Receptacle for emotions

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape... Pablo Picasso

The days are rather gray here and they have been for a while. I guess the daily hours of sunshine that I shared earlier were in earnest. We don't get many glimpses of the sun and days shift from dark to gray to darkness once again. It feels cozy and exotic to be surrounded by darkness -- four o'clock in the afternoon feeling no different than three in the morning. It's rather disorienting to loose your grasp on time, and I suspect it is nearly a year-round phenomenon in northern places where summers are also affected by copious amounts of daylight. Everything in its own balance, I suppose. At the moment, the lingering darkness provides the perfect repose for cups of tea, introspection and creativity. I guess that Picasso had it right; our emotions and artistry often do fall out of the air around us.

Return to RO mania

I spent last weekend traipsing around my old digs in Romania with old familiar friends. It was completely lovely and it was completely crazy. I had forgotten about the fascinating character of Romania and the peculiarities of big industrial cities like Craiova.


I spent an entire academic year in Romania last year as a Fulbright grantee teaching English (and the like) at two universities: the University of Craiova in the southwestern geographical region of Romania called Wallachia and the University of Transylvania in the central mountainous area around Brasov. Stepping back into the city felt almost like stepping back in time; as I wandered around the city once again and met with familiar and friendly faces, I felt somehow as if I never left. A strange feeling considering I left Craiova last February.

Over a couple of Silvas at a local pub, my friends and I once again reconsidered Romania. As relative outsiders (as Americans, Spaniards, and French) and insiders who had recently spent time abroad (in England, Scotland, France, and the U.S.), we pondered the marketing of Romania to the outside world. What do people know of this place? What should they know? How is it presented? How should it be?

What do people know of this place?
We agreed that people are generally aware of only a few facets of Romania, some of them closer to the truth than others. There are the well-known persons and features such as the famous gymnast Natali Comeneci and the coach Bela Karolyi. There's Vlad Tepes or Dracula and the legends he inspired. The name of Ceausescu rings a dark bell to most outsiders as well. And then there are the images presented by the press about abject poverty, the large number of gypsies living in Romania, and abandoned children living in horrible orphanages. I, for one, have seen two documentaries on Romania in the news since arriving in Estonia. Perhaps the world is taking note or investigating what this place really is about as Romania plans their ascension to the EU. These residual pictures the world retains about Romania are, in a global sense, none too positive.

What should they know?
In my opinion, the world should also be aware that Romania's history has deeply affected what it is today and to understand anything of the contemporary environment, one has to delve a bit deeper into what it was and has been in the past. (This is no less true of any other place or people really, I guess). There are undoubtedly current issues and serious problems with employment, sanitation, education, health care, corruption, and child welfare. They are not so hidden -- you can see them easily when you visit or live there. More difficult than identifying them is understanding why they exist and are perpetuated; I am not sure that I do.

However, there is also a kind of joyous embracing of life, the good and bad, that can be infectious. On my visit, I was struck by laughter and loud, excited talk in the streets, markets, and bars. People are passionate and open about their perspectives -- much in contrast to the Nordic stoicism of Estonia! There is also a kind of unbridled reaction to life that can be contemplative (if a little fatalistic) and rendered into a creative or artistic look at life. At least this was true amongst many of the Romanians I came to know well while I was there.



The landscape varies considerably and the contrast amongst regions is considerable. The breath-taking mountains of other parts of the country are hardly at all like the flat, fertile plains around Craiova. Industry with all of its ugly concrete and smoke towers abuts wide open spaces just as modern technology is often juxtaposed with crumbling building facades and the use of old-fashioned horse-drawn buggies.

How is it presented? How should it be?
After spending some time in Romania and recently returning, I think that it is often presented pretty accurately to the outside, but it is not presented completely. There are rough edges in the country -- some of them are quite unpleasant and some of them are downright frightening. However, there is also life and there is also beauty. Last year, while I was traveling in Slovenia over the holidays, I saw an advertising campaign poster plastered to the back end of a bus that read "Romania. Land of Contrasts." I don't think that I could capture it any better and I am thankful that I returned once again to be reminded of some of its more colorful aspects.

Good friendships anywhere are amazing and I was comforted by visits with former students, colleagues, and friends over the three days I was in Craiova. I love it when you can renew a friendship by picking up where you left off. Wonderful conversations and fellowship warmed my heart and made me wish I could transport all of those lovely people back to Tartu with me. Long conversations on train rides or over coffee, trips to my favorite gypsy market, games of monopoly, chilling out at a jazz concert, enjoying a lovely meal or cartofi praziti, and catching up skew my vision of Romania in a positive direction. I have posted below a web album containing a few pictures from my recent stay so that you, too, can enjoy the contrasts.

Return to RO mania

A red toenail tribute

A time to keep silence... My blog has been pretty quiet lately. I guess that is because I, too, have been feeling a little bit quiet these late autumn days. The gray days here in Tartu are perfect for quiet reflection and even a bit of brooding, and I guess I have had a few things on my heart that weren't ready for sharing quite yet.

