Well, things are certainly speeding up now that the weather is good and we've had some time to feel out our travel buddies and plans. As always there's much to tell. I'll update a bit and make another more detailed post when i have time (when i go back to boring america). I'll explain my encounter with the Polish medical system in this post.
I got my friend Anna to take me to the doctor way back when my leg was infected. I was really dreading it, but actually with anna's help it was no worse than a trip to urgent care back home, with one exception. I went to the international student office to ask their recommendation where I could go and Ursula made a few calls and told me I could go to a place at 2pm when the doctor would be available and that somebody from the office could go with me. So I came back later and a nice young lady from the office went with me. The inside of the building looked really communist. Very institutional, old, bad colors, weird lighting. I don't really know how to describe it. We found the reception and they had us wait a while. Eventually somebody who worked there walked by and started talking to my interpreter friend for nearly 10 minutes. Then she turned to me and said "sorry, you will have to come back tomorrow before 12 to see the doctor." I was pondering how the hell so many words can be summarized so tersely.
The next day anna came with me. I didn't wanna fuck around so I whipped out my US passport to the receptionist the first chance I got. Apparently it helped because later anna told me it was much easier for me to see the doctor than she had ever seen. I walked up a lot of stairs and waited around in the hallway for 15 minutes to see the doctor. I took off my pants, she poked my wound asked two questions (through anna, which was a little awkward) as a nurse bandaged it then sat down to write a lot of things. It turns out that she gave me 4 prescriptions with some rather cryptic dosage instructions and told me to come back in a week. At the pharmacy down stairs I got 2 antibiotic pills and two ointments. They were just in a box like an OTC, and the pharmacist (after my request) wrote on the box with a pen a '1 x 2' or '1 x 3' apparently indicating the dose, but it still didn't seem so obvious if it meant 1 pill twice per day or once per day you take 2 pills. It turned out I had to take 1 pill every 12 hours, another pill every 24 hours, put on one cream in the morning and afternoon, and a different ointment every night. The night ointment was awful. I'm pretty sure it was a tube of tar. Four fucking medicines seemed a bit much. Back home I would have received one prescription I'm pretty sure. A few weeks later when i managed to get some internet access, I checked to see what the prescriptions were. One of the creams isn't approved for use in the US because it is essentially useless (resistance). Polish people are generally hypochondriacs and ask for a lot of medicines fairly often.
The next week on my appointment I took off my pants again and she looked at it and wrote me another prescription for one of the same pills and told me to come back again in 10 days. Goddammit! I was greatly improved and I didn't think i needed more antibiotics but it's important so i played along. The pills had given me some harsh diarrhea. After a few more days I got a horrible sore throat and my tongue turned black. It was a great pain to swallow. I was pretty scared, but then i vaguely remembered from microbiology class that 'hairy black tongue' was a side effect or long term antibiotic use. I was pretty angry. My leg seemed fine and it was really hell to live with this throat problem so i quit taking the pills and didn't go back to the doctor for my next appointment. After shitting hot snakes for about 3 weeks (NOT FUN) my bowels finally sorted themselves out and now I feel better than ever (except when I'm hung over).
The whole shebang cost about 60 bucks and i think i will get reimbursed if i ever make the time to do the paperwork, so I'm not so much worse for the wear.
Maybe I can talk about my how i resolved my computer problem in the next post...or maybe how I lost my dorm deposit, that's a good story.
One last bit of what I've been up to, I went to Prague and Slovenia for 10 days. It was such a great trip. I was really surprised by how amazing Slovenia is. It helped that I had a super cool guide to introduce me to her family and friends. Then i took a road trip to Budapest with a few friends the next weekend. Unfortunately i broke my second camera in Budapest somehow. I still have some photos, but I've got a backlog on my flickr site. I just uploaded some pics from home base, Wroclaw. I gotta run now, I'm heading for that body of water between Finland and USSR. peace
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
It’s time for another bitchy post
Due to my internet issues this post is a few weeks old but was never published until now! There have been updates, especially to the part about the shit weather and my medical problems. Life has improved immensely since this post so don't feel sorry for me!
