Author: Jess

there is a bank on my way to work that has a clock on the sign and the clock is incorrect. i’ve known this for about a year. there was a time for about 3 months of my life last year where none of my clocks lined up at all. my car clock was late by ten, my watch was off by 4 in whatever direction, my phone was fast by 2, etc. So i’d go to work at whatever time and hope to arrive around the time I needed to be there. I used this wrong bank clock I passed on the road as a guage for how late I would be and eventually learned that the time recorded on that clock is the time that I will clock in to work. One year later, it has yet to fail.

Debate camp was pretty rad. It had it’s emotional ups and downs for sure but I think the season is going to be great and the new recruits are going to fit in like cereal added to a box of cereal. Probably delicious.

I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night with Jarod. We went out to sushi around 5:30. Sushi is probably one of my favorite things to eat, even if I do have to prep it by myself a lot. Besides, 8 rolls of cucumber sushi with salad and fried rice is only 4.75. Hooray! It was great. And wasabi is the best thing to ever come out of Asia. Yum. The movie was really good too. I think I like it better than the original because the script has a little bit more of a deep impacting social message. Lol. It’s hard to say though. Also, I was terrified of Gene Wilder in the first movie and figured that given my preexisting feelings about Johnny Depp, he would probably be better at creating the concept of Willy Wonka as a child molester which is totally how Gene Wilder seemed to me. Johnny Depp was best. He was like a child molester that killed his victims. Terrifying. The movie was good though. Charlie Bucket was cute. I wish my last name were Bucket.

What’s the difference between a child molester and a serial killer? (The Bucket!)

i’m at debate camp all week, but I swear i haven’t fallen off the face of the planet. I have about 11 pages handwritten of entries that I wrote while in Poland and I’ve been meaning to add them to this blog, but I guess I just felt like I shouldn’t blog until that was all updated but I miss my journal a lot so here goes.

I’m not going to great britain. because i want to go to latin america or the middle east later to work and not here. basically. i just kind of realized that i care more about things that are not being an intern in the house of commons when i could do something that i actually really want to do like activism or whatever. lobbying. so there’s that decision that is new and pretty important. Ugh. I kinda feel weird about the decision because I really want to live in London for a few months but it’s probably a bad thing to do right now because I have no money.

I have to buy a new computer because the power adapter is out on this one and i”m tired of that happening so i’d rather just spend my money working toward a new computer. so i think i’m going to get an Ibook or a powerbook. hopefully a powerbook because they suck less and ican get the free ipod mini or the free 179 dollars off of an actual Ipod.

I stayed veg in poland with the exception of a few soups that had meat in them that i didn’t know about. that sucked because i had really dramatic stomach cramps the whole day after i ate the soup. the camp was really fucking awesome though. i’ll be able to write more about that when i update all of the stuff that i wrote when i was there.

i’m also a more psychotic vegetarian here, i think. but it’s hard to tell because i was pretty crazy when i left.

man, i’ve missed blogging. even if i did jsut take a week off.

This camp is pretty unstructured at least for the volunteers, so I think that it is sometimes bad for my depression because I spend so much time alone in my room and I have lots of bizarre fears like i was afraid I would run out of books to read which is odd cos I brought The Mayor of Casterbridge which is like 342 pp or so and figured it would be a drag to get through because it was written so long ago but I think I was so delighted to fall into English that I got a lot of reading done so I finished it today and am now 65 pages into Skinny legs and All. I suppose the odds of my finishing 3 books in my 9 days is pretty low. Especially given that Tuesday and Wendesday will be devilishly busy and this weekend I am aparently going to Warsaw. It may be a pretty likely possibility though even still. Meh. At the leat, I am about 4 days behind on journal catch-up so I will always have that to work on.

Where did I leave off? Wednesday. We took a trip to a bunch of places in the Swiety Krzyz (Holy Cross or pronounced like a bunch of consontants) region of Poland. We saw a monastery that was so cool. The building was over 700 years old. It was at least mildly strange to consider that the building was older than nay US building ever encountered before. Crazy.

