oh, my.

this is the third part of a multi-part post encompassing my train ride form tarnow to dessau, germany:

wednesday, December 23 2009

poland

3-something.

so tired.  so hungry.  screwed up on the food front & didn’t really pack any snacks, except a candy bar.  getting delirious.

we just crossed the german border and the announcements are in german and english only – at least there is english.  apparently the poles can go screw.  some creep-looking border control types just walked by, giving us all the stink eye – i guess they’re gonna check all our passports.

funny!  none of the germans on the train were speaking much when we were in Poland.  now, across the border, i hear very little polish and lots of german.  there are still a lot of poles on the train, though.

porn guy has been at it almost constantly, despite the attempts by his neighbor to stop it.  he has gotten past the loss of his tabloid by turning the laptop almost completely towards the window, which means, now that it’s getting dark, i have a clear view of his smut reflected in his window.

it’s not, as i previously guessed, hot girl-on-girl action.

he has, until this moment, seemed incredibly aware that there is a female sitting with a possibly perfect view of his screen, which has allowed me opportunity for some fun.  all i have to do is look in his general area, and then shift my gaze so i am looking out the window behind him. he thinks i can see his porn.  it makes him jump, and turn, and interrupts his grunting and moaning for a minute.  when he has satisfied himself (eww) that i am not paying attention to his porn, he turns back.  then i wait a few minutes, shift my gaze back to him, and then back out the window.  and he jumps and turns, etc.  ad infinitum.

all of his concern for my lady-ish charms has not actually stopped him from inflicting his porn on me and everyone around me.

two more hours to berlin, then two more hours to Dessau.

i’m going to die.

i’ve just been waiting until we passed the border to fall asleep, and that took longer than i thought, but now i’m afraid to fall asleep in case my exhaustion causes me to miss berlin entirely.

i forgot to put all my berlin friends’ phone numbers in my phone, just in case.  don’t even know if i have them all.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

poland

argh, 4:30 now – another hour.  the man in front of me has successfully derailed the porn fest by engaging porn guy in conversation – he tried this a few times before, and it didn’t last – 10 minutes later those hands would be creeping to the computer and the grunting and moaning would return.

i’m not against porn, mind you, i just resent being forced to participate in this guy’s fantasies.

all of my pens are dying.  i’m actually writing this in a notebook on the train, as i don’t want to show off my computer.  plus, this is what i’m used to – writing on trains.  laptops are a relatively recent entry into my life.

i brought a book but i can’t seem to be able to read it – or even think about it.  it’s Rebecca solnit’s meditations on claiming irish citizenship, with very little claim to the honor.  seems fitting, considering a similar situation has landed me here, on this train, trying not to see porn.

i tried to read this book once before, on a train.  to Portland.  i realized that as i was putting it in my bag, but it’s the only book i have that isn’t 600 pages and heavier than a brick.

it’s not the kind of book you can start while your brain is being knocked around your skull.

in germany they tell you what stop is coming up, and they tell you long enough before the stop that you can actually get all of your things together.  amazing!  they don’t keep it a closely-guarded secret that they refuse to share with outsiders, so you have to peck your head around like a chicken, trying to see the sign coming up ahead out of the window.  if there even is a sign.  and if it isn’t placed at the end of the platform, so you pass it as the train is leaving.  then, in germany, they give you time to get off the train!  amazing!

aside from the intrusive pat-down in the Frankfurt airport (that started this blog), i have never been in germany before.

it’s pretty outside those windows.

germany!

i’ve been so stressed by the journey that i forgot the exciting thing – that at the end of it i get to see sara and mom and leo!

i just witnessed an endearing sight.  the man in front of me, the porn-derailer, just pulled the old polish-chivalry move and helped a german mother get her bag up on the luggage rack.  nevermind that he must be in his 60’s and she my age – she was sort of taken aback, but they did it together and she said,”danke schon,” and he said “proszę bardzo.”  then she asked, in german, how you say thank you in polish.  he didn’t understand the question, but she asked again, and again, until the cranky man across from me (who has gotten the worst of the porn, and who i think is awesome) and i both shouted “dziękuję” at the same time.  and she smiled, and tried to say “dziękuję.”  i don’t know, it was so smiley and neighborly-feeling.  warmed my cold, hungry heart.

i may collapse in the berlin train station.

porn train

this is the second part of a multi-part post encompassing my train ride form tarnow to dessau, germany:

Wednesday December 23, 2009

it’s noon now.  it looks like 8 pm outside.  we just left Wrocław.  jesus, it’s bigger than i thought, and really beautiful, in a crumbling sort of way (my favorite kind of way).  the train really filled up there, there were only 5 or so of us in here before we got there, and i still don’t have anyone sitting next to me, so it’s not that full yet.  5 more hours to berlin.  jesus why does it take so long?  it smells like kielbasa.

there’s an older man across from me and one row ahead who is trying desperately to watch some porn.  he fumbled with the discs for a while, and i could see they all had photos of sultry ladies and one of them said “sex” (funny story about that “X” – i’ll get into that later).  then he fumbled with the headphones, trying so frantically to unwrap them and get them on.  harder for him, because he appears to be missing half of each of his thumbs, including the nails.  hard to tear desperately into plastic wrap without the all-important thumb-nail.  now he has tilted his computer away from me (and everybody) and is holding up a tabloid newspaper to block the screen.  unfortunately the tabloid has a picture of a child being stepped on.  really.  a small child with a foot on his throat.  below that is a picture of a naked lady.

