Today was the educational symposium day. We listened to speeches from professors from around the world (mainly India and the U.S. Who had spent time in both countries) comparing the education systems, the wins of both and where there is room to grow. In 2008 India introduced the PharmD to its pharmacy degree options and it has been a learning experience for them. (I won't bore you with all the details but if you're interested let me know because I took notes). My favorite speaker was the dean from the University of Colorado Skaggs College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. He hosted an interactive talk where we compared all the counties present and their programs which really opened my eyes to how NOT universal the education is. Maybe that's a direction we will move in the future, who knows.
After the dean was done speaking, me and Ron (my fellow choreographer for our International Night dance) left a little early to finish up our dance, and met back with our group at the end of the symposium. We agreed to take a little break and reconvene at 7:15PM for dance practice. This gave us one hour to rest, or if you're me and Christine, adventure. We picked our dance practice room, checked out the vendors at the hotel, and then decided to take a rickshaw to the store to buy some wine. Well, we didn't know the adventure we were in for. The driver decided we just HAD to go shopping for jewelry, and when we told him no he took us there anyway. We humored him and went inside, they had some nice pearls but we were not planning on purchasing any, so we went back to the rickshaw to go to the store. Well, even though we adamantly told him no again, he thought we needed to just see costume jewelry that was less expensive then we would buy some. Since we had no way of getting out at this point, we had to go, again humored him, walked in and walked back out. He almost wouldn't take us back without a purchase, but we finally convinced him we had to go because now we were really on a time crunch. All the while, he was basically refusing to take us to go buy wine which was the entire reason for he excursion in the first place. We convinced him, we got our wine (310 rupees each, or roughly $4.75) and headed back. When we first left, he told us he could get us there and back for 150 rupees (~$2.25), but when we get back he was now saying it was 500! We were really annoyed, but then thinking logically this is only roughly $7, and had he only taken us to the store we wanted to go to, we would have only gone down the road, but because of the adventure he took us on we got a first-hand tour of the city, in a safe way, and it was pretty exciting. Hyderabad is an interesting city. Metropolis meets lean-tos, both high rises and dirt roads. We also saw some things we really want to visit now, like traditional clothing shops, and some food we can actually eat, specifically we saw KFC and Pizza Hut (refer back to my "all the food I'm eating gives me a stomach ache and makes me sick" post), so normal food will be so welcomed. There are tons of cart vendors along the lake and also a boat ride out to the Buddha statue we want to do, and we wouldn't have known about this part of the city, because this was the first time we left the hotel aside from our adventure to find the cemetery outside our window the other night that totally failed.
We made it back just in time for dance practice. For 16 people who literally learned the dance one day before performing, the USA is looking pretty good for international night. I'm excited for our performance tomorrow.
After practice we headed to dinner, and we had the first meal that I actually enjoyed and didn't make me sick: plain noodles and sweet and sour vegetables. I was ecstatic about finally having veggies, and also it was in no way spicy so my tummy was happy. We tried to request that dish be available all the time since the meals are pretty consistent, but the locals didn't enjoy it so they denied our request. Oh well, we ate as much as we could hold in case it's the last time we eat for a while. Dessert has been consistently pretty good, and breakfast has donuts and eggs usually, so we can at least have some protein in the mornings.
Anyway, after dinner, we prepared for the evenings festivities - Bollywood Night. We danced the night away with the delegates from India, trying to be as legitimate as possible. We might as well have been locals because everyone thought we kept up with the traditional dancing pretty well. The party ended at midnight, so everyone moved up to the skin at again (I think this may be a consistent theme). So many more people were there than yesterday, we were with people we had already met and made new friends too. Me and Christine also got to help the bar tenders administer concentrated beverages to everyone (censored for professionalism) and had a great time. After the party ended at the sky bar, we played a game of charades with Slovenians before heading to bed. Today was a great day, and it's really starting to kick in that holy cow were across the world in Asia meeting tons of awesome people also in pharmacy school and we are so lucky to be here. Without ever really leaving the hotel before, it was easy to forget where we were. But now we have the itch to get out and see the city. We had intentions of spending this night exploring, but with our meetings and dance practice we didn't have the chance. We are thinking we may on Monday, which is our excursion day.
While the education symposium had come interesting speakers, it didn't appeal my core interests in pharmacy since it was mainly educating people on the U.S. way of doing things which we already know, but tomorrow is the Scientific Symposium and I am looking very forward to it!
Good night friends, Namaste!