I slept from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. on Sunday night and then woke up pretty homesick and sad and didn’t fall asleep again until close to 2 probably. I woke up tired at 8 for an 8:30 breakfast and went to bed at 9 because we weren’t needed until 4. At 1, the British boys woke me up and I went to lunch. Then, the three of us (Peter and George) sat outside an talked until about 4:30 when we finally were asked to talk with the kids. George taught me to play backgammon which is a pretty fucking fun game, it turns out. I think Joe’s chess set is a two-in-one with Backgammon so maybe I can teach him to love it, too.

The lesson was very intimidating. We had decided with Sigrite, who I usually refer to as only “the Austrian” or “Sigfried” an Josee from Canada that we should split them into two groups and then have them introduce themselves in English. By the introductions it would have seemed that they all spoke English pretty well. But later we learned that they are all pretty shy especially the girls. They’ve started to come around though which is good. They also decided on some topics to discuss later in the week.

I felt pretty unnecessary and depressed during dinner but it was good to finally get to know Pete and George. They had a live band called Zenon play a few songs on Monday night. Somehow, the Brits and I missed the set and showed up when they were signing autographs. We still got invited to the afterparty though. This was at probably 9 p.m. and the party was predicted to begin at 11:30. I read some of the Mayor of Casterbridge until 10 when they got me from my room to party.

This afterparty was out on the front lawn by a treehouse type thing with a bunch of picinic tables under a shelterhouse. I chatted about music with Tom who is Zenon’s bassist. It was rad. We talkeda bout good covers and all the boys got wasted on Tyskie (pronounced Tiss-ski but affectionately called Tit-ski). I eventually invited Tom up to y room to show him the joy that is Death Cab for Cutie, ANi Difranco, and The Shins.

Peter and George joined those of us who were outside when Tom and I got back. Zenon (lead singer) started doing impressions of the guy from Kajikstan on Ali g. We all made lots of jokes and had really kick ass talks. People started to file inside around 2:30 so Just James (pianist), Tom and I reminaed. James and I yelled about the IRaq war which is my least favorite part of being abroad: haing to defend actions of my country that I disagree with. James, apparently satisfied with my opinion said he was glad to finally meet an intelligent American. The night of chilling with native English speakers cheered me up greatly and I even woke up in a good mood on Tuesday.

Lessons were immediately following breakfast and lasted until 10 so at 11 the volunteers caught a bush to Kielce. I spent most of the time in Kielce with Josie. We found a place to use some internet at a cell phone store with a computer that had some Polish words on it. The fact is that we may have stolen this internet, but there was no english speaker to tell us how much we needed to pay. Oi. I bgouth a sweater because mine got left at home and then I bought this really pretty dress for 30 dollars. I plan on wearing it home to KCMo from Newark if not Krakow. The bus system in Kielce is beyond fucked up so we had to get another goddamned taxi from Kielce to Jodlowy Dwor. This one was divided among five so I only had to pay 10 dollars. Still though, it really breaks yr wallet when you pay 10x what you expected to pay.

saturday, i let myself sleep in because I was really jetlagged. I was supposed to go to the Salt Mines but I accidentally fell asleeep after deciding not to reset my alarm at like 8 and we were suposed to be in the Dizzy Daizy lobby at 9 so we could leave. I woke of my own accord at like 11 am and decided to piss away the day so I slept by myself until about 3 p.m. then I think I woke up a little angry at that point because I’d spent an entire day doing nothing but I felt really refreshed and finally adjusted to the time and couldn’t really hold that against myself.

I sat in the Bling Bling lobby for a few hours and some Americans came. One was a girl who was from a rich part of Seattle but was studying in new York or about to start law school there anyway. She was kind of a bitch. I mean, she probably meant well, but I”ve found that a lot of American travellerse are little spoiled kids who are used to blowing mom and dad’s money as lavishly as possible. It’s unfortunate, too, because this is the portrait of America that most foreigners see. She babbled on about her journey and suggested the best and worst things about the entire world while talking about how her clothes were being just thrown out now that her trip was close to done so she didn’t have to carry them back. Augh!! She was speaking with this boy John from Stanford born Seattle about this when I finally left to take a phone call from Joe.

Honestly, it was phone calls from Joe that really kept me sane in Krakow. I spent a lot of it pretty terrified and depressed but it wa good to have a familiar voice when there were no faces available. He left at 12 CST/7 Polish time so I returned to the lobby and talked to some new American arrivees.

