Plan: Attend classes, walk home, enjoy time off!
We wake up again...way too early for a Saturday morning! We quickly get ready and head out to grab a rickshaw from the corner. Once at school, we have our usual breakfast of spicy omelettes and toasts (which Yan really enjoys cause he gets to eat half of mine!) and then head to class. When we get to our hall, we find about 3 students sitting in the class, and it’s 8:50... when class is scheduled to start at 8:45am...weird.
We sit and wait, a couple more students show up and then the professor walks in. He greets us and asks how many students are currently in the class...a quick count reveals we are only 8...when yesterday we were about 30-35 students...where did everybody go??!! He starts his lecture and finishes about 45 minutes later. Weird thing #2...the professor did not take any attendance... I wonder why?!
Once he leaves, we ask this really nice girl in our class about books and stuff and she explains to us that there has been 2 cases of swine flu at the college and because of this, attendance will be optional until August 14th, followed by a holiday (National Day) on August 15th...so when exactly do we go to school?!?! Not sure when or how they actually get an education, but it works for us!! :)
After class, we wander around school a bit waiting for Mrs. Sakahlkar (from the International office) to ask her about that problem with our timetable (environmental class). Thankfully, she is here today...and early too!! We speak to her about the schedule and the flu outbreak.
She told us that because of the 2 confirmed cases of swine flu at the College, they had been asked to close. Lucky for us, because they are affiliated to Pune University, they won’t close unless the University does. For now they’ve made classes voluntary!
She was really nice and even suggested good restaurants nearby...but most importantly, she tells us that our exams will be OPEN BOOK and specially written for us (to the GREAT relief of Yan and I!)!!! Turns out we get special treatment because we’re foreign. You gotta love exchanges!!
She simply acknowledged that it is more difficult for exchange students to get accommodated in a foreign country to a different legal system! Seems fair to me! :) Besides, she said there was no point to us memorizing thing, it was important instead to understand! We’ll also likely do a written project and presentation in each class that will consist of a comparative analysis between Indian and Canadian law.
We leave her office feeling even more confident of actually being able to pass our classes and head to the library to get our ID cards. We ask the guards sitting in front of the library about the librarian and one of them gets up and walks away (we thought he went to get the librarian...but we were wrong!). He comes back and sits down...we wait...he gets up and says something in Marathi to the other guard while pointing to us...we wait...he comes back, Yan asks again about the librarian and he says something we just don’t understand. Finally, we get tired of waiting and head out. Ahhhh India!
We decided to walk back to the hotel and take in the sites on the way. On the way, a man (who speaks English) stops us and hands us his business card. Turn out he’s into sport medicine and would love to have a conversation with others interested in the subject and possibly even come teach in Canada. We speak to him a bit and then head back on our way.
We stop by the internet café and then get home and as soon as we get to our room, the really really nice waiter from the restaurant downstairs shows up with a menu and asks us if we want anything. Yan decides that he doesn’t want anything so, we say no to the waiter and he goes off. But Yan is hungry (no surprise there!!) so I convince him to look at the menu cause it’s only 1:30pm and we still have a long way to go before supper. He agrees, looks at the menu and decides to order a Veg Burger. Since one of the workers from at the hotel was just outside our room, we asked him but he told us to call reception. Yan asks to be transferred to the restaurant but the man at the reception decided to take the order himself. A couple of minutes later, the waiter who speaks English shows up at our door. He asks us: “did you order a veg burger?” Yan responds “yes, just one please”. As the waiter turns to walk away, he laughs and says: “Nobody here understands your language!!”
After lunch, we just chilled until supper. Before leaving, we asked about getting a rickshaw at 5 am since we had to meet the other Canadians at their place for 6am in order for all of us to walk to the gym where we would be leaving for tomorrow’s adventure!! The reception told us that there would be a rickshaw strike as of 8 am but that he would make sure there was a rickshaw waiting for us at 5am but that we would not be able to take a rickshaw back. We decide to get it anyways and we would try and get a taxi (or walk) when we got back from the trip.
We then went to buy food supplies for the next day since we were going to be gone all day and then went to the outdoor restaurant in front of hotel and had soup, headed back to our room and watched a movie on TV. We’ve been noticing the commercial a lot more lately and two of them really surprised us. We saw at least 2 different commercials for “the morning after pill”, and three different commercials about skin lighting creams. One was by Garnier and promised to lighten you skin by up to 2 tones!!! We saw the same product advertised for men...but then we say one that I found even more offensive. It was for the same type of product by L’OREAL called “White Perfect”!! I guess for them, this is equivalent to our tanning lotions, except that the history behind it is a bit different. Here, skin color is or was also associated to the caste system. The lighter you were, the richer you were since you didn’t have to work outside...I guess these products help everyone achieve this, just like our tanning lotions permit us to look a little more like models.
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