A time to speak... Tonight I did a major house cleaning and later showered and painted my toenails bright red. They are really bright and shiny and actually kind of pretty. I don't usually prefer red polish or even wear it during the winter, but I painted them in a tribute to a very special woman, my grandmother who peacefully passed away two weeks ago today.

A time to mourn... You would think that it would be quite easy to say goodbye to someone who hasn't around for a while. My grandmother was in the nursing home after suffering from one or more strokes a few years ago. On my visits to see her over the past four years, she hasn't usually recognized me or often times even herself. Pleasant enough I suppose, her existence was a strange one of living amongst other equally disoriented elderly people. Knowing that her time finally came and she left us gently to find peace is very comforting to me.

A time to weep and a time to laugh... I take this night and this time to remember a woman who was a true lady and, at the same time, begin to let her go. My grandmother, whom I often called "Grandma Casper" to distinguish her from my other grandmother by using the place where she lived was colorful, distinctive, and dignified woman. Here are a few memories of those things that made her special:

• In the fashion of her times, my grandmother had two first names rather than a first and middle. Although spelled with a space between them, her name was Mary Ellen and never just Mary or simply Ellen.
• She loved ice cream, sweets, and popcorn, and, much to my delight as a child, she always had a candy dish full of hard candy (the best ones were butterscotches) in her living room when we visited.
• For most of my childhood, my grandmother lived in a big, old house two and a half hours south of my hometown. My brother and I spent a week visiting every summer, and we spent hours sorting through an old wooden toy box on the porch and discovering toys my mom and uncle had when they were kids (a seeming impossibility at the time -- how could such grownups have once been little? ). The basement was stuffed with boxes and discoveries just waiting to be made. We made trains out of boxes and spent afternoons navigating the backyard with them.
• When I was a little bit older, I would get up early to go walking at the mall in Casper with my grandma. After morning exercise, we treated ourselves to cinnamon raisin biscuits dripping with frosting at Hardee's.
• She had a signature dish that she fixed for my mom, homemade chicken and noodles. The aroma filled the whole house and it was the yummiest part of a visit. She also had these special multi-colored dishes in that house that we always ate on. I loved them because everyone got a different colored plate.
• For the holidays, she always made a kind of pistachio salad with whipped cream and maraschino cherries. She liked to make celebrations special in some way and often brought small, seasonally-shaped chocolates that she propped up beside each dinner place setting.
• She was a competitive and quick-witted Scrabble fiend. She always played for points, and I can remember serious games being played after dinner on our visits.
• Grandma Casper wore her hair backcombed with a little curl in the front and went to the "beauty shop" to have her hair done once a week. She maintained it carefully between visits by wrapping her hair and tucking it into a hairnet at night. In my memories, she also wears blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick. As a girl, I remember getting my own hairnet to wear to bed so that I could be like my grandma.
• Her cars were always Buicks and, before driven, they had to be to be shiny and clean.
• She was a loyal Wyomingite and UW Cowboy football fan. We traveled to California twice to watch the Cowboys lose the Holiday Bowl -- the entire family decked out in matching brown and gold!
• Every summer, she made the best strawberry preserves that I can ever remember eating. When visiting, we ate them on toast at breakfast time while Grandma did the crossword from the newspaper.
• More than these particulars, I remember my grandmother as a lady who may have seemed fussy at times but had a lot of dignity. One of her signature features was her long, beautifully painted fingernails and her toes which were always, always painted a bright and brilliant red.

A time to dance... Thinking about my grandmother as she was when she was still a lady is much better than contemplating some of her final and rather incoherent days. I am happy to know she is now in peace and I am glad I have so many fine memories of who she was. Looking at my red toenails peaking over the top of my laptop as I sit here, makes me smile and dance in celebration of who she was. So, I post this red toenailed tribute in honor of my grandmother, knowing that she is still with me and hoping that she watches on with a smile and brightly colored toes.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-

First Ski

I did it! I skied. Today, I joined the ski club here in Tartu for my first training. Since there was enough white stuff on the ground, we put on the skis and went outside.

WOO-HOO!

It was so much fun. Not much instruction, but perhaps it is a a sink-or-ski, natural sort of teaching method. I was given some skis, some poles, some shoes, led outside to the snow, and let loose. After an hour and half of training, I felt like I was beginning to get it... more practice is needed, of course, but it was a good start. The group seems nice and moderately athletic (I think I can fit in without feeling too awkward as soon as I get the hang of it). I am feeling excited about it and more and more Nordic already. Good ski pointers and tips for beginners are welcome, if you have them!

As an English teacher you need to be practically perfect, eh?

Perfection is over-rated, even for English teachers.

Some readers of this blog really absorb each and every word that I write, hanging onto every word, analysing every sentence, noticing misusages, comma splices, and the horribly offensive typos that creep into my writing once in a while. It has been noted that occasionally (or perhaps frequently, depending on your perspective) my postings include some infelicities. I once misspelled waist as waste (!), I've been known to replace they're with their (!!), in the last posting I spelled teachers without the "r" (!!!). You can stop reading now if you've found this news difficult to swallow and are too shocked to continue. You may consider discontinuing your readership of this blog! For the brave, my confession continues...