The new people were Sukyeong from South Korea and Jeff from DC born OC. We talked about travel to Russia which Jeff had just completed, and then Daniel and Maja who go to school at ELON in NC but were originally from Costa Rica and Poland-Boston repsectively joined us. They had also just been to Russia. John from earlier came back and we decided to go eat with Petter, Pehr, Sara, and Kim from Sweden so all of us except Jeff went to this little restaurant by Club Prozak and ahd pizza and beers (I had cokes) from 9-12.

I’m convinced that British and Scandanavian people are some of my favorite non-Americans. They seem to be just very enjoyable to be around and good conversationalists. When we went out, we had wonderful talks or debates about how Swededn isn’t a very nationalist country and most people there consider themsleves European before Swedish which is pretty fucking rad.

It’s interesting to me because even though I consider myself a global citizen, it’s undeniably through the lens of being an American. We also debated health care which Maja was very much in favor of socializing in the US. I am too, but it was interesting to hear the view of the Swedes who I think simultaneously take their UHC for granted and find important flaws in it. I wish the conversation could’ve continued but it moved to the topic of lawsuits in the U.S. Dan and Maja thought that we should cap emotional damages but Joh and I Pointed out that a lot of the cases they cited were really hyped by the media. Tehir view on media is a little hypocritical I think because they say that American media fails to perform its job but simultaneously they take the media’s word on some issues (lawsuits) as fact. I was enjoying the debating becuse it’s so engrained in my blood but Dan started to get a little frustraed so we moved on to something else.

After dinner, John, Kim, Sukyeong and I made plans to meet everyone else at 9 a.m. to go to the Salt Mines an then we went to a disco. We tried to get in to Club Prozak but you had to be 21, I am 19 and Kim had no ID. We ended up at alittle underground club nearer to our hostel. This club also had the 21 rule but the guy at the front said it didn’t apply to girls and I convinced him that Kim didn’t need ID. The club played mostly American rap which I found helped to cure my homesickness by being both familiar and bad at the same time.

Sunday, we went to the Salt Mines which were amazing. I’m not kidding. They’re cooler than anything else I’ve seen here I think. The mines are naturally occurring rock salt that has been mined adn the miners have made really great sculptures in the leftover salt (or maybe it’s just salt they decided not to mine). They have statues of Copernicus, several Polish folk scenes, and a huge chapel that took 3 miners 65 years to finish. It’s phenomenal. I have lots of pictures of it even though a photo pass cost 10 zl.

After the mines, it was rainy and I had to take a train to Kielce and a cab (50 fucking dollars!) to the camp because the only bus timetables I’d found were wrong. Fuc k. I was really frustrated by the time I got out here and spent the whole cab ride saying Our fathers and opening praying to God. I said “God Bless You” to the driver when I got out. I meant “Than you for not killing me.” Ugh. That part of my day is the most afraid I’ve been in my life, I think.

i’ve had a good trip to poland so far. though parts have been extremely frustrating. the flight was pretty good. apparently polish people clap when a flight lands. i find this to be pretty ridiculous and lame. i hope that it is only a polish thing. i was pretty tired because i’d been flying for 10 hours when this happened for the first time and given that it wasn’t even that smooth of a landing or that comfortable of a flight, i did not find this clapping thing to be a good idea. we shouldn’t encourage poor pilotting. though he was a good pilot there was little or no turbulance that i was awake for.

my first experience with airline food was pretty cute. i requested a vegetarian meal and they pretty much just gave me random vegetables. like “well this wasn’t murdered i bet she’d put it in her mouth” so i ended up with baby carrots, baby potatoes, and steamed mixed veggie that included carrots. so a lot of carrots. luckily i think they’re pretty delicious when they are steamed and its not like anything had any flavor to it at all. there was also really delicious bread from chicago that i’d recommend to anyone.

customs in poland wasn’t bad at all but i suppose that it wouldn’t be. they just stamped my passport and then i had to wait about an hour for my luggage to come around but it was pleasing to see it round the conveyor belt for sure. i then had to take a bus out to the hostel in krakow. this part was a little frustrating because i wasn’t adjusted to seeing strictly polish on the signs and once you left the airport you were on your own as far as engish signage went. one woman tried to speak to me in polish and i was like “uh uh i don’t speak” and she said “oh.. london?” and i said “united states” and she said “tragedy?” and i was like “what?” and she was like “hours ago?” and i was like “oh yes, very sad” and had no idea what she was talking about. but later learned this much to my own shock. man. pray for the victims.

