In search of index cards (jak to bedzie po polsku???) I have been walking around our communist style neighborhood. It's like Warsaw was in March but much more attractive due to the nice weather and greenness. (Well, it's been in the 90s for 3 days, so "nice weather" is sort of hyperbole, but anyway....)
The concept was to create neighborhoods of moderate density by making big apt blocks but with lots of open space around them so that people could have light and air (as opposed to the evil capitalist cities where tenements were the rule). There are roads too but the blocks are fairly large with dead-end driveways for parking and then an extensive network of pathways. I was walking along one, thinking I shouldn't because it's not "my" building when I realized that, of course, there was no "my" in the time before, because all property was collectivized. Someone said that they've seen some "private property" signs appearing here and there. (Not specifically because of the hordes of students in this place, but just generally.)
Then, most buildings have little shops here and there in the first floor where you can buy cigarettes and pastries and drugstore-type things. Mostly shabby little places with little customer trade and not huge selection. The consensus at lunch today was that the days of such places are numbered: hypermarkets are on their way. We'll see.
I could write lots more about this, but time is short so I will make some notes so that I can post up some more observations about transitions when I return.
Today was the first day of class, 5 1/2 hours including the breaks. It sounds brutual, because 3.5 hours at the U on Tuesday nights is exhausting, but I think that having it first thing in the morning really makes a difference. The mind is fresh and uncluttered and able to process fairly large amounts of new information.
I am the only American (and hence the only native speaker of English) in my 12-person classroom. Lots of Germans/Austrians. I have a much better command of the grammatical structure of the language but others speak more fluidly and find it easier to understand the professors. The woman is great - really encouraging. The guy is nice but unfortunately lapses constantly into English to explain things, which is ironic considering the audience. A fun thing - I sat next to a French woman and got to explain Polish vocab to her in French, when she didn't know the words. Too cool.
Thinking lots at night when I have trouble sleeping about my dissertation. I'll post it over there in "Preliminary Reflections" when I get a chance. (Sorry, this computer setup is too backwards for me to grab and paste the link for y'all.)
Well, here I sit in an internet cafe and due to the wonders of technology, it's like sitting at home. Opening ceremonies today, along with the placement tests - classes begin tomorrow.
People are nice - but I miss my friends and B.
An comment from this morning's keynote speaker, who gave a presentation on "plurilingualism" not multi-lingualism. He said that we should think of foreign language acquisition as additive to our existing selves, rather than focusing so much on how limited we are in the foreign language itself. So that if I know only 5% of all the Polish of a native speaker, I should think of myself as 105% rather than 5% - the 5% as additive to my existing skills and the holistic 100% of my former self.
Is this just feel-good edu-speak, or is there something to be taken from it?
As usual, my favorite blog of all time beats me to the punch.
Earlier this week, I practically went postal in Large Midwestern-based Discount Retailer. I didn't mention it in that post, but the purpose of the expedition was to buy bras, something I do every couple of years, and anticipate with the same joy reserved for, oh, I dunno, root canals or preliminary doctoral exams. I tried on a bunch of sizes approximating my own, and they all felt wrong in different ways. Too tight here, too baggy there, too lacy, too puffy, too high-riding, too low, too whatever. Sometimes multiple iterations of the same size would be wrong, but in different and even opposite ways.
Today I resolved to try again, in that hell of outlet malls called Albertville MN. In the Bali et al store I selected a range of possible sizes and gave it a whirl in the dressing room, staring all the while at a poster that informed me that "75% of all women wear the wrong bra size."
Well, lemme tell you WHY that is, Mr./Ms. Bali/Maidenform/Hanes/Whatever Bra Executive: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "SIZE" IN BRAS. You can try on a 36C in 3 different models and you will have three different reactions, a la Goldilocks. This one is too small; this one is too big; this one - well, sorry folks, "just right" is never an option. So this notion that if the salesclerks just MEASURE you, everything will be fine, is pure marketing BS. You may as well grab some samples from random racks, and you will get EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS as if you carefully weed through them for your "size."