everytime his arm gets tired i get a glimpse of the action, but in that off-center-laptop way, where it looks all fucked up and negative.

he just let it drop for a while because the conductor came on the loudspeaker to tell us all the different times we’d be arriving in different places.  it sounded like reading the list made him both winded and bored.

thank god, my porn fiend friend has changed pages, so now it’s just text.

stealthy porn guy -- best picture i could get. there is porn behind that tabloid, i assure you.

in my bag i have five tests to grade – i’m putting that off for as long as i can, though really i should just get it over with.  oh, it was awful, giving the test.  renata told me beforehand that Polish people just cheat and i said, “yes, i know, ania and Karoline told me.”  she replied, “it’s true!  past native speakers have been shocked!  ‘what are you doing?’ they yell!”  as if she were overjoyed by the concept.  i took karoline’s advice and told them i would deduct points for cheating, which they seemed to believe.  they were mostly quiet and well-behaved.  which made me feel like a pushy asshole.

it’s really a fine line that i haven’t fully defined yet – my anti-authoritarianism clashing with the need to show some sort of authority, just enough to make rambunctious, willful, smart children pay attention – how do i balance that?  i guess i’ll find out with time.  or i’ll become an asshole.  i have quite a few great radical teacher/child care friends – i should take a poll.

ha ha!  my porn friend keeps turning the pages of his tabloid because he’s pretending to read it!  nevermind that he’s holding it completely parallel to his line of vision, and that he is obviously not looking at it.  nevermind!  oh, how wily he is!

so, anyway, the test.  the other thing that i hated was how paranoid it made me.  pawel started fiddling with his sweater or his pants pocket, so i’d go stand next to him and then he’d pull his hand up to the desk again, but only because i had freaked him out by standing over him.  the only time they ever spoke to each other was when Karoline (student, not teacher) asked weronika if she was supposed to write her name at the top of her paper, in polish.  i understood what she was asking, so i didn’t do anything.

oh gross, porn guy is grunting and breathing heavy now.  the hand holding the paper is shaking.

the coffee cart is coming through, so he’s taking another break.  i think he needs it.

when he takes a break, he drapes the tabloid over the screen, so that no one can see what he is watching.  very clever, that.

anyway, weronika asked me to define one of the words in the test and i couldn’t, because it was in the test, and that’s the whole point of the test, right?  and it was ripping my heart out because i watched her try to figure out that one word for half an hour.  the question was “L_____s are part of the reptile family.(7)”  it told them how many letters in the word in the parentheses at the end.  she asked me what “reptile” meant and i couldn’t tell her,  so i watched her counting letters and holding her head in her hands and being so goddamn frustrated, just because she couldn’t remember what “reptile” meant.  i know that feeling.  she’s really good, and she takes it really seriously.  i’m the same kind of nerd.  she finished the rest of the test and tried to figure out that one word for the last half hour.

it took everything in my power not to run up and crouch down in front of her, grab her shoulders and scream, “it’s lizards!  the answer is lizards!”

broke my heart.

i checked her test right away and finally, out of desperation, at the last minute, she had written “lions.”

it made me think of mr. maclean, my physics teacher senior year in high school.  somehow i ended up in honors physics. well, i took anything honors i could, because we didn’t have placements tests – you just signed up if it fit your schedule and then you sank or swam, depending.  i wasn’t science-minded, but other science classes had been all about memorization.  like mr. hurlbut’s (god love ‘im, that was his name) biology class.  carrie monska and i would ask to go to the bathroom and we’d spend the rest of the class wandering the halls, only returning for our stuff when the bell rang.  we wouldn’t even go outside to the park across the street, because carrie was a good girl and when disciplinarian vice-principal frank tudryn found us in the hall, he was sure we were there for a good reason.  he would nod and move on, looking for someone else to harass.  only once did he sort of catch on to the fact that he was seeing us in the hall an awful lot, and then carrie came up with some marvelous answer that he just had to believe.

then we would memorize whatever the lesson was about, take the test, and pass.  all we would have missed was mr. hurlbut droning on and on about the scientist lady at UMASS who used to be married to, or somehow involved with, Stephen Hawking, who he had had a chance to work with, and who he had a massive crush on.  that sentence was just packed full of relative clauses.

i’m getting so far away from my point now.  i will take a minute to add that one of the times i was in mr. hurlbut’s class i learned that sometimes, on the farm, they castrate farm animals with bricks.  ah,  an AP education.

um … ok … mr. maclean, the physics teacher.  like mr. hurlbut’s class, his physics class was two class periods long.  and i was fucking lost the whole time.  when we did experiments in class, in groups or not, i was good.  when we talked about formulas in class i was good – except for when matt alberston was sitting behind me, singing his favorite selections from Achtung Baby right into my ear.  but when i came to actually figuring out what formula to use for what, or how to even begin applying any of it, i was lost.

