So I am sitting in my favorite bookstore, Massolit, and am drinking a kawa mrozona in a dark, dusky room.  Now, back to my blogging, ahem:

What I neglected to tell you about last time in my blog was the centre.  The main square (Rynek Glowny) is very beautiful, with cafes lining the perimeter, and in the middle there is Sukiennice market, which is partly under renovation, but you can still go inside and buy touristy knickknacks and amber and scarves. Outside in the cafes, where people sit and do a lot of people watching, and chatting with friends, coffee, drinks, and food is cheaper than in the United States, especially considering the view. I would love to take a sketch pad there and sketch all the people walking by.

 In the centre there is also a tower, and some sort of chapel.  In the clock tower, a trumpeter gives the call which was given to warn of invasions.  Legend has it that when the trumpeter was trumpeting to warn of Mongolian invasion during the thirteenth century, a Mongol shot him in the throat in mid-call, and the call was cut off.  So to this day, the trumpeter’s melody is cut short.  I wish I could tell you how often this is done per day, but honestly I don’t know.

On the various short streets which connect to the centre, there are a myriad of different Catholic churches that are breathtaking.  I went into this one church, which was very ornate—marble everywhere—and inside they had the sarcophagi of various political leaders, including Kazimierz. On the outskirts of central Krakow, immediately South of Kazimierz and Southwest of the square, is Wawel Hill, where the fortress is and where the legendary dragon was defeated. Wawel is situated along the Wisla river.

The main centre in Krakow isn’t all that big, but it is lovely.  I especially like the kindness of the people—the Poles are more than willing to help you find your way, and a lot of them speak English and can politely help you with your Polish if they see that you are struggling. Contrastively, there are pigeons everywhere— nasty little pigeons which cover themselves in the filfth of every puddle, and poop all over the place, including all over our balcony.   I see a lot of tourists, especially girls from the UK, putting bread crumbs on themselves and letting the pigeons crawl all over them. They are laughing and giggling.  Fortunately or unfortunately—whichever way you’d like to look at it—they don’t know where those pigeons have been.

Perhaps now would be good to tell you about my routine, insofar as I have one.  In the morning I walk about forty minutes to school. Now there is a tramway, but the weather is so nice right now, and it’s really good exercise, plus a dollar (2.5- 3 zlote) to ride the tram, so I prefer to not take it.  On some days I have an Introduction to Central Europe class at 8:30; on other days only Survival Polish at 10:15.  I really like the Intro to CE class, and I have been reading a lot for it outside of class. These are just condensed courses, and only the Intro to CE class counts for credit.  After school, I am on my own, and usually end up meandering up and down the streets, reading in the CES reading room, or planning out local trips to where I should like to go next.

So far I have only taken three trips of my own planning—one to Oswiecim (Auschwitz), one to the Wielicka Salt Mines, and the other to a nearby lake that had been created by digging for limestone. 

Oswiecim was a unique experience—it was ironically very green and even pretty considering what its main function had been—a slaughter house for over  a million people. As I walked the halls, where there were poor English translations, and grainy photos blown to a larger size of victims, papers,  etc, it kind of struck me that the place must not have enough funding.  It’s free to go there solo, but you can pay for a tour if you’d like. I think it needs more funding. Anyhow, back to the experience.  The most interesting room I saw there (I did not get to go inside all of the buildings, however… just hardly one strip) was the room where they had piled women’s hair.  There was so much of it, because the Nazis were selling it for cloth-making.  One of the most horrible sights I saw was the role of fabric in the corner made out of women’s hair.  And the halls were lined with photos of haggard people, each photo listing their birth date, former occupation, etc. Most of the men and women in these photos looked so defiant.  But there was this one photo I shall remember, of a man with beautiful features, only twenty-nine, who had a look of desperation and even hope. Call him stupid if you wish, he probably died there just for being Jewish, but to me it is best—to hope even when there shall be no comfort. Because one day there shall be.  I also saw Maximilian Kolbe’s cell in the basement. I didn’t get to see Birkenau, which is only thirty minutes away walking, or even all of Aushwitz, so I will have to return soon. 

The day before that, however, I went to the Salt Mine, which was quite interesting.  Of course, the best site was this large room was a church of sorts with large chandeliers. If you want to see it, check my facebook albums out; I posted quite a lot of photos. At one point, the excavation of salt was responsible for 1/3^rd of the income of Poland.  Interestingly enough, Jews were used in the mines as well, and none of them ended up living.  There is a star of David dug into the salt. 

Two days ago I went to a lake that had been formed by limestone excavation.  Although it is fenced off, the fence is quite shoddy with lots of places where it has been cut.  Many people walk along the lake, at least two hundred feet up.  It is quite pretty, and the paths are a little narrow. 

