Week 2 Day 2 Tuesday - Bangalore, India

Things have been quite hectic in the past couple of days with us finishing up in Switzerland and packing up to go to India. The past few days in Switzerland were amazing! One woman spoke to us about the differences between Traditional Medicine and Western Medicine and it was absolutely fascinating. She also spoke about how China is one of the few countries in the world that has been able to integrate Traditional and Western Medicine well in society. Did you know that China has a policy to treat both types of medicine equally, such as in terms of funding and advertising? I found that fascinating. The WHO has been working to try to do the same in many other countries. It's particularly interesting to me how even though 70% of the population in India uses traditional medicine, traditional and western medicine are still very much segregated. :( I think that I'm going to explore this topic further and I've chosen to base the three papers that I'm going to write this semester on the integration of Western and Traditional Medicine in each of the countries that I visit.

I am finally going to meet my homestay family tomorrow, which I am very excited about. I will write more when I can. The internet connection is slow in India and often, I have to wait in line for a long time to use it. Hopefully the situation will be better in the neighborhood that I'll be staying in with my homestay family for the next 4 .5 weeks!