Life in Hyderabad, an Introduction

The first day we walked around campus a bit. It's extremely spread out and sort of in the woods. By "woods" i mean a landscape roughly equlivalent to the side of a poorly kept highway. Lots of trash, weeds, and barren dirt. Here and there in front of buildings it will be lushly landscaped and beautiful, but it looks sort of out of place with the general tone.

Yesterday we had our introductions. My stupid alarm didn't go off and so I slept in. For reasons in a rather complicated sititation, no one woke me up until everyone had left and then i had to jump. Joke's on them tho because I got to ride a motorcycle to class! One of the adminstrative employees gave me a ride the 1k to class. Helmetless, of course and wearing a skirt, but it was fun!

Introduction didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. There are kids here who aren't from the Pitt program, and they are really badly informed. They didn't even know what classes were offered and we had already registered. But..basically we are in the same classes, they just don't have the extras or the faculity supervision.

Our facuility supervision is Prof. Gajanan. He did his grad work at Pitt and now teaches at Pitt Bradford Campus. He is great. He lives in the building and eats with us and teaches my economic class. He is responisible for the Pitt kids. On the bus yesterday he was flirting with a female U Hyderabad Prof. and he said that he is "responsible for 12 children" and we were like "Hi, yes, 21-year-old children." So it goes. He is great tho.

After introduction we had a campus tour which was pretty much just walking around. The facilities are pretty much what you might expect of the developing world which is to say not much. The library was particularly sparse. The sports facility is a bunch of badmitton courts. Prof. Gajanan is going to teach us to play cricket.

Later we went into town and went to the Birla Temple. Wow!! It was amazing. First of all we took a bus which was crazy maddness. Then we walked through a sort of souvinier area, then up the hill.

The temple is on the top of a hill and its made completely of white marble. We had to take off our shoes, then we joined the processional just as the sun started to go down. You walk up a long set of stairs and then process quietly with the line around a set path stoping periodically at statues of Gods which are dressed in colorful clothing and decorated with flowers. The whole time there is chanting going on, played over the loud speakers. The sunset was amazing and you could see it setting over the lake and the giant Budha statue in the middle of it with the Hyderabad skyline lighting up around us. The whole place smelled of insence. It was so peaceful. The temple preists had long hair and robes and were very good humored to see stunned westerners in line. Little kids waved at us as we passed them.

It was so intricate and smooth, with scenes from Hindu stories played out all over the walls in big sculptures.

Then we took a bus back... less than peaceful... o well. the temple was great.

We are eating really really well. We eat four times a day, breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner. It's all Indian food, as you can imagine and its sooooo good. We haven't eaten anything the same twice, but I wish they would put the Indian names on what we are eating down so we can order it in restraunts at home. We eat in our guest house so everything is safe and the water is fine and everything.

The tea is chai and its super duper good. We drink it with dinner too.

So the worst thing that has happened so far was def that a mouse got in my room last night. I screamed and went into Kevin's room for the rest of the night. In the morning I told the house manager who looked absolutely stricken and embarassed. He told me to open my door and set a bunch of traps and put out poison and then we found out that the screen behind my air conditor had been open and thats how he got in. Well, thats closed. We are going to search my room for holes or signs of mice tonight. Yikes....ya.

Otherwise classes are getting started. Had econ today, and it was pretty much like econ at Pitt except the power kept going off. Soon we're going to go shopping for somethings. There are def some things I wish I'd brought, namely a thin blanket and shower shoes (why the fuck didnt i bring shower shoes). They gave us wool blankets which are wrong for so many reasons.

Anyway, thats the update. If your out there, comment!