Chief Minister

Okay everyone, here's the deal. The chief minister of the state I live in, Andhra Pradesh, is missing. From the way my family is talking, they have no doubt that it was a planned assassination, either by his own son or by some terrorists in Karnataka. They think he's already dead but the media is just withholding this information until nighttime so that they can spend the night re-electing a CM. So that's what's going on with that, but as more is released, I guess we'll see. It just feels really strange to be in a country where that is the first assumption they go to when something like this happens, and furthermore that it is actually a possibility. Some things we definitely take for granted in the states.

The other thing I wanted to quickly mention is the meeting between the vice-chancellor and all of the international students today. To begin, there is a difference between SIP students (Study India Program) and the international students. SIP are kids like me, staying for a semester or a year for short-term, undergrad studies, whereas the international students are grad students who are earning their entire degree from U of H. So some of them have already been here for a year or two.

The meeting today was basically the VC giving the students a chance to "critique and expand the program", or complain about things that need to get done still. Here's the thing, all the international students are colored, from Yemen or Iran or Afghanistan, and all the SIP students are white, from US or Norway or Sweden. All the white people looked around in silence, we have nothing that's been troubling us. Meanwhile, the international students immediately stand up and start talking about all these issues that we had absolutely no idea about. For instance, since the international students live on the first floor and SIP on the second, apparently someone has been restricting the international students from going on the second floor to the common areas, like the TV room or lounge. Upstairs we were always wondering why the international students never came up and visited, and I guess this is why. But in the meantime, we're all sitting looking at each other clueless of this happening and just feeling guilty, like the bad guys.

The other main complaint they had was that they have nothing to eat. I guess they were never asked if they WANTED to move to Tagore International House, they were forced to, and since Tagore is a solid 30 minute walk or 10 minute scooty ride from anywhere to eat on campus, they can't eat at the canteen. At Tagore, there's a cafeteria (with really bad food I might add), but it charges Rps. 6,600 a month, which is outrageously priced to begin with but the international kids can't afford that either way. There's no kitchen access, no cooking allowed in the rooms. So basically these guys have been starving for about 6 months because they have nowhere and nothing to eat. They also have no washing machine and even though they have AC units in their rooms they don't work. This was explained as a shortage of electricity, but all the SIP student's AC units have been fixed and are working.

I don't know, I just felt like it was shoved in my face today that no matter where I go I'll have special privileges whether I want them or not, whether I know about them or not. It was just sad to see that they had all these issues and all of ours were completely taken care of.

Besides that, the crazy one living in our house has announced that he's seen a UFO and has premonitions. Getting juicy. Nothing else though, so later!