This is a sick place. Literally. We bring the germs from all the corners of the world and my body just cannot cope with this germ-nursery. It was -5 degrees during the holidays at home, I was skiing for a week in France, and I felt completely fine there. Now that I am back to the comfortably numb and much warmer Netherlands, I get sick... I hope it will be over soon. I don't like feeling every single one of my bones.
I was planning to write about my new courses, the new unitmates, the joy of seeing people return from exchange, but I simply cannot do that until I share the news of the day with you. I got a phone call from Brown. I was sitting on the bus (I had to hand in my papers to the IB Groep - otherwise I would have slept all day) when my phone rang. Long, unknown number, starting with a different country code. Beautiful American accent on the other side. I must have only said "yes" and "lovely" and "ok", but I was so absolutely surprised by the call that nothing really meaningful came out of my mouth. I was offered an interview!!! Now, how swell is that? It means that they find me interesting. It's not a "yes", but it's a "hmm, we're curious, we want to meet you". People in the bus were staring at me because, as we would say at home, I was "smiling like a wild apple" (don't ask). I'll call the consulate about the visa tomorrow.
So, what was I about to talk about? New courses. I have to admit, the first class of statistics III was a pleasant surprise. The 2 instructors seem funny, helpful and generally interested in students. Cross-cultural psychology, on the other hand, has been a disappointment. We did a round of introductions and everybody was asked to tell why they had joined the course. I was completely honest and I said something like "I am not particularly interested in the cross-cultural aspect of psychology, but I hope you can sparkle my interest". Well, I'm sorry, but there is no way this guy will sparkle my interest in anything. You can't just read off things from slides or from sheets of paper! I'm sure he'll improve during the course, but by then I'll be totally de-inspired by him. The guy whom I do expect to be very inspiring is Simon, the creative writing teacher. He has a wonderful British accent, the kind that a lot of people had at AC. (Oh, I miss AC.) Dry, British, witty humour and honest statements ("it will be very painful for me to read your poetry"): I already like the guy. After just one class I realized how much I missed dealing with literature. And finally, there is neuroscience: spatial cognition. I'm looking forward to the course and to the field trip to the blinds' institute Spatial cognition is not what I'm most interested in, but it will be connected to other modalities, such as memory and language, and I like that.
So many people are back from exchange! Caro, Laurens, Nils, Lotte, Nicole... It's so lovely to see them all!
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Monday, 28 January 2008
The panorama piste from Risoul to les Florins
Take a camera, get on the mountain, start sliding and admire the view.
Risoul pictures
Risoul from somewhere on the slopes.
The other region: Vars.
Playing uno with the guys (after they had decided that I was too good to play against).
Drining gluhwein with Paul at the Platte de la Nonne.
"Off-piste" areas seen from the skilift in a not so off-piste state.
With David, my Junior Advisee, on the lift from les Florins.
Off-piste sign :)
Sunday, 27 January 2008
UC Skitrip 2008
How lovely it is to end the holidays and start my last semester with a bunch of UCers, skiing in the French Alps! I think this was the biggest UC skitrip ever; we filled 2 double deckers. Our destination was Risoul, at 1650-2750 metres, with 180 km of slopes, a real paradise for skiers. I haven't been skiing for really long, only 3 days last year, but before that I haven't had skis on for 4 years. So, this was my first real wintersports holiday since what it seems like ages.
7 days of skiing, wonderful weather, sunshine, nice company... I was in an apartment with Dávid, Paul and Jens. Since Paul was just starting snowboarding, I was mostly skiing around with Ayana, Dávid and/or Jens. On the fourth day, I met 3 Hungarian guys on the slopes. They were a funny bunch and I joined them for the day. Then, the day after, the first thing that happened in the morning was that I bumped into them again, so we conquered the slopes together. Next day, again, I met them at one of the skilifts, completely accidentally :) So, I'll send them the pictures I made and they will send me the pictures they have.