which meant that tests were a nightmare.  he would give us situations and we would have to apply the shit we knew to figure out the mass of the semi truck, or to say how much helium should be in the balloon after 12 hours, or whatever.  there was some small stepping-bridge of information, over a deep gap of not-getting-it, that i was missing.  i would approach our teacher during the test and … ask him.  the same thing weronika tried to do.  he wouldn’t tell me the answer, but he’d walk me through it, during the test.  so i would sit down and work it through.  he never told me the whole process, but somehow that last bit of personalized explanation was all i needed.

i mean, that last little bit of personalized explanation all the many times we had a test, for many of the problems on the test.  that’s quite a lot of explanation, actually.

but halfway through the course a strange thing started to happen.  this soon-to-be-lit-major had a scientific epiphany.  i suddenly understood what the hell it was all about.  my brain clicked and i was able to figure it out on my own, all because he had broken test protocol and helped me the fuck out.

i finished that class with an A average and true sense of the meaning of “miracle.”

take that, smarty pants science kids.

he also gave me a scientific calculator, because i was too poor to buy one.  he had a secret stash of calculators that had been left behind by former students.  when i approached him about our monetary situation, he opened this magical drawer and went through looking for the best one.  i still have that calculator in my apartment in Poland.  i use it to calculate exchange rates.

so now all i can think is that i was asked to be that teacher last night and i didn’t do it.  or maybe not.  maybe i was asked to give the answer and i chose not to.  what worried me, or what i reacted to, is that if i did try to give her a hint there would be an uproar from the rest of the class.

i don’t know.

ha ha, the guy directly across from porn guy (so, the guy ahead of me) asked to read his tabloid, effectively shutting down the not-so-surreptitious inflicting of his sexuality upon all of us.  he did it in the most polite way, too.  startling.

now porn-guy is sedately reading the free on-train magazine, with one hand resting on his closed laptop, as if to ensure that it is still there.

and my hand is cramping.

more later, i’m sure.

1:06 pm

drunk island

this is only the first part of a multi-part post encompassing my train ride form tarnow to dessau, germany:

tuesday December 23, 2009

way too early in the morning.  actually it’s 7:40-ish.  i slept for two hours, woke up at 2, tried to sleep til 3, had the most awkward and silent cab ride ever (which i paid too much for) and now i’m on a train to berlin, looking out the window at fields of dead corn stalks and brightly-painted beehive boxes.  i probably am going to crash soon, but i wanted to get down the story about the guy.

kraków głowny (main train station) is an hour from tarnów and worlds away.  the first thing i saw as i got off the train was a man (let’s call him “the man”) on a bench, trying drunkenly and desperately to revive his friend, whose face was in the man’s lap, his knees on the ground, still collapsing from what must have started as a sitting position.  almost hovering.  leaning on the man was another man, forward precarious from his wheelchair, whispering, cajoling, something.  both of them prodding at the man passed out, as he continued to slide off the bench in slow slow motion.  all around, on other benches, in a sort of “bench island” were other men, passed out & sleeping, one of them covered in crumbs, as if he hadn’t just eaten something but rather it had exploded.  all over.

drunk island.

where the air is rancid.

unfortunately they were right next to the departures screen, so you had to sort of hover on the periphery of the stink to see what platform your train was leaving from.

not that i’m all prissy about stinky drunks, as that describes some of my best friends, but this stink was … beyond … anything.  bordering on biological warfare.

impressive.

which reminds me that the first thing i got to see this morning (ok, not THE first thing) was a couple of cops harassing people sleeping in the tarnów train station, asking them if they were taking a train, and if so where was their ticket, and if not what was their name.  then they called in the names.  the guys were pretty ok about the whole process, but the cops were … cops.  so i decided to sit out in the cold for 15 minutes rather than be near that cop testosterone first thing in the morning.

cop outside of tarnow train station

none of which is the story about the man.

after i stared at the departure screen long enough to know what platform i was supposed to be on but so long that i doubted it (welcome to my neuroses), i asked the woman in the ticket box and she spoke english and told me, “maybe platform 4, but check the screen.”  the problem was that my ticket said 7:24 am, but the screen said 7:25 am.  that’s not the same!  i must have the wrong ticket and i’ll have to live in the train station forever!  with the smelly drunk men!  fuck!

travelling sometimes makes me crazy.  really.  renata scheduled the cab for me for this morning, and before she called she asked me what time.  when i said 4 am she replied, “no!  that’s too early.  you don’t want to go that early. then you’ll just be sitting there.”  i had told her my train was at 5, though it was at 10 after really, and she was right, 4 was too early.  but she had to force me to say ok to 4:30 because, really, travel sometimes makes me neurotic.

and then i laughed really hard when i heard her say to the cab driver on the phone that i don’t speak polish but i understand some, and no, it’s fine, don’t worry, it’s fine.

so he did not even try to say one word to me, until the very end, when he muttered something that may have been “happy holidays,” or “good travels,” or “good riddance bad tipper.”  because i can’t count money at 4:30 in the morning.

ghostly peron #3

whatever town we’re passing through smells horrible and looks worse.  industrial wasteland.

oh god, don’t have to teach for a week and a half.

and not a single one of these things that i’ve said is the story of the man that i wanted to tell.

