did i sign up for this?

I say the title of this blog humorously now, but a few days ago, I was seriously asking myself that very question. Boy, has it been a couple of days....where to even begin.

I left Chennai on Tuesday - wow, was it only Tuesday? Not before finding out from the airport that they had found my luggage - it was in Lima, Peru. I haven't heard anything further, but hopefully it's making it's way back to Chennai so I can pick it up when I return next week. Oh well, at least it's a good story...is it weird that I'm kind of jealous of my backpack?

Dan and I left for the bus station where we were looking forward to a 14 hours bus ride followed by an 8 hour train ride to get to Bhubaneswar. We boarded the sleeper bus (yeah, it was more like a train with the aisle on the far left side and horizonal train-type beds) and found our seats occupied. The operator informed us that our tickets hadn't been confirmed so we would have to pay again to stay on the bus. Dan thought this was a scam so we sat and argued for a while (things like "well, we're not getting off the bus", "sir, your ticket is not confirmed", "our tickets are confirmed!"...etc.) Things ended with us holding up the bus for half an hour and eventually getting off. What a waste, but apparently this issue of buying tickets that say confirmed on them are really just wait list seats. How you're supposed to know that, I have no idea. We bagged the entire plan and booked a bus ride to Bangalore instead. Then bought flights from there to Bswr. It was a sweet 7 hour bus ride (although it was air-conditioned, which I have come to realize is really the pinnacle of comfort, regardless of other accomodations). We had to take another bus to the airport which got us there exactly half an hour before the flight (keep in mind that this was at 7:30 in the morning after we'd spent all night "sleeping" on the bus). Imagine 2 white people, dirty, sleep deprived, frustrated and generally fried running, and I mean RUNNING, through the airport to board this flight. We made the flight and arrived in Bhubaneswar 4 hours later.

We came straight to Anjelie's house (she's doing the same work Dan and I are, but for a different project). This is where I am now, and where I'm supposed to be staying for the rest of the summer. It's close to a main road where you can get an auto (they're small open door taxis basically) up and down the street for like 4-7 rupees (that's probably around 20 cents). Not bad. The apartment doubles as an office for both Anjelie and me and Dan. It's really not a bad place, but the room I'm supposed to stay in is also the un-airconditioned office (full, and I mean full, of boxes and surveys and books, etc.). There's a blow up mattress, which is actually the best part about the situation. Both Dan and Anjelie will be gone next week on vacation which is pretty good news for me - it means I'll have the whole place to myself and also that I can take the mattress into Anjelie's bedroom (it as AC!). I've already decided though, that when I come back from Chennai in mid-June that I'll get a hotel room to sleep in and just come to the apartment to work with the rest of the staff. It's too much to have to live in such an uncomfortable space with no privacy (and even no light in the bathroom - what!) Nothing too fancy, just AC and enough space and privacy to take my stuff out of my bags...

Anyway, after getting a full night's sleep on Wednesday for the first time since I arrived in India (at least as full as you can imagine where you just sweat all night and can listen to the lulaby sounds of honking horns), Thursday was a much better day.

For dinner and drinks we went to the Mayfair, which is a super super nice hotel. The bars and restaurants were all AC and everyone treats you really nice. It's such a contrast to the surroundings when you walk off their grounds. Anjelie (she's from California) says she goes there at least once a week just to read and hang out because it's just nice to have a place where you can relax and be comfortable. It was nice hearing that I wasn't the only one to be occasionally overwhelmed here.

I've been learning a lot more about this project and I've taken over big chunks of it. It's really crazy seeing this side of a survey. I'm really used to the academic uses for data sets, but it's such a vastly different thing when you look into all the work that goes into getting that matrix of numbers. I think this is the first day where I'm really starting to appreciate being here and being emmersed like this. I mean, it's just insane how much work goes into collecting data, and how much you have to trust people to do what you're telling them to do. When Dan leaves, I'll be the boss of the project, so I'll be in charge of telling everyone what to do, paying them, making sure everything stays on schedule, etc. Also, Dan took me to the data entry company where I watched people on computers just going through and entering the survey data. They do double entry, which means that 2 separate people enter every survey and they you run checks to see all the places where they were different. I don't have to actually do any of that, but it's my job to go down there and ask to see what everyone's working on and make sure they're working hard enough. It's so surreal to be put in a position of such power with relatively little knowledge about the project. My assistant (Deepak) is really great. He's from Bhubaneswar so he's got so much knowledge and has been working on this project for almost 2 years. He'll be the one doing the majority of the work I think, but I still need to make sure it's done. I'll also be using pretty much all of my stata knowledge to run checks on the preliminary data to make sure that people entered things right and skipped questions when they were supposed to, etc. And then, if things look funny, break out the survey and see what they wrote. I'll actually be finishing up the entire project while I'm here - talk about responsibility. I need to get the data to such a final state that we are confident that we don't need to look at the actual surveys again. Of course I'm also in charge of shipping all the physical surveys to Chennai when we're done where they'll be locked in a vault - fancy huh?

I've spend a good chunk of time the past 2 days actually doing the follow-up survey to Deepak (I ask the questions and he answers like he's a villager). It's been a really great experience and pretty much the only way you can learn the details of the survey quickly. Part of the survey is taking the participant's blood to test for anemia and malaria, so for fun, he tested my blood. Thankfully I haven't caught malaria yet!!

Deepak and I are leaving tonight for an overnight bus to Rourkela where a doctor there runs a malaria clinic. We meet with him tomorrow to discuss coming back up there with some of our blood testers and malaria tests so that we can verify that our field tests make the right diagnosis. It's pretty interesting and I really hope I can represent the project well! Unfortunately it's another overnight bus back to Bswr tomorrow night, although I have to say that I'm kindof looking forward to sleeping in AC, even if it is on a bus - weird huh?

Sorry to bore you with so many details of the program, I think maybe my econ friends might find it a little more interesting...Updates might be coming more infrequently, but I won't forget altogether - I promise!

No pictures yet, in fact I haven't taken any. It's such a different experience when you go somewhere like this to work instead of for vacation. But, I'm going to consciously try to take more from now on, so don't worry, they're coming! :-)