Simply amazing

The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity for me... exchange student orientation, Hyderabad city tour, academic orientation, course sampling, and pestering the IT Customer Service center for internet access! A lot of catching up to do now, since my experience has simply been amazing so far.

I'll most probably have to post my thoughts in separate pieces because there's just so much to show and write about. First things first, accommodations! I stay on the first floor of a block with 6 quads and should theoretically share my restroom & bathroom with another person.

As you can see, my room is quite spacious and there a place for everthing. Staying at the ISB student village is like staying one step up from a hostel, I've got my own room and someone comes to clean my room everyday. My cupboard doesn't have locks. I've been told that it is quite safe to leave your things around, but it's definitely better not to tempt an honest person into sinning. So I usually take my valuables (that are smaller in size) around with me.

You may have noticed that my bed is fully cushioned and another perk is that the cleaning service also takes care of my bedding and blankets so I come home to a clean spread of bed everyday. The pillow may be a bit old, but I just found out that the Student Board has arranged to have it replaced with new ones. I'm excited!

9 hours into my stay in Hyderabad, I realized that I didn't know where the exchange student orientation was going to be, and without internet access, searching information from my computer proved futile. I just went to the main campus and ambushed the first non-Indian person I saw, Katja. Luckily, she has been on campus for a few days so she knew where the orientation venue was. It's a great coincidence that we have a few friends in common, one, I knew about because of Facebook (the mutual friends feature) and the other, simply because she mentioned that she's from CEIBS and had some Filipino classmates there.

Orientation was quite informative with Srujana giving us quite a few tips on the "need to know" on campus. Paaras & Abhi were there to give us a crash course on surviving on campus. Key takeaways?

• Always ask when you don't know.
• ISB is but a conduit to the "real" India.
• The housing service is always happy to help, just call.
• There are cleaning ladies who can wash your clothes for a nominal fee.
• Water on campus is safe.
• MORE is the inconvenient convenience store. But there's definitely stuff you could buy for daily usage.

Information overload!!!