Bonus Post: Photos

Our group communicates via a group thread on WhatsApp. Typically we'll share photos from the previous day with each other. Because I've been writing the blog in the evening, I don't have access to these photos until after the post has gone up. By now, we've collected a sizeable common album. The photos—from other people's phones—also include more images of me. I'll add some of the photos from my colleagues below without captions, mostly because the details have started to blur, and they represent generalized impressions of our group visit to India.

Comments

Tuesday, March 12: Last Day in Mumbai

Today's schedule resembled yesterday's but with two different institutions. In the morning, we visited Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Right away, the campus felt familiar to what we recognize as a university. We walked onto a shady campus with a fruit-tree-lined pathway. Parents sat on benches with their children, waiting for their admissions interviews. Because we arrived early, our guide comandeered three students walking by into giving us a tour. Master's students (and a stray dog) give us a tour of TISS. TISS, as it's called, is a "deemed" university, meaning it has government funding for faculty salaries but is being encouraged to generate more of its own revenue. Their focus is on social work, psychology, and urban development. One student we talked to, for instance, was writing her thesis on the effects of residential squatters in urban areas. Several of the faculty members there had traveled to the U.S. on Fulbrights and came to greet u...

Saturday, March 16: Downtime

The first two items on today's itinerary were breakfast and lunch. Last night, seeing the sparse schedule, colleagues hatched plans to visit Hindu temples and jewelry markets in the morning, but, as our flight's departure time receded, so did the ambitious plans. I woke up around 7:45 am and opened the curtains to reveal a view of Hyderabad, population 9 million. I fought the inclination to unpack my clothes and headed for the hotel gym and then ate breakfast. View of the city from the hotel room Taking advantage of the free time and the already warming day, I strolled around the hotel grounds. I found a shady chair and read the local newspaper. Back in my room, I turned the bathroom sink into a makeshift washing machine and freshened up some of my clothes. We will be here until Thursday, leaving sufficient time for drying. By the time I had unpacked, wrung out the clothes, and checked messages, it was time for lunch. As usual, the hotel offers an abundant buffet of delici...

Tuesday, March 19: Health Professions, Finally

Every institution that hosts us has treated us with genuine hospitality. Senior administrators present their strategic plans, faculty members accompany us on campus tours, and students share their perspectives. Just about every place also has a photographer document the visit. One of the group discovered that the Indian School of Business had chronicled us on their Instagram page. With a medical school on the list for today's campuses, I hoped that we would receive the same embrace. Reshmi, our facilitator, introduced the day to us by saying we would visit a languages institute and then a medical college "mostly for Peter." IHP does not grant medical degrees while two of the other institutions represented in our group do, but the study abroad staff seem to work primarily with undergraduates, so the medical college would be as close as I'd get to observing how health professions education operates in India. Our first stop was the English and Foreign Languages Univ...

Fulbright IEA Seminar India 2019

Search This Blog