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Published: February 3rd 2010
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So, just to give you all an idea of what day to day life is like here, I thought I would point out some of the differences, the interesting bits and the surprises.
Weather I must retain my Canadianness and comment about the weather - it is hot! It gets up to around 25 during the day here and the sun is absolutely baking. But in the shade, it gets quite cold and inside the buildings it is routinely frigid. It makes for an interesting array of clothing that everyone decides to put on. In the mornings everyone gets up and is cold ( it gets down to around 8 at night), puts on thick sweaters and pants. But by the time we all go down to breakfast (and the sun is up) we are all warm. Then we walk outside into the sun and all start sweating and wish we wore shorts. We have all figured out that layers are the only way to go.
As for the air, it is - I don't know how else to put it - thick. As soon as the sun goes down, the ground is covered in a visible
layer of fog, which burns off by morning. Otherwise there is so much dust and pollution (no matter how much the locals say it is so unpolluted here) in the air that even looking accross a room, the other side is hazy. Yet, I've got to say, it is much better here than China. We have almost-clear blue skies.
Residence Life We are in an all girls rez (here they call the hostels). And the boys are in an all boys. The two never mix . . . at least until we came.
Our residence is very nice. It's five floors (with an elevator) and is very airy. The rooms are quite big (as you saw in the other pictures) and the fifth floor has a balcony attached to each room which look out onto the inner courtyard. But, you can't really go out onto them unless you go to the common balconies (about 3 in each hallway) and squeeze onto the balcony that runs around the entire inside of the residence - or you climb out your window ; P. Guess which one I opted for.
Showers here are very interesting indeed. We came,
we saw shower stalls and thought all was as it should be. Then they gave us buckets and showed us where the single water heater is and the only tap with hot water. Okay. It's not that bad. It's just cold because you have to keep pouring water on yourself while the wind blows in through the windows (at the top) in each stall.
I have to say that inside here is relative. Inside apparently means that there is a roof over your head. Walls on every side are not at all necessary. So everything is very airy - and the same temperature as outside. Makes a cool walk to the bathroom in the morning.
The girls here are very nice and we are starting to get to know each other. They have taught us about Indian life and we compare that to our Canadian background. They are as interested in us as we are in them, but they are even more interested in what priviledges we get when we are here that they do not. Mainly that we do not have to follow the curfew and we can visit the boys' residence whenever we want to.
As for the division, there is a very strict boy-girl segregation here (another rule we break). Girls never visit the boys (they are not even allowed down the road that leads to the boys' hostel) and they are even separated when seated in auditoriums. All the girls' residences are very nicely surrounded by tall concrete or brick walls topped with barbed wire, that have a single entrance - where we are there is a single gate to 3 girls' hostels - at which guards sit once the sun goes down. As for the boys, they have nice, big residences that open out onto the street or sports fields. No walls, no barbed wire, they have a custodian, not a guard, and their curfew is at 11pm.
Classes The lectures here are basically the same, but with much smaller classes than at Waterloo. I would say the 40 people would fit into the classrooms at the most. But, this university only houses about 5000 students, so it is fairly small compared to Waterloo. All the subjects here are taught entirely in english, so everyone is fluent. The students I have talked to say the only difference is that
we (the canadians) have the right to come and go. When we asked them what they meant they explained to us that at the exact time (again this is relative, I think one of our teachers has shown up to class acutally on time) that class starts, the doors are completely locked. Meaning anyone that is late is locked out and everyone that is on time is locked in. They are not permitted to go out for anything. Not for the bathroom, not for a drink, not for food, not because the lecture is exceedingly boring. The one guy I was talking to said "Yes basically we just sit in there, starving to death and dying of boredom. Don't worry. The teachers must make exceptions for Canadian students".
As for the workshop. IT IS AWESOME!! And this is the point where Thapar beats Waterloo in access to resources. They have a massive workshop with enough of each type of machine to hold classes on a single machine at a time. As far as I could tell they had at least eight of each type. We got to jump right in during our first class and we started doing various
exercises. My group was working on shaping machines. These machines are about six feet long and four feet high and have one large arm that moves back and forth horizontally. It has a single blade attached that shaves off one linear piece of the workpiece at a time. It is very slow, but it is quite accurate in shaping materials - in a straight, squarish kind of way.
Electricity and Internet Sketchy at best. I will try to update this and stay in contact as much as possible, but it is hard because the internet sometimes decides to randomly disconnect itself.
Just for fun I started a count of the number of black-outs we have had. Current count: Six days - 14 black-outs, seven internet outages. : )
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Emma Sakamoto
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Be glad about the weather...
-14 right now in Halifax with the wind chill. Although, if it was 25 degrees, I'd probably be complaining about that, too. Stupid temperature subjectivity. I have lots to say comments-wise about your blog post... but somehow it came out as a comment about the weather. And now I have to go to class. Oh! Was the plane mail diverting?