A Wonderful Experience, With A Few Hiccups Past Review

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

I really enjoyed the courses I took during the program (Contemporary India, Public Health, Social Justice, Hindi, and Documentary), however I did not find them particularly challenging. It was nice to have less assignments, as it gave me more time to travel and enjoy my experience abroad, rather than solely focusing on my studies.

On-site administration of your program

The on-site administration of the Pune program are awesome. Uttaraa is the program coordinator and she is always willing to help wherever and whenever she can. She is basically the mom on the program. Uttaraa helped several of the students on my program whenever they had difficulties with their host parents, or traveling. She even helped me when I had to leave the program a couple of days early for a family emergency. Abhishek is the assistant program director and is pretty cool too. He most often helped students with everyday things such as buying bus/train tickets for traveling that weekend, helping to contact professors, and even letting us know the cool things to do around town (where to eat, where to hang out, places to visit, etc.) Sometimes he was kind of hard to track down, but he was most of the time a text away.

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

I loved living with my host family. I lived with a woman and her husband and 4 other girls in my program. My host mom runs a girls hostel, and so the 5 of us and 5 other Indian girls have our own apartment that connects to hers, with our own door, two bathrooms, a sink, and bedrooms. This meant that we had our own freedom, but we still had dinner with our host family and they were always available to us.

I enjoyed eating Indian food. Even if you are not a vegetarian, you will learn to enjoy the meatless meals (and yes, egg is considered a meat there). There are of course meat options at restaurants and the usual KFC, McDonalds, Dominos, etc. but they all have their own Indian spin on them.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

I felt that living with a host family really helped to integrate me into the local culture. With them I was able to celebrate the different festivals (of which there are a lot during the fall), do poojas, go to a wedding, go to a baby shower and just in general learn about their everyday life. What traditions and festivals mean the most to them, and the importance of family and community.

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

During the program I sprained my ankle. The on-site program coordinators, my host family, and the other people on my program were all great. Abhishek took me to the doctor within an hour of my informing him, my host mom helped me around the house, checked up on the ankle, and made sure it was always elevated, etc. I have sprained my ankle several times before and although I have had worse sprains, this one was pretty bad too. If I back in the States I most likely would have been on crutches, however, that didn't even seem to be an option in Pune. No one asked me if I wanted any, I didn't seen any, and no one suggested that I look into getting some. Perhaps I should have taken the initiative to ask, but at the time I didn't want to be even more of a burden than I already was. Being without crutches didn't mean that I couldn't get around, but I was MUCH slower than I would have been otherwise. I only needed to go to the doctor once, where he confirmed it was sprained, prescribed me some pain medication and anti-inflamitories, wrapped my ankle and sent me on my way. I also had an x-ray a few days later at the encouragement of my program coordinators as the swelling hadn't gone down as much as they hoped (I, on the other hand, having sprained the same ankle 3 times before didn't think it was necessary), but it of course wasn't broken. Overall, it my interaction with the healthcare was fine. I didn't have any serious diseases, or issues and so I don't think that I had as much experience with it as some of my peers.

At no points did I feel unsafe in India. Of course during some festivals (such as Ganapati), where there are thousands of people dancing in the streets, mostly men, it can be very overwhelming and intimidating. However, I always stayed in a somewhat large group during those times. You do draw a lot of attention as a foreigner, but at the same time most of it is positive. As a foreigner, I also feel like law enforcement make a bit more of an effort to make sure you are ok, for example during Ganapati while in the middle of a dancing mob, a couple of police officers separated us and suggested we go further down the road where it was less crowded. We were not in any immediate danger, but they took the time out to make sure we were ok and that we wouldn't encounter any danger. During our travel week, myself and two other girls went traveling to 7 different places in the south and at no point did the 3 of us feel unsafe.

I felt I gained a lot from the program. It gave me the freedom and exposure to the local culture that I wanted, as well as being in a city that I really grew to love.

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

$1 = 65 rupees, so as you can imagine I traveled and ate good food way more than I probably would have had I gone to a country where the exchange rate wasn't so much in my favor.

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• Host Family

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• Local Students
• Americans
• Host Family

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• Americans

• I liked the freedom we had to travel with at the weekends and during travel week.
• I liked learning about the different festivals, traditions, and being able to participate in them.
• I liked truly feeling like Pune was my home, and getting into a routine while I was there.

• Access to the internet could be improved. I understand I'm not there to be on instagram, but when there is not internet at home, limited free wifi around town, and I have a research paper I need to write AND email to my professor, guaranteed internet at school shouldn't be too much to ask for.
• Communication between the on-site coordinators and the students in the program. Sometimes I felt out of the loop on events we had coming up, or I wasn't informed ahead of time when Uttaraa was out of town.

The Outright Urbanite