That’s about all I can think about now, but tomorrow I shall go to Warsaw for the weekend and visit the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) as well as seeing some sites around the town. Although I hear that Warsaw is not as charming as Krakow, I am sure that as the capitol, there will be wonderful museums and other historical places to see.  Most notably, we will visit the museum for the Warsaw Uprising in 1939.

 Well, I must go, but later I will blog about my time in Zakopane, and also cover this weekend’s trip to Warsaw.

Do Widzenia!

~Jess

Okay, so it hasn’t been quite three weeks, but it has been around that. Wow, there is so much to say… let me see if I can recap.

The flight was quite nice, and I watched parts of four movies and continued to read 1984 while this German couple in front of me, the guy a Zach Efron look-alike, took turns kissing each other and exchanging sweet nothings… eww. Anyhow, I arrived in Munich, and then in Krakow.  From Krakow I took a Radio Taxi Taxi, and the taxi driver spoke English very well and was quite hospitable. And when I looked out the window and saw all of the urban sprawl scraggling everywhere like a stray mangy cat, I thought to myself, “Good heavens, what have I done?” But I digress. The city is much prettier than its surrounding sprawl.

When I got the Hotele Studencki Piast (which I am sure hasn’t been renovated since the sixties, and the ominous communist style building scars the skyline… thank goodness it’s yellow!), I paid rent, went to my room, and met my new roomie and my two flat mates. There are two of us to a room, and the four of us share a small bathroom.  It’s fine by me, but that’s only because I am low maintenance.

Anyhow, when I came I got acquainted with “the group”– there are about thirty-five of us in the CES programme.  It’s a very mixed group, and most of the people I genuinely like.  A lot of them are into the party scene, which just isn’t me, but I tried to join them sometimes nonetheless.

One of the nights I ended up doing karaoke in a bar with four people. It was awesome! We sang “Wonderwall”, and I got to harmonize.  Ohh, and dancing… dancing’s different here because of all the techno… how do you dance to techno?!?

One day we toured the main square in Krakow, and the other day we toured Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter. I thought there would be more of a Jewish presence here, like there is in Praga, but apparently so many Jews were wiped out here that only 150 people here still claim Jewish heritage. It’s really sad. There are only two running Synagogues– one progressive and the other old school. We toured the inside of the old school one, and the guys had to wear yamakas, while I had to cover my shoulders with a scarf.  We also toured the cemetery which had been renovated, if I can use that word. It had been destroyed, and they manage to put the headstones back into place, but on the wrong graves, because no one knows the order. Jews also come and place stones on the gravestones, so that their wishes may be granted, and  there is a wall there built with old tombstones that had been destroyed. The synagogue itself is being renovated.

Kazimierz is my favorite part of the city, although it isn’t as glamorous at the area near Wawel Hill.    There’s an English bookstore on Felicjanek called Massolit that I enjoy frequenting, and you can hear Yiddish music as you enter some of the stree cafes.  I like it because it isn’t as busy as the other areas.. and you can meander down the street and let time slip by, unnoticed.

I’ll have to post about Zakopane and the Dunajec in a bit… it’s time for me to run and do something else! Goodbye

I don’t have an address for Poland yet, but once I have it I will give it out. I want to keep in touch via email, skype and snail mail, so send your snail mail address to me at the following: jessicalynnskarda@gmail.com

My skype username is jess.skarda If you don’t have skype, get it– it’s free!

Yesterday was nothing less than terrific. Erica woke me up at ten-ish, which is early for someone who doesn’t have a job and stayed up late the night before singing songs with friends and watching Seventeen Again. The Fantastic Three (Erica, Philip, and me) went to Niffer’s, and then Erica and I went to AK’s. At AK’s coffee Amy Wrasman called me, a friend of mine whom I met while studying Linguistics this Summer at the University of North Dakota. So this, quite obviously, made my day. I was happy that she got to see one of our Anabaptist friends while in Pennsylvania, and I also talked to another fellow student (Bethany Heynen I love you) via skype.  My bestfriend Adaobi and I also talked via skype about our plans to go to Turkey together over Christmas break, and we are going to confirm that later this week.  Then Ben came and took me downtown, where I had locked my bike up the night before because it wouldn’t fit in anyone’s vehicle.  So needless to say, I had a bike, and was downtown.  So I thought about Yuto, and rode to Cambridge to see if he still lived there (check yes, he does!)