I swear Murphy’s Law is so much more intense in Poland than anywhere else in the world. Everything goes wrong, every day, all the time. Take a simple thing like going to class for example. My dormitory is not in a bad location, but not a particularly good one. There is no university campus, only buildings scattered about that you have courses in. Naturally, all of my courses are in bum fuck Egypt. It’s called Koszarowa (for the street), and it’s a former Red army camp in a really far away useless place. They must have chosen to rent these building because it was cheap. Furthermore, the university doesn’t have shuttles there, instead we use the public transport system. Ninety percent of the buses are noisy, rattling, shaky metal shit boxes. Only two per hour go from near my dorm to Koszarowa. It is always crowded and I often have to stand on the 30 minute trip. I had no idea which stop to get off at the first few times I went and got lost. I got off at the right stop and walked the wrong way, or I got off at the wrong stop. This is the middle of nowhere and there are no people in the street to ask. Sometimes the stop names aren’t labeled. Sometimes the stops are named differently on schedules posted in different locations. DAMMIT POLAND. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
The first time I go to find a class I go early because I anticipate getting lost. I end up walking around in a desolate place with warehouse looking buildings and a field. I find another bus stop and wait for it. Eventually and miraculously I do make it to Koszarowa only fifteen minutes late. I consult the three print-outs I had received a week earlier from the international student office, which showed the schedule of courses offered in English. One sheet has the addresses of each course and the room number and instructor. But it says only the institute that offers it and the street, Koszarowa 3. This one address includes at least five large buildings inside the walled compound. Another sheet only says that it is courses for master students (which are the courses we take because they are in English), but it doesn’t say what department or what address. I found out they are all in Koszarowa also. You don’t have to enroll in courses, you just need to show up. I choose the building I think my course is in and search long and hard for room 205. This is difficult because numbers are not in order Poland. It can go 207, 212, 237, 215, 240, 220. Nonsense. I find the room and sit down. There are 6-8 girls speaking Polish and then an instructor arrives late and begins speaking some Polish junk that I don’t understand. I approach and show my schedule, asking if this is the right course. She talks to one of the students and then the student tells me, “other building.” I start the room search again in the next building. When I arrive there are a few other international students waiting outside the door. The motherfucking teacher never even showed up for class. All my time and frustration just for nothing.
I came back for another course the next day. The story is almost the same. Then the next week one of the instructors still doesn’t show up so my friends and I get angry and start asking around. They go to the front desk and the receptionist makes a call. It turns out one of our courses had changed the time to one hour later, yet nobody was informed. There is no fucking effort to communicate a goddamn thing in this place.
My roommate is the only foreign student studying physics in this university of 50+ thousand students. In the first two weeks of classes he has shown up for courses but the instructors never have. Naturally he gets a bit frustrated. He sent me the following text last week: “Mother fuckin poles. I had to wait two hours in between the lessons and nobody showed up. We r not gonna learn or study anything in this country.”
He is the only student in several of his classes, but he said it will be like an independent study.
Also, there is a policy that there must be at least five students in a course or it will be canceled. Because there is no enrollment process you have to wait a few weeks (we only have each course one day per week) to see how many people decide to attend for the semester before you even know if the course will take place. One of my instructors had to travel the second and fourth weeks of classes. We only had three people attend for the first and third week, so we will not decide if the course is to be canceled until the fifth week, but it looks probable. By the sixth week it is obviously too late to join another course to pick up the credits we need. What the hell are we supposed to do? On one of the days my class was canceled I went to check out another class offered at the same time to ask if maybe I could still join. Guess what? I show up at the time and place on the time schedule and there was a class going on in the room. I didn’t want to interrupt to ask what was going on, so I sulked home. I’m guessing they changed the time and/or location of that course also, without telling anybody. Typical Polish communication block.
Also, instructors tell us we can find the syllabus on the school website, which is in all Polish. One instructor told us he left a book on reserve in the library that we needed to photocopy a chapter from (they have 15 books in English). The library did not have the book. Another professor gives us handouts in class but never has enough for every student. GODDAMMIT POLAND.
Aside from this though, all of my Professors are incredibly smart, well-read, and give good lectures. They just exhibit Polish behaviors sometimes. I’ll elaborate a bit on how great the courses later, but this is a post for complaining not commending.