The evenings were fairly quiet. We arranged dinner and played cards and bluff poker in the apartment. The Yeti bar, which supposedly was the base of the group, didn't win my affection with its apres ski style Dutch music, so I didn't go there much. (The most exciting question in the first place is why the hell do the Dutch have to go to a place where they play Dutch music, have frikadel and stuff and are served in Dutch, once they are in France... One of the mysteries of the world.) So, I was in bed by 11-12 usually, and, apart from the night when the boys got drunk and absolutely annoying, I had a good rest.
We were really lucky with the weather. The sun was shining all week long, and it was warm enough for me not to become an ice sculpture. I was having hot chocolates and glühweins (vin chaud) on the warm terraces of the restaurants on the peaks of the mountains. Now my face is all tanned and dotted with freckles :) It's only funny because the rest of my body is comletely white.
Hmm, I love the sound of skis on the snow and the silence on the skilifts... There is also something really really calming in huge mountains. The fresh air, the view and the silence clear your mind. But I think this was enough, it was time to come home. Now I can start the next (last) semester completely relaxed...
7 days of skiing, wonderful weather, sunshine, nice company... I was in an apartment with Dávid, Paul and Jens. Since Paul was just starting snowboarding, I was mostly skiing around with Ayana, Dávid and/or Jens. On the fourth day, I met 3 Hungarian guys on the slopes. They were a funny bunch and I joined them for the day. Then, the day after, the first thing that happened in the morning was that I bumped into them again, so we conquered the slopes together. Next day, again, I met them at one of the skilifts, completely accidentally :) So, I'll send them the pictures I made and they will send me the pictures they have.
The evenings were fairly quiet. We arranged dinner and played cards and bluff poker in the apartment. The Yeti bar, which supposedly was the base of the group, didn't win my affection with its apres ski style Dutch music, so I didn't go there much. (The most exciting question in the first place is why the hell do the Dutch have to go to a place where they play Dutch music, have frikadel and stuff and are served in Dutch, once they are in France... One of the mysteries of the world.) So, I was in bed by 11-12 usually, and, apart from the night when the boys got drunk and absolutely annoying, I had a good rest.
We were really lucky with the weather. The sun was shining all week long, and it was warm enough for me not to become an ice sculpture. I was having hot chocolates and glühweins (vin chaud) on the warm terraces of the restaurants on the peaks of the mountains. Now my face is all tanned and dotted with freckles :) It's only funny because the rest of my body is comletely white.
Hmm, I love the sound of skis on the snow and the silence on the skilifts... There is also something really really calming in huge mountains. The fresh air, the view and the silence clear your mind. But I think this was enough, it was time to come home. Now I can start the next (last) semester completely relaxed...
Slovakia
These late updates... I haven't written for a long time, but I will try to make up for it, I promise. I wrote this note in December but never published it. Well, here you go. More to come about the break and the trip to France later.
Listening to my complaints of fatigue during the second half of the semester – and probably using them as a good excuse, because this would have happened anyway – my mother arranged a 3-day-long stay in the mountains of Slovakia. Beautiful place – it used to be. It had its charm even now, with its trees almost completely gone after a huge storm a couple of years ago. Imagine big, elegant mountains, rippled with spikes, partly covered in snow, and most of its forest gone. Where once stood old, tall pinetrees, now was a surface of soil patterned with the what functioned as reminders of the magesty of the forest: huge roots turned out from the earth, chunks of trees, sometimes neatly cut chunks, and sometimes chunks that showed that the former owner was painfully broken in half under the power of the wind and the weight of the other trees. Béla bácsi, being originally a forest engineer, explained that this kind of process takes place the way a line of dominos fall. Once the wind made the first trees fall on the top of the mountain, it doesn't stop till the bottom.
Seeing the death of a forest is one of those moments you start to think about the power of nature. Hungary is in a particularly lucky position in terms of natural catastrophies. We don't have hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis (would be hard without seas) or heavy earthcakes. We have a couple of large floods once in a while, but compared to other countries, we are really lucky in where we are situated. Other places are much more vulnerable. And we, the big, powerful, and allmighty humans, often cannot do a thing to stop what nature has decided to go through with. We are ants.
