(no subject)
I can't access my real blog, so I will blog here and post them once I get home:
So, we arrived hours late in Ukraine after a series of comic errors that left us both giddy and frustrated. Busses didn't come. Trains weren't going to come. So Mateusz, our ever-resourceful shepherd, gets us chartered a microbus into Ukraine. Turns out all the better, because we were able to cross the border (relatively) unimpeded.
I am in Lvov, now and it is obvious that you are beyond the EU here. Portions are larger. I may return to Poland a little heavier if I have to keep eating at McDonalds (It's hard for me here, because I don't read Cyrillic and the food is even more rustic than in Poland.) I know that I broke the rule that I would not eat there on pain of death, but when pain of death becomes a little closer, we usually rethink. There's a lot of rethinking that I have to do. Some of this city seems remarkably "eastern" in that way that images of Russia are. The Poles maintain that this is a Polish city and much of it seems to resemble Poland with Russia grafted on. It's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Generally, I feel almost blind in a country like Hungary that uses romans, where I cannot read the signage, but there is something relaxing about this place and its' Cyrillic. I can make out what I need to given the cognates between Ukrainian and Polish and leave what I do not want to read. The way that cities bombard me is mostly lost on this place.
It's dangerous, I know, and many jokes were made (mostly by myself) that I would be unsafe here. Still, I know mostly how to navigate cities. Better than most who just think that I amble through them oblivious. Right now, I am writing this from an internet cafe that has my back to the door. I am carefully observing every person in this room - especially the woman in the pink jumper and blonde dreadlocks seated behind me. Not because I find her attractive, but I am very cognizant of the fact that she might very well be bait.
People don't stare here. At least not as much as Krakow and it's even within the American cultural boundaries of polite measure. Everyone I talk to in Poland tries to convince me that they, too, are stared at, but cannot ever really understand that they are not the same things. Every one hundred meters, I have to live with some sort of violation. The night before I left Poland, I saw this picture. Niggers out? I am certain that it was not there before.
Miles, one of the Aussie poets that I met, said that he was used to the same thing being in Australia. Jakub, his friend, also seemed to understand in a way that even good friends cannot. This could have had something to do with him being a foreigner in both Australia and Poland, having come to Australia at seven and returned to Poland in his late twenties.
Here in Lvov, I can imagine what parts of Poland may have resembled in the recent past. Lovely buildings that ought to be white stone are charred by decades of dust and pollution. There is just no money to restore the city to what it ought to look like. There is just not enough money.
I don't know that my Fulbright is workable. There is not enough money. It has been imparted to me that the university is not going to care about me and commit resources to my project simply because I show up with my song and dance about how it will make the university a better place and enrich two cultures. My faculty is not the correct place to carry out my project and there seems to be no one with the acumen to help me navigate the university and actually point me to where I might be successful. No. It's really all about cash and cachet.
So what do I do now? It seems a little early to be defeatist - just seven weeks. I don't want to just pack it in and go home before even my family gets here. I am out of options, it seems. I'm supposed to be the one who always finds a way, right? Meghann and I talked about being tired just before I left. She is a 25 year-old Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Studies at Northwestern. I did about eight years of education in four. I am tired. I am still going. It doesn't let up and if it does just briefly. I am tired.
I think that I'm going to Paris when I get back. I need a little time to clear my head and think where it is I'll be pointing myself in the future. And at whom.
So, we arrived hours late in Ukraine after a series of comic errors that left us both giddy and frustrated. Busses didn't come. Trains weren't going to come. So Mateusz, our ever-resourceful shepherd, gets us chartered a microbus into Ukraine. Turns out all the better, because we were able to cross the border (relatively) unimpeded.
I am in Lvov, now and it is obvious that you are beyond the EU here. Portions are larger. I may return to Poland a little heavier if I have to keep eating at McDonalds (It's hard for me here, because I don't read Cyrillic and the food is even more rustic than in Poland.) I know that I broke the rule that I would not eat there on pain of death, but when pain of death becomes a little closer, we usually rethink. There's a lot of rethinking that I have to do. Some of this city seems remarkably "eastern" in that way that images of Russia are. The Poles maintain that this is a Polish city and much of it seems to resemble Poland with Russia grafted on. It's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Generally, I feel almost blind in a country like Hungary that uses romans, where I cannot read the signage, but there is something relaxing about this place and its' Cyrillic. I can make out what I need to given the cognates between Ukrainian and Polish and leave what I do not want to read. The way that cities bombard me is mostly lost on this place.
It's dangerous, I know, and many jokes were made (mostly by myself) that I would be unsafe here. Still, I know mostly how to navigate cities. Better than most who just think that I amble through them oblivious. Right now, I am writing this from an internet cafe that has my back to the door. I am carefully observing every person in this room - especially the woman in the pink jumper and blonde dreadlocks seated behind me. Not because I find her attractive, but I am very cognizant of the fact that she might very well be bait.
People don't stare here. At least not as much as Krakow and it's even within the American cultural boundaries of polite measure. Everyone I talk to in Poland tries to convince me that they, too, are stared at, but cannot ever really understand that they are not the same things. Every one hundred meters, I have to live with some sort of violation. The night before I left Poland, I saw this picture. Niggers out? I am certain that it was not there before.
Miles, one of the Aussie poets that I met, said that he was used to the same thing being in Australia. Jakub, his friend, also seemed to understand in a way that even good friends cannot. This could have had something to do with him being a foreigner in both Australia and Poland, having come to Australia at seven and returned to Poland in his late twenties.
Here in Lvov, I can imagine what parts of Poland may have resembled in the recent past. Lovely buildings that ought to be white stone are charred by decades of dust and pollution. There is just no money to restore the city to what it ought to look like. There is just not enough money.
I don't know that my Fulbright is workable. There is not enough money. It has been imparted to me that the university is not going to care about me and commit resources to my project simply because I show up with my song and dance about how it will make the university a better place and enrich two cultures. My faculty is not the correct place to carry out my project and there seems to be no one with the acumen to help me navigate the university and actually point me to where I might be successful. No. It's really all about cash and cachet.
So what do I do now? It seems a little early to be defeatist - just seven weeks. I don't want to just pack it in and go home before even my family gets here. I am out of options, it seems. I'm supposed to be the one who always finds a way, right? Meghann and I talked about being tired just before I left. She is a 25 year-old Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Studies at Northwestern. I did about eight years of education in four. I am tired. I am still going. It doesn't let up and if it does just briefly. I am tired.
I think that I'm going to Paris when I get back. I need a little time to clear my head and think where it is I'll be pointing myself in the future. And at whom.