ok, so, after looking at the departure screen and deciding it was all going to be ok, i got the worst cup of coffee i’ve ever had in a little sklep by the stinky drunks.  while i was trying to explain that i don’t speak polish to the woman behind the counter, a grizzly old thing with a permanent lop-sided squinty face that made me think of pop-eye’s pa got off his stool by the door and started asking me questions.  he would take a few steps towards me as he did, and then jump back for my response, as if we were boxing.  unfortunately he was doing this as the woman was asking me questions, as well, so i couldn’t make out what he was saying, and even when i did i had trouble understanding until, in the midst of all the racket, he let out the word, in english, “Sweden.”  he was asking if i was from Sweden!  mete will be amused, i’m sure.  i told him “America,” and he replied “ooooooooooo.   esssssssssss.  aaaaaaaaaaah, tak?” all drawn out like that, like he was in a different time stream than i was.  when i nodded, he stiltingly exploded “clin …. ton!  hill … ary clin … ton!  obama obama obama! ja wiem!”  and i nodded and said obama.  yes.

then he told me, in polish, to make sure to put sugar in my coffee, and i responded, in polish, that i don’t like sugar in my coffee, and he looked at me slyly and said, quietly, “pani mówi po polsku.  (you speak polish).”   as if he had found me out.  like a secret.

it’s gray outside, even though the suns seems to have finally risen.  somewhere.  i really am crashing.  i’m going to try to sleep while there’s still relatively no one on this train.

remember:  test, & lizards, & hot dogs, & pani po polsku?

no retreat, baby, no surrender

Sunday, December 20, 2009 6:42pm

back home from the café.  made some pierogis, which were like heaven.  it was a nice walk home, actually, even if the fact that sidewalks here remain unshoveled makes for almost broken stick-ankles.

i want a typewriter so badly.  i don’t even know where to look for one.  going through withdrawal.  fuck.  i think i have a typewriter addiction problem.  i was trying to figure out how to take my underwood here with me, but it just didn’t make any sense.  there was just no way.

i have a serious mental problem when it comes to typewriters.

i had six, and i got rid of three, or rather annie ended up keeping one and i tried to sell two others, but they are still in wendy’s garage.  if anyone wants a plastic sears typewriter that i wrote most of my zines on, or a heavy electric typewriter that needs a slight bit of love, please let me know.  they will need to be dealt with eventually (sooner than later, for reals), and i don’t want to burden wendy more than i already have.

so, if you are up on your math that means that i still have three.  that also means, along with all the other crap i couldn’t get rid of, i am paying to store three typewriters.

(to be fair, most of that crap consists of negatives and photos and writing and art projects.  i just have too many of those).

actually, until i started writing this blog i never ever wrote anything on a computer.  it still feels sort of … wrong.  i wrote things out, by hand, or i wrote them on a typewriter.  editing on a computer is fine, but writing?  glowing things distract, and it just … feels wrong.

can’t be more detailed than that.

ok, fuck it, going to take a bath.

7pm

Wesołych Świąt

happy whatevers everyone.  holiday greetings from germany.  blog being hand-written for the time being. catch-up playing will be happening soon.  just sayin’ happy … things.

typical polish christmas card.

big L

Sunday, December 20, 2009 2:31pm

there is a small factor of life in this city that i haven’t had a chance to mention yet.  it is something that was brought to my attention almost from the very first moment i was here, and i can’t help but notice it all the time, now.  like a plague across the land.  like locusts.  the amount of student drivers here is … awe-inspiring.

i would still be wondering why there are seemingly fleets of cars with giant signs on top, blue with a large white L , if ania hadn’t pointed it out as she was driving mom and i to the apartment that first day here.  she was telling us that she had just gotten her license, which did not fill us with comfort as we shoved ourselves into her adorable and ridiculously tiny car.  she said she had trouble, sometimes, driving and listening, so could we try not to talk.  once again, yes, not so comfortable with that.  she said it made her nervous, other cars.  worse and worse.  then she pointed ahead of us and said, “there, there is someone else learning right now.”  and there was one of the cars, with a sign on top that seemed unwisely large.

since then i see them everywhere.  i also see signs advertising classes to learn how to drive, everywhere.  more on the buses than anywhere else, actually.  on the way here, today, i saw two come very close to tapping bumpers, in the rotary near my house.  it was snowing hard.  the roads are full of snow and student drivers.  oh my.

when we were here visiting two years ago, we rented a car.  this seemed to be a good idea at the time, as it meant we didn’t have to lug our suitcases on and off of still-moving trains.  it was the summertime, so trains seemed like an even worse idea because of the amount of tourists and people on holiday.  then we got on the road and tried to drive … here, actually.  well, the first place we tried to drive requires a longer story, but the second day of driving, we were coming to tarnów.  funny, that.  it took us forever to get to kraków, and then we were excited, because tarnów is less than an hour away.

i think that “less than an hour” took us two or three, though i can’t remember exactly.  it was sort of a nightmare of traffic and stilled cars and radio zed and burning fields and … ugh.  everything we tried to do took three times as long as we thought it would, by looking at the distance.

i found myself yearning for those smoky trains that don’t stop long enough to let you off.

