, which we choose to interpret as one of two ways:
- We are jealous of the evolution of crab claws
- We think Abbi’s biking gloves look like this
After lunch we picked up our handmade clothes from the tailor, who was nice enough to deliver them to Inspiration! After much stressing about the types of fabrics and styles we wanted, we were SO pleased with our choices! Here’s Arjun, Daniel, Breggy and Mark rocking their matching fits. There’s no doubt that they are giving all boy bands, past and present, a run for their money with their matching clothes. Group name ideas for them include The Cataract Crew or The Glaucoma Guys. (Suggestions welcome. Ophthalmology jokes only).
We packed up all of our stuff and said farewell to Inspiration Hostel.
Here’s Mazie with her iconic stash of granola bars! Yum.
We headed to the airport where we left Madurai and landed in Chennai.
Here’s me, Abbi and Arjun ready for takeoff!
Once we got out of the Chennai airport, we piled into cars and arrived at Trident Hotel, where we would later have a SPECTACULAR dinner before heading back to the airport. We had a few hours to kill so the group decided to head to a mall to find the store called FabIndia, as we had heard so many great things about it. The traffic in Chennai was at some points even more striking than it was in Madurai, as car horns and honking filled the air like a symphony.
Fabindia was so fabulous!
The mall was huge and packed with a Saturday crowd. Some of us lucked out at Fabindia and bought some more clothing pieces. Others enjoyed some familiar comfort foods like burgers and donuts.
Back at the hotel, it was time for dinner! We were ready to dig in. We had the privilege of dining at the Trident hotel with a multi-course meal packed with amazing flavors and huge variety. Surrounded by great company (so much love for our little family of 13!) we had a great meal filled with exciting and hilarious conversations. The prawns were a huge hit, as were the virgin pina coladas and Mark’s cinderella drink (yummy & tropical). We shared many smiles and laughs over special moments from the trip and people’s other stories. Oh yeah, and Abbi ate the decorative leaf on our dinner plates.
Family photo!
We did not forget that during dinner USA was playing the Netherlands in the World Cup. As you can tell, we definitely don’t have any soccer fans in the group. And they definitely don’t wear jerseys under their shirts…
Mark and Daniel watching the World Cup. A series.
We ended the wonderful evening with some thoughtful reflection on everyone’s efforts that made this trip possible. Dr. Zegans gave a special shoutout to Dawn who worked so hard to make this trip run as smoothly as it did. Thank you Dawn! Thank you Dr. Zegans!
Breggy spoke on behalf of the students and gave a thoughtful toast thanking our professors for putting on a great course during the term and such as amazing experiential opportunity here in India. Truly, we cannot thank Dawn, Dr. Zegans, Mark and Fiona, as well as everyone else who worked behind the scenes, to give us this once in a lifetime opportunity to connect with students from Aravind and learn about the astounding Aravind eye care model. After remarking on how close we have grown as a group, we piled one last time into a van and headed to the airport.
Here’s Maia. We are ready to sleep!
We look forward to sharing even more pictures and details of our adventures with everyone soon!
Signing off here. Thanks for tagging along!
Geneva