Today is our second to last day in Hyderabad! It's starting to become bitter sweet. Congress is drawing to and end and I'm leaving most of the American friends I've made, but we're also about to start the Post Congress Tour and most of the international friends I've made are going.
Although I was exhausted, I woke up for a morning workshop on what I thought was local Indian herbal medicine. And again, my research of the activity was wrong and I was slightly disappointed, however that's my fault. Here's a blurb about that workshop:
Gattefosse - the Vice President of Gattefosse India Pvt. Ltd., Chhanda Kapadia, hosted a workshop titled Lipid Excipients for Pharmaceutical Solutions. She delved deep into the work they do with lipid excipients in creating new formulations to meet the needs of their clients. They only use natural and plant extract with goals of maximizing the quality and texture desired. It was a very interactive workshop where each of us in attendance spoke about how things compares to industry in our home countries, like preferred delivery methods of most sought after specializations of study. She was an excellent presenter and portrayed industrial components of medication in a way I had never before appreciated.

I was nodding off during her presentation and I knew I needed coffee and excitement, so I headed to GA. I'm really falling in love with General Assembly because it has made me feel so connected to IPSF and learn so much more about the organization than I ever knew from just participating at the chapter level. Earlier in the week Amy was elected into a position where she is in charge of media and broadcasting, and she wants me to be a part of her committee to really begin to get involved, so I'm looking really forward to that! Amongst GA activity I worked on my proposal for Model WHO that I received from the Model UN workshop. That workshop was in the afternoon:
Model WHO - after attending the Model UN workshop earlier in the week and receiving our country assignments, we broke up into pairs to write proposals about improving the AMR problem in our country to propose to the World Health Organization. I have never participated in an event like this, so between the research, proposal, and public speaking, I benefitted from immense personal growth. We debated the topics, helped each other propose better ideas than what we came up with on our own, and interacted with students we may not have met yet. It was a great experience that really peaked my interest in public health and policy. I look forward to more practice in the future!
Our group text was blowing up with information from General Assembly so we rushed down immediately to catch the end of it.
Christine found out she made it to the finals for the Patient Counseling Competition! It takes place at 0900 tomorrow morning, so she spent the evening preparing. Tonight's theme night was Holi Party, the Indian festival of color. This was the night I was looking most forward to, so I left Christine to her research and preparations, grabbed Amy, Danielle, and Whitley, and headed down to the garden. They put some strict rules in place so we don't totally destroy the Marriott, but if you've ever done a color run before it's basically the exact same powder and washes right out of everything so I'm not really worried.
There was music and dancing and a traditional piñata type thing, and everyone just splashed each other with color and had a great time. Due to noise regulation laws here in Telengana, all the music had to be shut off by 10 (although we pushed it to 10:30), they had a massive shower going on so we all rain danced to get rid of the color, and everyone decided to move the party to the pool. You had to change in this shower stall thing, but we did not want to wait so we scurried off to the bathroom, changed there, and ran inside to avoid being seen changing the rules.
Well, the pool staff was not keen of our plans to get rid of all our color and enjoying to enjoy a nice long night by the pool, so although the pool is 24/7 they kicked us out at 11, so by the time we went upstairs, changed, and got to the pool, we couldn't get in. This was no problem for WCers though! Of course there was a backup plan! Everyone went back to their rooms, rinsed off the color, got dressed and headed to Skybar for what was possibly our last night. It was a great time dancing and socializing on our second to last day. Christine competes in the morning and GA begins promptly at 7AM, so we will be up early again tomorrow, too. So goodnight for the few hours I have!