part of the problem is that, until relatively recently, Poland did not have the need for lots of roads all over the place.  there were very few privately-owned cars.  seems the number of cars grew before the number of roads did.  part of the problem we encountered trying to get here from kraków was that we wandered right into a road-building project, which put all traffic at a standstill.  attempts to lessen the traffic problem by building roads made it worse.  it was pretty horrible.

so there are still a lot of people learning how to drive.  why it seems that there are more here than anywhere else i’ve been in the country, i don’t know.  i didn’t know what the signs meant, but i swear i had never seen anything like it before getting to tarnów.

i would like to take a moment to complain vociferously about the grammar-correction capabilities of Microsoft word.  due to the fluctuating nature of my internet access, i write this blog in a word document and post it when possible.  it tried to give me the incorrect tense for the verb “to take.”  it insists that i am wrong.  it is a fucking jerk.

ok, i’ve been in this café for hours and hours.  it is starting to get dark.  my feet are still cold.  i am probably not going to leave for a while, but i seem to be unable to focus on writing right now.  so, yeah.

3:41pm

ps.  who in their right mind would cover that proclaimers song about the 1000 miles?  you would have to be out of your skull.  but someone did, and it is on the radio right now.  pfft.

four student drivers at a stop light. there were three more outside of the frame, to the left.

ow ow cold

Saturday, December 19, 2009 11:27pm

got out of class this afternoon, lay on the couch and fell asleep.  for about two hours.  i woke up this morning at 5 am and just got up.  i’m not used to this sort of thing.  i mean, i had to get up at 7:30 anyway, but … fuck.  whatever semblance of a sleep schedule i’ve had has been destroyed by freezing temperatures and fatigue and wanting so badly to go on vacation.

actually it’s been fucked since the TEFL course.

one thing this grammar-knowledge had done to me is that i don’t say i “want things bad” anymore.  that makes me sort of sad.

there’s something really appealing in the phrase “i want that wicked bad.”  sigh.

anyway, it’s been a hard week, though i’m not sure why.  maybe because it has been so cold, and it’s been my first week totally alone, and all of that would be fine if it wasn’t the last week before vacation.

anyway, class today was ok.  i had a pretty good group, though i couldn’t get them to talk to me about anything for longer than a second.  “what does ‘blah blah blah’ mean?” “blah” “ok, but can you tell me more?”  silence.  so i had them talk to each other as much as possible, just making sure they didn’t speak Polish. and we sang the saddest version of Jingle Bells i have ever heard in my life.

then the bus was ten minutes late in 7 degree freezingness (Fahrenheit – my super-modern converter application on my ancient and crappy phone tells me that that is -14 celsius), though the sun was out and things were bright and kind of beautiful.  it stopped snowing, though there were supposed to be flurries today.

blurry attempt at surreptitious photography of frigid open-air market

had flashbacks the other day to the last time i was in -2o-ish degree (Fahrenheit) cold, in Vermont, and how i only had to walk about a block and a half to go to work, but it felt very much like the muscles in my legs were freezing, and that i had to walk faster or they would freeze solid and i would be stuck there until i died.  it’s very difficult, though, to walk fast enough to keep your leg muscles from freezing when the whole world is coated in ice.

these are the things i am remembering.

ugh, that nap really threw me.  i kinda hate doing that, as it makes me feel groggy and fucked up for the rest of the day.  i guess i was tired.  i think i still am.

frigid open-air market

tomorrow is a day off, and even if it is frigid again i am going to go for a walk, find a new café to sit in, and write and write.  maybe i will go by the open air market.  i discovered last monday, when i was heading home from my early early morning class, and it was freezing, and snowing that constant, boring snow, that they still have the open-air markets here year-round.  i mean, yeah, i guess people need to sell things and make a living year-round.  but, jesus.  since then i have noticed that the pretzel vendors and pantofle (slippers) vendors also set up in the frigid cold.  i wanted to take a picture of one of the pretzel vendors sitting in a small yellow tent-construction-thing with only his pretzels and his feet sticking out but i kind of lost my nerve, and didn’t want to take off my new wool gloves to get at my camera anyway.  because, like i said, it is cold.

the man who sells his pictures for 1 złoty at the church near my school has also been out every day.  the other day i watched him do some sort of slow-motion-warming dance, that looked like a bad spoof of tai chi.  he hasn’t been singing as much, either.

also, the grumpy woman who sells produce near my house still puts her bins of apples outside in the freezing cold.  isn’t that bad for apples?  freezing cold?

i’m really glad i didn’t end up in Gdansk, or somewhere farther north.  this is supposed to be the warmest region in the country …

anyway, i seem to have one thing only on my mind.

that it is cold.

well, then.