once i finally navigated the bus system i had a little bit of trouble getting to my hostel because the polish label streets on the buildings not with traditional signs. except one place and that was really confusing and lead to me taking a wrong turn and wandering around old town but that was alright and got me better oriented. i also realized at this point that if you’re lost and you ask a young person where you should be going they’ll help you a lot. there was this wonderful girl on the bus that helped me out a lot. god bless her. i love polish people a lot.

i arrived at my hostel at a little after 4 and was really frustrated and just wanted a nap and to stay inside for the next 3 weeks. unfortunately, they had messed up my reservation. so i waited for a little while and they found a place for me across old town. i was angry about that. so i went next door to check in because i was supposed to call mom at about 3 i thought and when i was explaining to her what had happened the guy there told me that i could have a room there. or a bed. with some people from texas and atlanta. awesome news! and this turned out to be the best thing to happen to my trip to poland so far.

i got all settled in and walked back to blingbling to tell them to cancel my spot at the other place for last night and then went and changed into pajamas where i realized that it’s a bad time to arrive as an american to a foreign country. there was a scottish guy that was kind of an ass and pretty much hated the whole country. but whatever. i love america and its so great i can’t even explain what’s so wonderful about it. it’s just the best there is, for sure. i hung out in the computer room/lounge and started talking to a boy from holland. we had a good conversation and then i was invited to dinner with him and two british girls and his friends.

by the time we were all changed and ready for dinner, there was quite a group of us. the two british girls, carena and sarah, the dutch boys tom, waldo, and chris, and thibault from paris and petteri from finway. we went to this italian place in old town and i figured out that poland is inferior to the us because of the quality of their spaghetti. we had a great time hanging out and getting to know each other. it was pretty much awesome. the british girls and i were talking about auschwitz and they said they were going today so i asked if i could tag along with them and they said that would be cool so we decided to meet at about 8 this morning to go out there. we finished off last night with a trip to the bars in old town. it’s kind of cool because its basically like a restaurant and you can just sit and have cokes or whatever but its a really relaxed atmosphere.

also, everything here is insanely cheap. it’s awesome. you can do anything for practically no money at all. the hostel is costing me like 99 zl which is about $30 for these two nights. it’s really rad.

i didn’t sleep so well last night. i was really jet lagged so my body thought that my 1am bedtime was actually me taking an evening nap so i woke up at like 4 am ready to go. hopefully that ends soon. i eventually got back to sleep at about 5:30 or so and when i woke upa t 7:30 i was really really exhausted. i could’ve slept for a least 300 more hours. at least. but instead i got up and went to meet the british girls for breakfast and then we started to head to auschwitz. we missed the first bus out there by a few minutes so we had to wait until 10:10 to take the next. when we got there at about 12, we missed the 12 o’clock tour by about 3 minutes so we had to wait until 1 o’clock but we kept ourselves entertained during that ammount of time.

auschwitz was a really interesting place. i have lots of pictures of my day there and it was just incredibly interesting to see where the holocaust actually happened. though it was also pretty surreal. it just didn’t feel like it had actually gone on. carena especially had a hard time accepting it. but you get to where you realized that it happened and you just stay in complete shock. it’s so eerie to be there. that’s the only word for it. just eerie. and its so freakish to think that people could otherize a group of people as much as the nazis did to the nongermans. it doesn’t even make sense.

we took the 6:42 bus out of auschwitz and went back to krakow getting in a little before eight. we met again for dinner at 9 and sarah and i went out to old town and ate at this little restaurant with polish food. they were out of pierogi’s though so i had to eat salmon but it was good and the protein was probably good for me. i smell of fish right now though and i hate that smell. oi.

tomorrow i’m going with a canadian who looks asian and a south korean to the salt mines. im going to try to find a girl to go with us.. maybe someone around in the lobby looking to go without set plans. backpacking is amazing. i wish i could just wander around europe like all of these kids are doing. it’s so much fun all of the people that i get to meet!

i’m pretty exciting to get on to kielce though. it will be nice to get settled into a routine and not feel like such a vagrant.

i leave for poland in about an hour and a half! whee!