So the two of us meandered around Auburn for a few hours and got some ice cream, when we saw the sign near the Loft (Chi Alpha) that there was going to be free American food for Internationals upstairs. (I have no idea why I didn’t remember this; shame on me for not going to church on Sunday!)  Anyhow, we decided we weren’t going to miss free food at seven, so we went upstairs.  The food was amazing. There were so many Internationals.  I had the time of my life meeting all the Turkish Students who are here to get their Masters. Counseling and Polymer Science seemed to be the hot majors. It was great! We talked about Turkey and they invited me to come visit them.  It turns out Auburn lets out about the same time, so they will be home when I am coming to Turkey. It would be amazing to visit the five of them over Christmas break! Haha.

After dinner, we went and played Ultimate Frisbee out on Samford Lawn. While playing, I met this Saudi named Mana, (I wanted to call him bread from heaven from this point on), an  we quickly exchanged name tags and started convincing people that I was from Saudi Arabia.  This one girl actually believed it, until he asked me to dialogue with this other guy named Ibraham in Arabic, which I don’t speak! Haha.  Mana is going to make Arabic food for Italia (Mateo) and me this week… I am excited. J

Anyhow, after Ultimate ended I walked up and introduced myself to the only people I hadn’t really met. All seven of them were from Nepal! How cool is that? Anyhow, we started talking about Nepal and they asked me when I will go and visit them.  I said it was very expensive to go visit them in Nepal, and they quipped with “It’s very expensive for us to be here, but we are here!”  Haha, good point—I hadn’t thought of that. So then, we got to talking about Nepalese and how similar it is to Hindi.  I told them I didn’t know Hindi, but that I did know a little bit of Marathi, which I had learned while in North Dakota. I started telling them words and they were shocked. They were exactly the same, or almost the same.  A few of the colors were different, and the verbs had slightly different endings, but all of the objects were the same. This continued for almost forty-five minutes.  I was so excited.  I began talking to them in Marathi. We were jumping up and down we were so happy.  I even told them all that I loved them in Marathi, but it was the exact same in their language. They even use “aje” at the end of anything. We dialogued for a short while, and I was surprised that I could understand them.  Meanwhile my Japanese friend, Yuto, was a little bored… and might have even thought the moment bizarre… haha. J But this latter experience—talking in a language I’ve never ever learned—made my night.  Hopefully they will come visit me in Polska! Do widzenia!

I have four classes. I am taking Sociolinguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Phonetics, and Morphology and Syntax (Generative Grammar)– a total of ten Masters Credit hours.  (Imagine drinking from a fire hydrant– that’s how it feels.  My brain reaches short term full capacity and tells me, “no more!”)

We just had our Syntax and Morphology Finals, and they were hard— not because of the material, but because my head wasn’t clear at all and I didn’t feel good physically due to sleep deprivation for time spent on other projects.  I often spend more time on Projects than I should, though I do well, but I am learning that if I had stopped two hours ago, it would have been a better use of my time.

For these finals, however, I had inner arguments. Put yourself in my shoes: It’s ten o’clock, and you feel drugged, and you are not in the mood to make morpheme cuts. Here’s my inner argument:

I am not going to do this. I don’t wanna do this. Maybe I should just leave.

Jessica, you WILL do this. You can’t turn this in later. It’s the f-i-n-a-l. 

And day two:

get it done… and hurry, ’cause honey,

you don’t have much time left and you’ve got ten more questions!

I’ve had this sort of mindset the whole Summer.  I like what I am doing, but I don’t feel equipped to do it or particularly skilled at it. What I don’t know, however, is if I don’t think I am skilled at it because I am so green and I’ve only had an intro class.  I think time will tell on this one whether or not I should keep pursuing Applied Linguistics or just let it go. It’s very math-y  (i.e. technical) and I am not a math-y person– even though I love the “puzzle side” of Syntax and Morphology, and if it had been later in the afternoon, I would have thoroughly enjoyed making morpheme cuts.  On the other hand, I love the social and cultural side of language and would love to explore its political implications as well as people’s language rights.

 I also am uncertain about where and when I would use a Masters in Linguistics. A lot of people here want to be full-time missionaries and translate the Bible into various languages which currently do not have an orthography (i.e. writing system.) I think this would be cool, but I am not sure I trust myself. And I don’t know how I feel about being tied down to one place for so long.  I think I would be better at doing  something akin to Language Survey, but I think this might be me being flighty and unsure rather than my real feelings on things. I also wonder if my interests (i.e. Central and Eastern Europe) will convege with Linguistics.

Well, that’s all for now… gotta go to skit night! 