I waste 45 minutes each way to go to a class. That is equal to the time I spend in class. On Wednesday I have a course at 10 then another at 2, then my language course in the city center (far away) at 5pm. So my day goes like this: 9am drag my dead ass out of bed to drink a cheap energy drink and go to the bus stop for the 10am course, kill a few hours between classes, enjoy another good lecture, travel back to my dorm for a 30 minute stopover to make a sandwich, then on to language course, return home by 7 to fix dinner and then drink away my wasted life. Typical Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday I only have one course so there is more time for cooking and drinking.
When we arrived we took a two week intensive Polish language course. Then they told us to meet on a certain day to take a placement test. We were all beginners and we know we need to take the beginning Polish course but still they told us to take the test. We went for the test and it was suuuper fuckin hard. It was for all people who were studying Polish. All of the beginners just looked at it and walked out except for one of my friends and me. The test administrator told us that if we couldn’t understand anything then we could go to room 25. I still took the test. It had some multiple choice along with the fill in the blank, listening section, and essay. Naturally, I finished quickly and went to room 25. They told me to go to the class with the native English speakers. There were about 20 in the class and most of them were friends of mine. I knew I could never learn a thing in this large group of friends. We just goof off, and a language course with more than 10 people is really bad. The next day I went to the office and asked to switch to another section. It was difficult to make them understand why I wanted to and they told me to wait two weeks and come back again to ask because the courses may have people drop out. I knew this was bullshit and I just left feeling defeated once again. The next week they posted the groups of the people who had taken the exam. I was in a different and smaller group than my friends. Hooray! They returned our test to us in the class. I got 24 out of 140. YEAAHHHH!!! The other students were a very strange mix. They were 2 older Spanish guys who I think have lived here for a while, a couple Indians who have lived here for 2 years, a German guy who has lived here for a while, a couple Chinese students who were here last semester, and an Indian girl who I want to punch. I want to punch her because she is a know-it-all who tries to answer every question. Also, she promptly corrects other students, and sometimes will answer questions directed to the teacher. But the class is really a good for me. It’s really challenging. After the first course though, our teacher had to travel for a week and a half (3 class periods!). We combined with another class. Shit, another huge class. I don’t get much attention and I’m totally lost, but I’m not about to be the asshole who slows it down for the whole group of 25.
So that’s the school problems.
And the weather is always shit here. I’ve never lived in a place where the weather was so consistently horrible for 3 months. There is an expression here that translates to something like (excuse the horrible translation) “March weather is a pot,” meaning that all different weather is thrown in and you never know what you will get. Today for example (Tuesday), there was sun in the morning (but very briefly), then hail, rain, sun (for a few minutes), then blizzard like conditions for half an hour, then cold cold wind. This is not an exaggeration. It cycles through EVERY type of weather in a very short period of time some days.
I think I have a staph infection in my leg. It’s killing me, really painful. I am so intimidated by the process of trying to find a Polish doctor. It will take a really long time, be really frustrating, and no English will be spoken. I’ve been trying to do a lot of favors for my Polish friend lately so she will help me out. I helped her move, I keep her supplied with chocolate and I’ve been teaching her loads of American idioms. She says she can go with me Friday, if I survive until then. First though, I need to print off my insurance card, but I have no printer and I just experienced a jump drive meltdown. DAMMIT. All the stress here has forced me to drink and swear like British sailor. I joke about these things with my English friend Emma, who has as much difficulty as me here. My personal favorite joke is (Background for the joke: Germans have a reputation for being super organized even to the point that one of the first phrases people who study German learn translates as “there must be order/organization”) so I say “I totally understand why the Germans wanted to take over Poland. All this chaos on their doorstep must really irritate them. Actually I wish the Germans would take it again so I could get some things accomplished.”
Like I said, Murphy’s law is the only thing I can count on in Poland. I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning because I don’t want to know what will happen next. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I really do enjoy it immensely here, but it can be so challenging.
