13 November 2010

Student Life

It costs students and their families a bit less than $2000/yr for tuition, room and board, books and incidentals. Given an average individual income of $3700, sending your child to college can be a real financial stretch. All students live on campus in dorms like this; laundry is hung outside to dry.
Students live 6 to a room, and each one comes with a desk and small locker. The rooms are quite basic, there's no TV to distract, and lights are out at 11 p.m.
Since there's no hot water in the dorms, students head across campus to the boiler room and fill up their brightly colored jugs. There's a small building with showers, where for 75 cents you can have a hot scrub.
Most of the students come from small towns and rural areas several hours by train from here so don't get home very often. There are a lot of sports activities and campus clubs, but your real group is the five other students you share a room with for the 4 years you're a student.
Each floor has a student washroom, with squattie commodes on one side and long sinks on the other. The sinks are also used for laundry.
Here two of our young single faculty colleagues show us their rooms, which are quite like those of the students except they have only 3 to a room. The college is building an on-campus apartment for foreign teachers which should be ready next year.