12:03 am

dead clintons

Friday, December 18, 2009 8:46 pm

i “get to” teach john lennon’s “happy xmas (war is over)” tomorrow, simply because i can’t think what else to do, and Rafał will be in the next room teaching cliff richards’ christmas song to the band of troublemakers that i have taught the past few weeks.  i won’t know what to do without them, even though they spat upon my attempt to teach them “’Twas the night before Christmas.” jerks.

but they said they would bring vodka tomorrow.  i told them i may be in the next room, teaching a different class,  but they would have nothing to do with that idea.

and now it is true.

ok, so i was trying to figure out what the hell to do with 45 minutes of this intensive class i have tomorrow, after the vocab review and some other crap, and teaching fucking Christmas is relatively easy, but if i have to talk about the difference between traditions in the US and traditions in Poland one more time i am gonna bite someone’s face.  (been a long week).  so i did a search in my MP3 library for songs with “Christmas” or “xmas” in the title, wising i had chris g’s Christmas album with me.  what came up was this (absolutely serious):

• atom and his package “what we do on Christmas”:  spoof about the supposed jewish conspiracy to run the world, and how it all is planned on Christmas day.  “wouldn’t you like to know … what we do … on Christmas.”  not appropriate.  “you’re still mad about what happened to your pal jesus .. well, if he hadn’t died for your sins you’d be going to hell like the rest of us.”
• beat happening “Christmas”:  starts “i had sex on Christmas … i had sex three times today.”  um, yeah.
• flaming lips “Christmas at the zoo”:  i don’t even like this band.
• john prine “Christmas in prison”:  though it is one of the most beautiful songs ever, um, no.  if only so i don’t have to explain “pistols carved out of wood” and “her blood’s in my stream.”
• tom waits “Christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis”:  saddest song ever, despite the fact that i don’t want to approach any of this with a ten foot jesus pole, at least not to an intermediate class on a saturday morning, days before Christmas, in a heavily religious country.  “wish i had all the money we used to spend on dope.”
• and, john lennon.

so, john lennon it is.  easier than trying to get a usable and hearable track off the internet at this point.

why is everything so hard?

also, the lyrics sheet they have on file at the school has the lyrics as “war is over if you wanted.”

anyway, i taught a private lesson today, to the boy that i accidentally stabbed with my pen on my first day of teaching, and he didn’t remember the amazing talk we had about Massachusetts then, so we had to have that talk again.  it freaked me out, because he went into a bit of a trance and recited, without breathing, the most watered-down, oppressive version of the first thanksgiving i have ever heard, outside of kindergarten.  and i took a deep breath, and said “yes.  pilgrims.  thankful.  sure.”

and then i showed him pictures and asked him about how people looked.  “is this man taller than that man?  which one is older? which looks happier?”  goddamn comparatives (happier, bigger, more popular) and superlatives (happiest, biggest, most popular).  i think i’ve taught them more in the last few weeks than i ever could have imagined i would need to, and again tomorrow, before teaching john lennon.  and somehow, in the folder of “pictures of people to be used in classrooms” i found a creepy photo of Reagan smiling like the devil, and a slightly less creepy photo of Clinton playing pool.  the boy was able to determine that Reagan was a US president, if only because he looked like one, and there was an american flag behind him. and then i told him that Clinton was also a president and he said “yes!  Clinton!  he died!  and i saw his … pogrzeb.”  pogrzeb means funeral.  what?  what kind of fucking alternative universe had i fallen into?  he kept saying “this year, Clinton dead.  this year.”  and i thought, what the fuck have i missed in the past month?  i mean, yeah, the new york times is my internet home page, so when i do get to be on the internet, i see the news first.  usually i just get pissed and go elsewhere.  had i missed something?  then he was trying to tell me that it was when he was in Chicago last, which i think was last august.  he has family there, and they visit at least once a year.  and he said, yes, it was a Clinton in the government.  a man named Clinton in the government.  what?  what the fuck?

i still have no idea what he was trying to say.

then i thought “oh, no!  what if it’s george clinton?”

then i came to my senses.

we spent too much of the class trying to work that one out.

and lance hahn just came on the magic MP3 shuffle machine and that makes me want to scream and jump and scream some more.

then i talked to ania for a while about the fact that i have to give my first test on tuesday, my last day of teaching before getting on a train for 12 hours.  she and Karolina (one of the other teachers) both told me that polish people just cheat, and i will have to be very careful, because that is just what happens.  both are polish, and they just nodded and said yes, they just cheat.

this is the class of supposed teenagers, who are actually 13, and who make me feel crazy. great.

then ania and i talked for a while about this tendency, this cultural lean.  and we decided that, mostly, it is not cheating, it is solidarity.  just in the last (almost) month of teaching, i have witnessed this over and over.  they leave no person behind.  if i ask someone to try to work out a phrasing, or a question structure, all on their own, it takes only about 20 seconds before one of their classmates is telling them the answer.  sure, it means they don’t learn shit, but it is, in a way, admirable.

then ania asked me how to say that saying in english, y’know, the one about how if you do something wrong, but your intentions are admirable, then it is ok, as opposed to if your intentions are selfish.  and i had no idea what she was talking about.  all i could think of was “two wrongs don’t make a right” and “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” neither of which were applicable, but which go to show you that my culture is probably a lot more fucked up than hers.

then i went to the bar and fucked around online until my battery died, which was way too soon because there were too many drunk people sitting in front of all the plugs.  i still have yet to meet a native speaker in that bar, despite what Rafał said on my first day.  though, really, there was something that happened the other day that i am kind of embarrassed about and wish i could rewind, and do again.