I swear Murphy’s Law is so much more intense in Poland than anywhere else in the world. Everything goes wrong, every day, all the time. Take a simple thing like going to class for example. My dormitory is not in a bad location, but not a particularly good one. There is no university campus, only buildings scattered about that you have courses in. Naturally, all of my courses are in bum fuck Egypt. It’s called Koszarowa (for the street), and it’s a former Red army camp in a really far away useless place. They must have chosen to rent these building because it was cheap. Furthermore, the university doesn’t have shuttles there, instead we use the public transport system. Ninety percent of the buses are noisy, rattling, shaky metal shit boxes. Only two per hour go from near my dorm to Koszarowa. It is always crowded and I often have to stand on the 30 minute trip. I had no idea which stop to get off at the first few times I went and got lost. I got off at the right stop and walked the wrong way, or I got off at the wrong stop. This is the middle of nowhere and there are no people in the street to ask. Sometimes the stop names aren’t labeled. Sometimes the stops are named differently on schedules posted in different locations. DAMMIT POLAND. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
The first time I go to find a class I go early because I anticipate getting lost. I end up walking around in a desolate place with warehouse looking buildings and a field. I find another bus stop and wait for it. Eventually and miraculously I do make it to Koszarowa only fifteen minutes late. I consult the three print-outs I had received a week earlier from the international student office, which showed the schedule of courses offered in English. One sheet has the addresses of each course and the room number and instructor. But it says only the institute that offers it and the street, Koszarowa 3. This one address includes at least five large buildings inside the walled compound. Another sheet only says that it is courses for master students (which are the courses we take because they are in English), but it doesn’t say what department or what address. I found out they are all in Koszarowa also. You don’t have to enroll in courses, you just need to show up. I choose the building I think my course is in and search long and hard for room 205. This is difficult because numbers are not in order Poland. It can go 207, 212, 237, 215, 240, 220. Nonsense. I find the room and sit down. There are 6-8 girls speaking Polish and then an instructor arrives late and begins speaking some Polish junk that I don’t understand. I approach and show my schedule, asking if this is the right course. She talks to one of the students and then the student tells me, “other building.” I start the room search again in the next building. When I arrive there are a few other international students waiting outside the door. The motherfucking teacher never even showed up for class. All my time and frustration just for nothing.
I came back for another course the next day. The story is almost the same. Then the next week one of the instructors still doesn’t show up so my friends and I get angry and start asking around. They go to the front desk and the receptionist makes a call. It turns out one of our courses had changed the time to one hour later, yet nobody was informed. There is no fucking effort to communicate a goddamn thing in this place.
My roommate is the only foreign student studying physics in this university of 50+ thousand students. In the first two weeks of classes he has shown up for courses but the instructors never have. Naturally he gets a bit frustrated. He sent me the following text last week: “Mother fuckin poles. I had to wait two hours in between the lessons and nobody showed up. We r not gonna learn or study anything in this country.”
He is the only student in several of his classes, but he said it will be like an independent study.
Also, there is a policy that there must be at least five students in a course or it will be canceled. Because there is no enrollment process you have to wait a few weeks (we only have each course one day per week) to see how many people decide to attend for the semester before you even know if the course will take place. One of my instructors had to travel the second and fourth weeks of classes. We only had three people attend for the first and third week, so we will not decide if the course is to be canceled until the fifth week, but it looks probable. By the sixth week it is obviously too late to join another course to pick up the credits we need. What the hell are we supposed to do? On one of the days my class was canceled I went to check out another class offered at the same time to ask if maybe I could still join. Guess what? I show up at the time and place on the time schedule and there was a class going on in the room. I didn’t want to interrupt to ask what was going on, so I sulked home. I’m guessing they changed the time and/or location of that course also, without telling anybody. Typical Polish communication block.
Also, instructors tell us we can find the syllabus on the school website, which is in all Polish. One instructor told us he left a book on reserve in the library that we needed to photocopy a chapter from (they have 15 books in English). The library did not have the book. Another professor gives us handouts in class but never has enough for every student. GODDAMMIT POLAND.
Aside from this though, all of my Professors are incredibly smart, well-read, and give good lectures. They just exhibit Polish behaviors sometimes. I’ll elaborate a bit on how great the courses later, but this is a post for complaining not commending.
I waste 45 minutes each way to go to a class. That is equal to the time I spend in class. On Wednesday I have a course at 10 then another at 2, then my language course in the city center (far away) at 5pm. So my day goes like this: 9am drag my dead ass out of bed to drink a cheap energy drink and go to the bus stop for the 10am course, kill a few hours between classes, enjoy another good lecture, travel back to my dorm for a 30 minute stopover to make a sandwich, then on to language course, return home by 7 to fix dinner and then drink away my wasted life. Typical Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday I only have one course so there is more time for cooking and drinking.