If you look carefully between the broken trees, you'll see a couple of small, living ones. Those will make the new forest, but that process will need at least 20 more years. So, I promised myself to go back in 20 or 30 years to see how nature regenerates and to see the forest the way my parents saw it when they were young. For them, this was the „West” when they could cross the borders of the country. Even I still remember the Deli chocolate that I got when my mother went to Slovakia when I was small. So, now we took the trouble to look for Deli chocolate bars, and found half a dozen types, including one containing taurin. Progression :) (Smart, isn't it? When studying, I need chocolate to munch on and Red Bull to stay awake, so this would be the perfect 2 in 1!)
Anyway, I was going through an old family photo album from the time when my mother and father used to be together and found some pictures which were taken at the places we went to. I wondered what kind of memories these places made my mother think of. I didn't ask. My mother and I don't talk much about the interesting questions of life. By the way, my mother loved wearing miniskirts when she was young.
Back to the topic, again, that place made me feel so, so tiny. Not necessarily in a bad way, but very tiny indeed. In 20 years, there will be a new forest there again. That's a third-fourth of my expected lifetime. What is that in terms of natural history? Nothing, truly nothing. Erasing a forest like that and recovering it is a routine task for the Earth. Erasing me would be nothing too. Here you are, with your smart mind, ready to solve everything, thinking about what to do with your life, who to love, and after all, it means hardly anything in the big equation. Life has to promote life, you'll make babies, you'll die, that's the order of life, and your only task for nature. How weird to think about this.
Listening to my complaints of fatigue during the second half of the semester – and probably using them as a good excuse, because this would have happened anyway – my mother arranged a 3-day-long stay in the mountains of Slovakia. Beautiful place – it used to be. It had its charm even now, with its trees almost completely gone after a huge storm a couple of years ago. Imagine big, elegant mountains, rippled with spikes, partly covered in snow, and most of its forest gone. Where once stood old, tall pinetrees, now was a surface of soil patterned with the what functioned as reminders of the magesty of the forest: huge roots turned out from the earth, chunks of trees, sometimes neatly cut chunks, and sometimes chunks that showed that the former owner was painfully broken in half under the power of the wind and the weight of the other trees. Béla bácsi, being originally a forest engineer, explained that this kind of process takes place the way a line of dominos fall. Once the wind made the first trees fall on the top of the mountain, it doesn't stop till the bottom.
Seeing the death of a forest is one of those moments you start to think about the power of nature. Hungary is in a particularly lucky position in terms of natural catastrophies. We don't have hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis (would be hard without seas) or heavy earthcakes. We have a couple of large floods once in a while, but compared to other countries, we are really lucky in where we are situated. Other places are much more vulnerable. And we, the big, powerful, and allmighty humans, often cannot do a thing to stop what nature has decided to go through with. We are ants.
If you look carefully between the broken trees, you'll see a couple of small, living ones. Those will make the new forest, but that process will need at least 20 more years. So, I promised myself to go back in 20 or 30 years to see how nature regenerates and to see the forest the way my parents saw it when they were young. For them, this was the „West” when they could cross the borders of the country. Even I still remember the Deli chocolate that I got when my mother went to Slovakia when I was small. So, now we took the trouble to look for Deli chocolate bars, and found half a dozen types, including one containing taurin. Progression :) (Smart, isn't it? When studying, I need chocolate to munch on and Red Bull to stay awake, so this would be the perfect 2 in 1!)
Anyway, I was going through an old family photo album from the time when my mother and father used to be together and found some pictures which were taken at the places we went to. I wondered what kind of memories these places made my mother think of. I didn't ask. My mother and I don't talk much about the interesting questions of life. By the way, my mother loved wearing miniskirts when she was young.
Back to the topic, again, that place made me feel so, so tiny. Not necessarily in a bad way, but very tiny indeed. In 20 years, there will be a new forest there again. That's a third-fourth of my expected lifetime. What is that in terms of natural history? Nothing, truly nothing. Erasing a forest like that and recovering it is a routine task for the Earth. Erasing me would be nothing too. Here you are, with your smart mind, ready to solve everything, thinking about what to do with your life, who to love, and after all, it means hardly anything in the big equation. Life has to promote life, you'll make babies, you'll die, that's the order of life, and your only task for nature. How weird to think about this.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
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