I would love to meet some of the people who design these undergarments of rapture. I think Dante reserved circle 6.5 for them.
Anyways. I bought some cheap stuff to replace my worn out cheap stuff, and some stuff for B to enjoy me wearing (SOMEONE should enjoy it), and that was that. As is the case so often when I sample the wares of the Consumerist Paradise that is America, I wondered if wouldn't just be easier in the end to create these garments myself. I mean, I know exactly what I want/need. Wouldn't it, in the end, be easier to make my own bras/pants/handbags?
I checked out the "prescient" dog from yesterday's entry - in the dictionary, that is. I thought it meant foretelling, and yup, it does: "prae" = before and "scire" = to know.
I could accept that a dog could have some sort of sixth sense that would enable it to know things that weren't perceptible to humans. Including even illness, perhaps. But to be able to know the future? That just seems a little weird. Maybe the vet doesn't exactly know what "prescient" means?
Still working on the anxiety. I've cataloged my fears and I think I have identified them all. I slept through the night - no 4 am weirdness. I had a little pre-meltdown at Target today, but we left before it got out of control. Haven't felt like that since fall 2003 when I had a complete loss of emotional control (quietly, so as not to disturb the class or call attention to myself) in seminar one Friday afternoon. I am pretty sure that no one noticed it that day and that perhaps is the strangest thing of all. Today there was nothing to notice - unless you'd been in the dressing room watching me snap plastic hangers. Why are they so flimsy anyhow?
The "Ask the Vet" column in yesterday's Star-Tribune had a letter about someone's dog that stopped howling on command after the person had been in the hospital for a heart ailment. The vet asserted that dogs can be prescient and advised that the sick person be checked out immediately for silent heart troubles.
I am surprised that a medical scientist would take such a view. But you hear all the time about people who - for example - have a premonition about a plane or whatever and refuse to get on their scheduled flight and then something tragic happens to the plane.
For myself, I cannot remember ever NOT anticipating a trip so much as the upcoming one to Poland, and I've been waking up in the predawn with absurd visions of plane and hotel explosions and massive car/tram crashes. Is it the London bombings? But I flew not too long after 9/11 and wasn't afraid in the least. Or is it just the separation from B? But I don't recall feeling this way about France in 2000, when we were separated for 10 days.
Even in the daytime I'm filled with anxiety, which makes it difficult to concentrate, and I can feel my heart racing. What is my problem, and how can I make it go away?
Our friends/neighbors downstairs moved out on Tuesday. Sad, very sad. It was hard to watch their place get emptier and emptier. H sucked up something quite a lot bigger than a Barbie shoe (there were quite a few of THOSE) with my vacuum, and we went down to see if we could help her clear the clog, and there were a lot of cat kibbles in the tube too (in addition to the lamp finial clunking around in there), and Sasha came and ate them out of my hand. Pawel on the other hand sulked and wouldn't come over.
Hugs all around with H and her parents. But P just said "well, see ya," rushed downstairs, got in the truck and drove away.
We went down after they had all gone and wandered through the echo-ey rooms, and a sheen of melancholy drifted over everything along with the late afternoon sun. Things get to be a way that you like, with your life organized just so and your friends all close by and you don't even truly realize how great it is, and then there's a change and everything's different.
J got the keys last night. Once he gets some boxes he'll be moving stuff in bit by bit. And so something new and great begins - we just don't know it yet.
Oh, the drama of online airline ticket purchase. We shopped around for the best deal to Krakow yesterday and booked the flight, but then last night some woman with a heavy accent called and said there was a problem with one of the flights and wanted to rebook it for $1000 more. !!