i was checking the internet, and then i had to leave to walk the ten minutes down the hill to the school.  i wanted to get there early, so i could make some copies and make sure i had all the stuff i needed.  was this two days ago?  or three?  or yesterday?  i don’t even know.  no, not yesterday.  i don’t think.  anyway, i paid my bill, and was heading out the door, when my attention was grabbed by some people at a table by the front door.  a man and a woman.  i couldn’t figure out why i was drawn to stare at them, though i thought it was because they were listening to some audio thing that was loud and they were laughing and reacting, and it was loud.  then i got outside and down the street, and only then did i realize that the thing they were listening to was in english!  what the fuck!  people with enough english to laugh at jokes, in english, and i didn’t even realize until it was too late!  i was already closer to the school, and i had to get stuff ready for class, plus it would have been uphill to go back.  well, fuck.

a funny thing happens when you are surrounded by a language that you kinda understand, when you have barely any outlet for your native language.  you start to think that other spoken languages are your own.  so many times i heard people talking and thought it was english, until i listened closer, and no.  no, it’s not.  so this was the opposite.  i heard english and didn’t recognize it as such.  fucked up.  yeah.  especially because there are so many other language schools here, but the teachers must be Polish.  or hiding.

what the fuck.

i started, today, really buckling down in my Polish studies.  i can’t do this half-assed thing any longer, especially because i can’t seem to find any people who speak english, outside of my school.  and, yes, they are lovely people.  but i don’t want to depend on them too much for my … communication needs.

anyway, wine makes for rubber fingers, and i have to wake up early.  so, yeah.  gnite.  sarah jaffe sings to me “we forget that we live by the sea.”  and it is time for sleep.  sheesh.

10:04 pm

p.s. note to self: remember to write the thing about the journal and the secrets and the thing.  yeah.

in which our hero realizes that novelty walgreen’s gloves are not gonna cut it …

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 9:32pm

just finished making a present for someone.  that’s all i’m gonna say.  so now i am sitting here, wondering if it is time to turn the heat on.  yes?  no?  i can say one thing for concrete housing blocks, they sure do keep the heat in.

everyone is really really really ready to go on holiday.  really.  i let the little kids play hangman today for 20 minutes (of a 45 minute class) because i couldn’t be bothered to stop them.  also because, before class, when, for some reason, i let them go crazy with my white board marker, one of them wrote “my favorrite tetcher is jannett” on the white board.  i shouldn’t feel so flattered, when a) it’s obvious we’re not teaching them to spell so well and b) all around this declaration was scribbled wild praise for hannah montana.  in fact, my praise was squooshed in the corner, and miley cyrus’ was going wild all around the rest of the board.   (and, probably, c) they really really wanted to play hangman).

then they told me what they wanted for christmas (we’re studying toys), then we sang jingle bells, then they went home.

my next class had only two people, out of the usual 4-5, and we inadvertently talked about t.v. shows.  i tried to tell them about “the daily show” and we discussed how well things translate, or not.  the really nice girl, katarzynka, told me that she’s really really into “jon and kate plus 8.”  apparently that translates better than jon stewart.  i got to teach them the word “gripping” in relation to storytelling, and then, when we were about to have our last activity, with 20 minutes to go, katarzynka said “but there won’t be enough time!”  i assured her there would be.  then i let them go three minutes early anyway.

all of this talk about television was happening while marcin, the guy in the class, was actually not talking.  he tends to grab the floor and hold it, usually.  he’s the one i saw in the bar last week.  last week? really?  Ania told me that she can’t hear what we are saying from the office next door, but she can hear his voice, and she hears it often.  he does tend to … go on.

turns out he, as he put it, “detests television.”  i wanted to tell him i was right there with him, buddy, but i was trying to find some common ground here.  still, when i admitted that i had never actually seen “jon and kate plus 8,” katarzynka’s jaw literally dropped.

awesome.

then we read some crap piece in the book about “unusual holidays,” which had a little blurb about paying to go storm chasing, which led to a discussion of where different storms happen in the US, which led to talk about Katrina.  I wasn’t sure how far i wanted to go with the discussion, though i did get to hear that they watched it on t.v. in Poland and were gripped.  they were also shocked to hear that people had actually died, as that hadn’t come across.  i told them that many people died because the government did not help, and then we got to talking about ol’ george w. bush, and marcin perked up and had plenty to say, while katarzynka decided to keep quiet.

what he said is that people in Poland did not trust him, because he said the things that people wanted to hear, but then didn’t do them.  somehow, though, he really had a hard time talking.  he apologized, saying that his vocabulary was not so good today.  and i said that it is ok, everyone is ready to go on holiday.  and then i said i understood what he was trying to say.

boy did i ever.

and then they learned how to write postcards.

afterwards, i almost walked up to the old town to go back to the café and have some beer and rant on various internets, and then i decided against it.  snow!  cold!  my determination to walk to work as often as possible is crumbling under the need to carry a lot of goddamn books and the fact that it is fucking cold.

i have to remember, they are playing the roman polanski documentary here tomorrow, one day only, and i really want to go see it.  i’m not sure if it’s in english, with polish subtitles, or what, but i haven’t been to the movies since i’ve been in tarnów, and since it’s so much cheaper than in the US i think i should take advantage.

also, roman polanski documentary in Poland?  awesome.  i would sit through it even if it was in polish.

i’ve been using the word “awesome” a lot lately.  where did it come from?  why won’t it go away?

anyway, here is a preliminary list of all the reasons why i am stared at here.  fun!