Here’s an update on North Dakota:

I am enjoying my studies here, but I am having a rough time.  In Phonetics I just received a C on a phonetics assignment, albeit a C+, but a mortifying C nevertheless. Please pray for me. You have to write what they say down in IPA format and sometimes it is hard for me to distinguish orI draw a huge blank or in my nervousness. Sometimes I even imagine sounds which weren’t actually there. In my Phonetics Articulation assignment (where you have to  produce IPA sounds upon request) I didn’t start crying, but I was tearing up so bad out of nervousness that my TA  told me that I shouldn’t be afraid because he wasn’t going to jump on me.

 I am finding that I am a very slow, but thorough learner. And I am still disoriented. Please pray. I feel substandard and a little bit stupid… even though I know this is not the case.

Jessica Skarda

SIL

2901 University Ave. Stop 8217

Grand Forks, ND 58202-8217

 So, I am in North Dakota now and it is cold and lovely, but before I tell you about ND I should tell you about the Greyhound trip up here.

We first start with the sketchiest stop on the stretch: Hotlanta.  As soon as we park, there are hustlers ready to greet us and charge us for the supposedly free parking— a seven dollar premium for the 45 minutes we were to be parked there, because of the strip club we were near. It doesn’t matter, we paid it, because the two hustlers were workin’ us by surrounding our car. My mother’s boyfriend offered the hustler we settled on beer, which he gladly hid.  Meanwhile, cops watched on right across the street.

The Atlanta to Chicago stretch is probably the “complainiest stretch” I have ever taken.  On this bus you will hear how Greyhound does everyone wrong.  Many are exaggerating to others about their city of choice… if you’re from Chicago, you’re mad that the bus driver is taking you downtown and not to 95th. If you’re coming from Opelika (one girl was.. I refrained), you talk about how nice the projects are there. There’s something wrong with your throat, and you of all people on that bus deserve a refund. You don’t like the bus driver for some reason or another, and you say all this out loud, but then you offer praise when he gets you there on time.

The most interesting part of this leg, however, was getting to butcher Mandarin. It just so happened that there was I Chinese woman on the bus who did not speak a lick of English (her daughter told us as she boarded.)  So I started talking to her in Mandarin (what little I remembered… not much) and she started translating sentences into English by her dictionary. I did the same, only vice versa. And so did the Mexican guy sitting next to her… the dictionary had Spanish, too.  When we arrived at the station in Chicago, the woman handed the phone to me as someone on the other line rattled off more than I understood in Chinese.  But I just said “Chicago, downtown”, and something clicked. The woman on the phone had understood me. She repeated me, and I heard it in her voice. Something clicked.  So she came and picked up the woman as me and the Mexican guy flowed in and out of Spanish and English.  He was fluent in English, but preferred Spanish.

Chicago was noteworthy. First, I befriended some Russian guys… all college-aged. After I got a locker to put my luggage in (it didn’t get lost in ATL this time!), I went out to see the city. The last two times I’ve been to Chicago, it has been extremely rainy and a little cold, but yesterday was sunny and perfect. I explored parts of the city I had not seen

 yet and waited until eight for the sun to set. Seeing Chicago sunny put me in a cheery mood. The boats afloat were dazzling.  The water was emerald green. All was good for the next five hours.

The bus from Chicago to Minneapolis was waaayyy overbooked to the point where they checked everyone’s ticket and only picked the people who either had no luggage or were going the farthest.  Luckily, I was going all the way to North Dakota, and so were three other SIL-ers.

I am really excited about the campus and it’s quite larger,  a good bit older, and far more beautiful than I expected. The Campus meanders around beautiful parkland with a stream and bridges and vibrant grass and planted annuals.  I was surprised that we walked for two hours and still had not seen the entire campus (although we were walking at a leisurely pace.) The cafeteria, in my opinion, is state-of-the-art, but I might be a little too easy to impress!   I’ll post pictures and you can decide. The campus is beautiful, and as soon as I take more pictures I’ll post.

Ohhh, I forgot to tell you that I am going to North Dakota for grad school future prereqs in twelve days! I am going to Greyhound up to Grand Forks. I am really excited about the Linguistics courses I will take while there. I have always wanted to study Linguistics. Yay!

I recently was accepted into the Jagiellonian University Master’s Program for Central and Eastern European Studies in Krakow, Poland.  I am very excited! I will fly out three weeks after I get back from North Dakota (August 31st).  I am very excited about the excursions we will be taking as well.

September

5-6 Trip to the mountains

18-20 Study trip in Warsaw

October

1o Study Trip to Nowa Huta

November

7-15 Study Trip to Bulgaria and Romania

December

19-January 3rd (Christmas Break)

February

13-18  Trip to Brussels

March

13-19 Study trip to Ukraine

May

1-9 Study Trip to Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Serbia

Well, gotta go! Ciao