While I was on the phone with her, B was on the phone with her supervisor, and we were BOTH online looking at other options. We found a much cheaper flight even than the original one (with a different online service), and booked THAT, and cancelled the first series altogether. I have a confirmation on the second series - but now I'm a little worried that there will be problems with it as well. And we still don't have e-confirmation of the cancellation.
In the middle of all this B spilled a drink into his UPS and the B2 computer went down, taking the network (and hence my internet and email) with it. We had been in the middle of watching a German documentary on Andy Warhol ("Absolut Warhola") in which the filmmakers went to his village of origin in Ruthenia (now part of Slovakia?) and chatted up his relatives. Their idea of technology is TV - they get one channel. Makes you wonder how we would fare without all the technology we've grown accustomed to. Technology allows you to have more options, and to do more things at the last minute, but it's all in what you get used to. If I'd had to decide about Krakow back in May and then work with a travel agent to book the flights, well, then that's what would have happened.
I leave in two weeks. More on my separation anxiety and general fears about being in a foreign country to come. Now, we are off to see if the Midtown Market really is open Sunday mornings, as the website promises.
I rode my bike to school yesterday, the first time since I fell on June 24. I don't really like to drive (a car) but I didn't feel very comfortable on the bike, either. I was overly cautious about pavement surfaces and rode extra-slowly.
Oil is for Sissies (one of my favorite blogs) posted a link to a great (if over-the-top) piece about current transportation. Pretty much everyone I know is, in OIFS's words, a member of a loosely-knit terrorist organization that kills 5 times as many people EVERY YEAR as were killed on September 11, 2001.
I had a brief flash of a vision yesterday: what if all our roads were car-free? Bikes and peds could use all that real estate, not be marginalized at curbside (which is the reason I fell over) or on the sidewalk. We are so acclimated to thinking of roads for cars only that it's always a strange feeling when a roadway is closed to traffic for an event, and you can walk on it. Like W River Parkway for the fireworks on Monday night.
Would pavements last longer? You'd think "yes" but I think actually they'd sprout weeds and start to break up. Cars bizarrely keep asphalt compacted and weedfree.
...and no one even noticed.
Well, that's not true. When we got pulled over yesterday for speeding through East Nowhere, Iowa, and couldn't find the registration card anywhere (turns out I had filed it thinking it was merely the receipt for my "tabs"), B. wondered if the records department of the MN state police had been shut down and therefore the IA officer wouldn't be able to verify that the car was registered. We had visions of the car's being impounded and us living by the side of the road in E. Nowhere, scrounging corn from farmers' fields, until the MN Legislature gets back to doing the work they were elected to do.*
Hence my Declaration of Independence. Regardless of their qualifications, I am not going to vote for any MN legislative incumbents in the next election. And not the governor, either (although I would never have voted for him anyway!). I realize that the legislative members are probably not equally responsible for the morass they've made, but nevertheless, they are all equally responsible to transcend the BS and get the work of government done.
If a majority did the same, then we could have a brand-new government. Can't be any worse than the current state of affairs!
*Evidently the records dept. is unaffected. The officer verified that the car was registered, and let us off with a warning. 42 in a 30-zone, indeed!
We're off for 2 days in Iowa - never been there before. My advisor waxed all enthusiastic about Des Moines - and then he realized he was thinking of Dubuque. Ah well. P's brother is getting married to a Polish woman so maybe I'll get to try out some language "skill."
Our dinner party was a big hit - and we have tons of leftovers so we won't have to cook anytime soon.
And, my car has 2 new tires, new oil, and a wash inside and out. We are ready to roll. Quite a productive 24 hours!
Alas, I have been waitlisted at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, for my foreign language study. I have to call on W or Th and see if there are any cancellations. If not, I have to get myself in the groove of reviewing Polish EVERY SINGLE DAY for an hour or so and maybe find some other outlets for hearing and speaking.
On the up side, if I don't go I am really going to pound on prelims/dissertation proposal and make some serious progress over the next 2 months. Either way, I think it will work out.
Happy Fourth to all!