When we arrived we took a two week intensive Polish language course. Then they told us to meet on a certain day to take a placement test. We were all beginners and we know we need to take the beginning Polish course but still they told us to take the test. We went for the test and it was suuuper fuckin hard. It was for all people who were studying Polish. All of the beginners just looked at it and walked out except for one of my friends and me. The test administrator told us that if we couldn’t understand anything then we could go to room 25. I still took the test. It had some multiple choice along with the fill in the blank, listening section, and essay. Naturally, I finished quickly and went to room 25. They told me to go to the class with the native English speakers. There were about 20 in the class and most of them were friends of mine. I knew I could never learn a thing in this large group of friends. We just goof off, and a language course with more than 10 people is really bad. The next day I went to the office and asked to switch to another section. It was difficult to make them understand why I wanted to and they told me to wait two weeks and come back again to ask because the courses may have people drop out. I knew this was bullshit and I just left feeling defeated once again. The next week they posted the groups of the people who had taken the exam. I was in a different and smaller group than my friends. Hooray! They returned our test to us in the class. I got 24 out of 140. YEAAHHHH!!! The other students were a very strange mix. They were 2 older Spanish guys who I think have lived here for a while, a couple Indians who have lived here for 2 years, a German guy who has lived here for a while, a couple Chinese students who were here last semester, and an Indian girl who I want to punch. I want to punch her because she is a know-it-all who tries to answer every question. Also, she promptly corrects other students, and sometimes will answer questions directed to the teacher. But the class is really a good for me. It’s really challenging. After the first course though, our teacher had to travel for a week and a half (3 class periods!). We combined with another class. Shit, another huge class. I don’t get much attention and I’m totally lost, but I’m not about to be the asshole who slows it down for the whole group of 25.
So that’s the school problems.
And the weather is always shit here. I’ve never lived in a place where the weather was so consistently horrible for 3 months. There is an expression here that translates to something like (excuse the horrible translation) “March weather is a pot,” meaning that all different weather is thrown in and you never know what you will get. Today for example (Tuesday), there was sun in the morning (but very briefly), then hail, rain, sun (for a few minutes), then blizzard like conditions for half an hour, then cold cold wind. This is not an exaggeration. It cycles through EVERY type of weather in a very short period of time some days.
I think I have a staph infection in my leg. It’s killing me, really painful. I am so intimidated by the process of trying to find a Polish doctor. It will take a really long time, be really frustrating, and no English will be spoken. I’ve been trying to do a lot of favors for my Polish friend lately so she will help me out. I helped her move, I keep her supplied with chocolate and I’ve been teaching her loads of American idioms. She says she can go with me Friday, if I survive until then. First though, I need to print off my insurance card, but I have no printer and I just experienced a jump drive meltdown. DAMMIT. All the stress here has forced me to drink and swear like British sailor. I joke about these things with my English friend Emma, who has as much difficulty as me here. My personal favorite joke is (Background for the joke: Germans have a reputation for being super organized even to the point that one of the first phrases people who study German learn translates as “there must be order/organization”) so I say “I totally understand why the Germans wanted to take over Poland. All this chaos on their doorstep must really irritate them. Actually I wish the Germans would take it again so I could get some things accomplished.”
Like I said, Murphy’s law is the only thing I can count on in Poland. I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning because I don’t want to know what will happen next. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I really do enjoy it immensely here, but it can be so challenging.
return from the black hole
I've got so much to tell since the last post. Firstly I must apologize for the long dead period, but I'm in Poland and these modern things such as Internet have been problematic for me here. But now I should have consistent Internet.
I've had complications of all sorts to tell about. The weather just got nice which absolutely transformed this city like nothing I've ever seen. It greatly improved my mood and optimism as well. Check back soon because I hope to catch up a bit before the Easter break. I've planned to go to Prague and then to Slovenia to my friend's home! yipee yayayayayayayayayaya!!!!!!!!!
I've had complications of all sorts to tell about. The weather just got nice which absolutely transformed this city like nothing I've ever seen. It greatly improved my mood and optimism as well. Check back soon because I hope to catch up a bit before the Easter break. I've planned to go to Prague and then to Slovenia to my friend's home! yipee yayayayayayayayayaya!!!!!!!!!
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