No diva or movie starlet dream this time. Instead I dreamt we were raising money at school for a good cause by making wine and selling it at a profit (yeah totally borrowing Joanie’s idea here). Part of my dream involved me transporting wine crates and dropping a few crates, wasting sweet precious wine (did I say dream, this was clearly a nightmare!). But the funny part of the dream was that Sandra and I thought of asking people at Heenan to donate and Jean Chrétien liked our idea so much that he and his friends donated over $5 million to our cause! I’ll be expecting a cheque when I come back from India...
This is why Yan is never in charge of carrying anything fragile....especially not wine...such a waste!
We took a rickshaw to the College and met with Vaishali who was our saviour in what was to come (speaking to people and driving us around). First we met with a coordinator at the College. Then we followed a man to another office where we picked up paperwork and were told we would have to pay fees of $700 each. We weren’t too thrilled with that though we had been warned it would probably happen... Under the OMG Exchange Program we’re not supposed to pay any fees but the ILS Law College is new to this process since we are the first law students to take part in it. Usually students attend Pune University, but the Law College has a much better reputation and quality of education in terms of law courses. Probably not worth the nearly $6,000 we’re paying between Ottawa tuition for this semester and these fees but whatever, we’re in India and still get to graduate at the end of the year! :)
So I guess it turns out that we’re actually paying $6000 dollars so we can skip a semester and still get our credits...I still thing we’re getting a deal!!! A whole semester + out of Ottawa and Fauteux Hall is priceless!!
Back to our bureaucratic adventure... We still needed to get our hands on $700 (26,450 Rs). Vaishali first drove us to a bank, where we were told we couldn’t withdraw that money but were instead directed to a Thomas Cook office in the next building over (which of course turned out to be a ways further). On the way we saw an ATM and tried our luck there. The limit was 15,000 Rs a day and only Emilie’s card worked. Only 37,450 Rs to go! We couldn’t take out money at the Cook office either and they recommended a money transfer instead. Unfortunately it was 3:30 in the morning in Canada and we needed the money now if we wanted to start classes tomorrow. Next we rickshawed it to a Citibank ATM where Emilie couldn’t take out more money (apparently reaching the limit on one ATM precludes you from withdrawing at another, even if that ATM has a higher limit)! Fortunately my card worked and the limit was 400 notes (not a lump sum but the number of bills you choose to withdraw) and I was able to withdraw the other 37,450 Rs. Thing is, the college wouldn’t take such a large sum in cash and we had to return to the first bank to get a demand draft, which is basically a cheque prepared by the bank that we give to the College. Because we weren’t Indian and didn’t have an account with the bank, Vaishali had to get the demand draft for us. So basically we handed over all our money to her and she deposited it into her account, after which they could issue the draft. Thankfully, she didn’t try to make a run for it. We had another hiccup though because the bank could only issue one such draft given the high amount of money involved, so we drove to another bank, waited in line, received the other draft, and next stopped at a Kodak store (the forms we had to fill out required special sized photos). Another 120Rs later, we stopped for a stick of glue (for the photos in case the College didn’t have any) and headed back to pay and hand in our forms. After signing every form and handing over our money, we are now more or less officially students of ILS Law College with our very own timetable and we’ll even get shiny ID cards to boot!
It would’ve been entertaining to actually see Yan and I try to navigate all this bureaucracy without Vaishali’s help!!! What took 5 hours for her would’ve taken DAYS for us!!
Timetable: 2 classes a day, 6 days a week: Monday-Wednesday from 7:15-10:00am and Thursday to Saturday from 8:45-11:20am. Those early mornings are going to kill us!!
But at least we get the afternoons off to sightsee....I mean study!! :)
After confirming the locations of our classrooms (all in the same building), we drove to a stationary store and bough ourselves a binder, pens, and paper for our first day of school (Some pretty exciting stuff... but in all honesty, we felt some of those first day of school jitters!). Vaishali then dropped us off at the hotel. We ate some yummy soup at a place across the street, spent an hour on the internet and another ten minutes trying to erase our passwords (stupid old versions of msn!!) before retiring for the night so we could be somewhat coherent for our first morning class!
We had actually wanted to eat a HUGE meal since we had only had a banana for breakfast and were now starving...we headed to the restaurant where we were greeted by a gate and a guard who told us the restaurant is closed. Yan tries his best to ask him at what time the restaurant opened but to no avail. So I tell Yan that I was going to ask reception and a look of glee now showed on the guard’s face as he clearly agreed with me. Turns out the restaurant only opened at 7pm...and it was now 4:45pm...we were too hungry to wait so we headed to the restaurant where we normally have our breakfast. I originally wanted to have the Hot and sour egg soup but Yan mistakenly ordered the Hot and Sour chicken soup (he had ordered a noodle soup for himself). The boy who serves speaks NO word of English and just gave us our soups so we ate whatever was in front of us...after realizing that I was eating the noodle soup (and not wanting to chance eating wheat for a third night in a row...but really, would it make a difference at this point??!) we switched soups. It’s then that I realized that this was a chicken soup...CHICKEN!! The one meat everyone tells you NOT to eat cause it will make you sick...but since it was so delicious, I ate it anyways...and, thank god, did not get sick!!! Would actually eat that soup again!! So yummy!
Interesting India tidbits we learned today:
- The street lights are apparently turned off at 1pm for several hours, not sure how long, in order to save on electricity! During those hours, everyone just zig zags through intersections while dodging the following, in order of size from largest to smallest: trucks, buses, cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, people pushing carts of foods, pedestrians, and dogs (and at least one mule).
- The cost of a trip in a rickshaw works as follows: Each rickshaw has a meter with 4 numbers, the first 2 are black and the next two are in red. If the meter indicates 0100 it is 1.00. If it indicates 1245, it means 12.45. When you arrive at destination, you multiply whatever number you are at by 7 and add 3. This is how many Rupees you should pay. So 0150 is 1.5x7+3. It’s as simple as that! Most drivers also carry a little card with a conversion table though it only goes up to 15 or so. The nice thing with understanding the meter system is that you really can’t get cheated and the drivers have even let me do the calculation for them using my ipod touch and just taken me at my word. The only thing is to make sure they use the meter as some prefer bartering and that’s when you’re taking a pretty big chance if you don’t know the route. Then again, if you don’t know the route and you use the meter, he could take you on a little joyride along the way to add to the reading! Basically it’ best to act like you know where you’re going to they don’t get tempted. The only thing I’m not sure on is that at night, when traffic is absolutely crazy and the trip can take much longer, the drivers seem much less willing to use the meter or just want to charge more regardless (which does make sense actually). Our Lonely Planet indicated rides were more expensive at night as well but Vaishali told us they should always use the meter and the calculation should always be the same. Finally, to correct what we said earlier then, our accidental tour of the city was not 51km but probably more as the meter seems to go up less than 1 per km.
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