• “ladies” don’t wear hoodies
• “ladies” don’t wear coats that are five times too big for them
• young ladies don’t wear big clunky boots
• old ladies DO wear big clunky boots
• young ladies don’t wear pants under their skirts
• old ladies DO wear pants under their skirts
• nobody wears a slip as a skirt
• nose ring
• giant hole in the side of my nose where nose ring isn’t
• lack of earrings
• silver hair (huge one)
• obviously-self-cut silver hair
• running around screaming “nie rozumiem!  nie rozumiem!” (i don’t understand!)
• walking around repeating polish words to myself to get pronunciation down and to remember them.  these are usually read off of signs, or advertisements.  this means, in practice, that i am walking around saying, for instance, “real estate, real estate, real estate.  butcher, butcher, butcher.” (etc. etc. etc.)
• walking around muttering to myself in english
• walking around talking to all the stray cats/non-stray dogs.  in english.
• walking around taking pictures of things like signs and birds and houses.  why?
• i only have one pair of pants for work.
• they have cheese on them.

i’m sure there are more.  i will mention them as i realize them.  the old ladies stare at me more than the young ladies, but i find that the case no matter what.  the old ladies love to stare.  the young men either don’t seem to care or stare at me almost as much as the old ladies.  hmmm … curious.

when i got home today, there were a couple of guys talking inside, in the stairwell, by the door.  as i walked up to the door with my bag full of groceries and my bag full of english course books, one of them opened the door.  i thought they were leaving.  they were talking sort of non-stop to each other, as if they didn’t even see me.  it wasn’t until i got around the first landing that i realized they were shutting the door, and continuing to talk.  then i realized that they had only opened the door for me, because i had a lot of bags.  then i felt bad that i hadn’t said anything.  then i didn’t feel bad.  then i realized that i should be used to this fucking chivalry by now.  i mean, come on.

it just, still, sort of shocks me.  i mean, when a 15 year-old boy carries your 75 pound suitcase off of a still-moving train … it raises some issues, and it also feels, well, awesome.

so, balance the staring with the chivalry, why don’t you?  because i’m having a hard time.

and, yeah, the title of this post refers to the fact that not only do i only have a pair of “Halloween mummy” one-size-fits-all $1.99 walgreen’s stretch gloves that i think are going to keep me warm, but i realized some time ago that somewhere along the line i mixed up two pairs.

so both of the gloves i have now are lefts.

sigh.

10:37 pm

oh what fun

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 2:37pm

Sitting in café hybryda, again, where’s the surprise?  finally got my money situation worked out, so i really just want to go food shopping and get a bunch of vegetables and make a huge meal and stare out the window at the falling snow.  huge flakes, that are collecting.  it snowed all day monday and tuesday, but still that sort of snow that didn’t really stick.  well, it sort of did monday night.  Rafał offered me a ride home, so i didn’t have to wait for the bus for a half hour, and we talked about driving in snow, and how very strange it was my first christmas in san francisco, when it was vaguely warm, and we went to the park and ran around on the seesaw, and … yeah, i forgot how strange that felt.  that was my first Christmas in weather that wasn’t freezing.  even the year before, when we were stuck in santa barbara, it was unseasonably, ridiculously cold.   even the year before that, in seattle, it snowed and the whole city shut down and everyone lost their minds.  in fact, for years there was a running joke that everywhere i moved i brought frigid, east-coast temperatures with me.

somewhat thanks to Brendan, and somewhat because i think that it just started working for me, i have finally figured out how to put pictures on this here thing.  this doesn’t necessarily mean that i am going to.  but it’s nice to know that i can.

ok, fine. here's a photo of snow.

and another

so, yeah, snow.  and snow.  so i really don’t want to go sing jingle bells with a bunch of screamy children, though they are nice, and somewhat well-behaved, children.  the classes i had yesterday were awful; both the “teens,” who are really all 13 and 14 and can be difficult, as well as the FCE class, who are usually really good. they are three upper-intermediate adults, who are taking the First Certificate in English Prep class, even though, apparently, they are not going to take the exam at the end (don’t know why).  i think everyone is just ready to be on vacation and to have Christmas and to not have to think for a little while.  i am really really ready to not have to think for a while.

ok, short entry for now.  more tonight, i hope.  i really just spent the past two days, when not teaching, watching red dwarf and reading Murakami.  now i am out of red dwarf.  the only DVDs i have with me are the whole series of red dwarf (now watched … again), the whole series of farscape, which was pushed upon me by my siblings, and which i can’t seem to get to play on my computer, one season of Reno 911!, which i have now seen 3-5 times, and, yes, the first season of 21 jumpstreet!  i have only watched one episode of jumpstreet since being here, and i watched it with my mom, and it was about a Polish girl who gets to go to school in the US, despite the iron fist of communism.  she spends the whole episode trying to find a husband so she doesn’t have to go back.  and the girl playing this Polish lass had the worst fake accent i have ever heard, as well as a Russian surname.  amusing.  kinda.

ok. 3:03pm