Starting School

Now, my school here started back on the 24th of July. Actually I'm not supposed to call it that. 'School' here is 1st through 10th standard (grades are called 'standards' here). 11th and 12th standards are called 'junior college', as opposed to 'degree college'.

Almost everyone hear loves it, including me. Junior colleges are only in Maharashtra (the state that I'm in), and are much nicer than the rest of the country. You don't have to wear uniforms (unlike in school), and instead of having every subject, you only take one 'stream' (either arts, commerce, or science). Plus, for indian teens, 10th standard is the year where you study a huge amount, and 12th is the year where you study an insane amount. So 11th is party time. 

The college campus (a central square of mud where you can almost always find people playing soccer (***ahem, "football") instead of going to class.

My college's name is "Vinayak Ganesh Vaze College of Arts, Science, and Commerce", but everyone just calls it "Kelkar" or "Kelkar College".

Cat laying on some sort of bags next to the walkway

Three times so far, we've had lectures (classes are entirely lectures and note taking, so they're not even called classes) interrupted by cats (who apparently live at the college and survive by generous students), and once by a lizard. Since I'm a foreigner, everyone, students and teachers, is very quick to tell me that this is not a common occurrence in India, and that this college is a very high quality one, one of the best in Mumbai.

I've joined the magazine club (and been to a grand total of one meeting so far).

My class (and I do mean one class, since there is only one lecture I move to a different room) has 125 students (including a Mexican as the only other foreigner), but most days there is maybe 90 students (or fewer) thanks to 'bunking' (skipping class).

Even though I don't know a lot of people's names, it feels like everyone knows mine (a very weird feeling), and I've made a lot friends, some of whom are now reading this blog!