Arrival, orientation

I arrived in Vellore last Monday and spent most of the first week settling in, moving into my new apartment, running errands and getting to know the city a bit.
Although it has been 2 years since I was in India, most things seem to come back quickly.  The sensory overload and culture shock seemed much less severe, although I had forgotten how bad the noise pollution is.  I spent half of the 2hr ride from Chennai to Vellore with my fingers in my ears as my taxi driver was extremely fond of the horn.
SunMin (the other Fogarty scholar) and I are staying in a cottage (Poothicote) about 500m from the medical college campus in the southern part of Vellore.  We have a 2-bedroom apartment which is the 2nd and top floor of the home owned by our mentor's great aunt-in-law.  She is 97 and was the first female nursing superintendent of CMC hospital.  Her life experiences are incredible, lots more to come on that as I get all the stories.
Compared to my summer in Mangalore living in a converted hospital room with little more than a bed, desk and bucket bath, having a real apartment, fully furnished, is a huge improvement.  Air-conditioned bedrooms, wireless internet, satelite t.v. and a functional kitchen with appliances leave little to be desired.  
After speaking with so many Tufts folks who visited Vellore and reading lots online, I felt fairly knowledgable about the city when I arrived, and have figured out the main basics in the past week.

This week (week 2) I started an orientation, with many meetings and department tours across CMC, with the goal of learning about different research opportunities here.
After meeting with our mentor, Dr. Gagandeep Kang and telling her my areas of interest, she scheduled me to meet with with key researchers of infectious disease, gastro-intestinal medicine, community health and epidemiology to learn about some of the major ongoing projects.  Additionally, we are spending some time exploring the community health work done at CMC at the community clinics (off-site from the main hospital) that serve the urban poor and rural poor.
CMC's overall mission is three-fold: education, service and research.  Research has always been a key component of the hospital and college, and thus the opportunities here are almost limitless.

After 2 weeks of exploring different units, meeting with researchers and project managers and doing some additional background reading and research, I hopefully will have a few potential research questions that I can further develop into research proposals, and then will continue to pursue one or more of these as a full project.