Shame on me! ... and I call myself an English teacher! You could fault my training. You could blame me for being inattentive to language or just downright deft. You could also just call me human. I get so excited to have a free minute in which to share a thought or two that sometimes I get distracted by the message. I don't always painstakingly proofread my postings as I might for a handout or an article. My friends and family know that I sometimes write with my "hair on fire" and stream-of-conscious is a bit more natural to me in a blog than other forms of writing. After all, a blog is literally a web log or type of journal for jotting down observations and notes, right? Not that I don't care about spelling and correct usage, but everyone needs a place to let their hair down, right? (Yes, there is a pronoun agreement problem in the last sentence, but I am fairly unconcerned.) I know that my friends and family will forgive me and not let it shed bad light upon my character. We all need a little bit of grace.

Someone recently pointed out some language-related issues in my blogging. The comment was as follows:

"As an English teacher you need to be practically perfect, eh?"

I beg to differ. I know how to analyze my audience and having a typo or two probably does not interrupt the message or offend the readership of this blog ostensibly. Secondly, I never aim to present myself as a perfect language user to my students. I do like language. I do like grammar. However, my goal as a teacher is not to present myself as something that I am not. I make mistakes sometimes. All language users -- in writing and speech -- sometimes do. Almost all human beings do at some point or another. It's okay. The interesting part of being a language teacher is presenting language and everything that it is, including a few infelicities, in such a way that students can access and become more aware about how it works. It is a brilliantly challenging job. As many of you know, my work pervades my outside life and a day rarely passes that I don't tuck something away for my students or future language work. Any language is complex, even English.

It is fascinating that this antiquated notion of the flawless English grammarian continues to be a persuasive model for what language teachers do and the kind of character they have. Language is not a thing to be captured and molded; rather language is a tool molded by its users for a purpose, generally communication. Rules and regulations about right and wrong (even if they are petty typos or spelling errors) fall short of explaining the reasons of why language evolves and operates as it does.

That said, my purpose for making this posting is to invite those of you who have issues with my language use to consider whether or not you have understood the message. Make a joke about my errors (I do!). Enjoy them! Use them as an affirmation that your mistakes are a common part of the human condition. Before you seek to chastise me with comments or give me advice on editing, please remind yourself that blogging is for fun. I have taken off my professional hat in this setting. I do far too much professional and academic writing during the day to be worried about being reprimanded for a missing letter in a word that you understood correctly the first time anyway.

Thank you for listening to my diatribe; I hope that I have not steered you in the wrong linguistic direction with any errors as I have not followed the advice of carefully proofing this message. After all, I guess if I misspell one word for every thousand or so here, I consider that to be a pretty good ratio of accuracy to mistake!

**This message was approved by Jennifer Uhler, occasional bad speller despite the fact her mother made her write her mistakes in her spelling words 100 times when she was a child and even though she is now an English language teacher. The reader should be warned that I did not save this as a draft or read it slowly word-by-word to find typos and missing words.

beyond the weather

Now that I have warmed up with a short discussion of the weather, I suppose that a few updates are in order. I feel as if a million things have passed in the last weeks and I haven't had time to share. Here are some new developments (beyond the weather) in Tartu:

English teachers are cool. They really are. Perhaps teachers are cool in general, but I can't speak from that perspective as accurately. This weekend, I attended a conference for the Estonian Association of Teachers of English (EATE) and met many language teachers from the area. There were some good speakers at the conference, many of them from abroad, but the real highlight was meeting participants. I have felt a little bit professionally isolated since my arrival, especially since I am sponsored by and situated within an administrative university unit rather than a faculty. Having conversations about teaching and language was just the confirmation and energy boost I needed about my vocation. Woo-hoo!!!

I've joined a cross-country skiing training group at the ski club here in Tartu. The group is for adult beginners and meets twice a week to exercise. Last year, several members of this beginning group later participated in the Tartu Maraton in mid-February. Estonia is famous for its skiers and has had several Olympic medalists in skiing events in 2006 -- No small feat for a country of 1.3 million people! I don't have any Olympic ambitions (ha, ha, ha) but it does seem to be a great way to enjoy a country that has such a long winter and great skiing places. The Estonian winter paradise is just south of Tartu in Otepaa. My training at this point includes exercises and running, but I am waiting for a bit more snow so we can really practice! I'll keep you posted on my progress...

A couple of international students from the university came over to my apartment this last week to do some baking for an international food fair in the student dormitory. I have an oven, and one of the Americans wanted to make snickerdoodle cookies. It was fun to have the company over and filling my apartment with the lovely scents of baking. However, they also brought with them some Kefir, a sour yogurt-like milk product common here. The Lithuanian student brought it to use as a cream substitute in one of the recipes. The kefir got left behind in my refrigerator. As I don't have any real affinity for drinking milk, I thought I would never consume it. However, I have become a huge fan of this thick drink and find myself enjoying a small glass almost every day. Opening the refrigerator the other night, I even experimented with a variation of mixing kefir together with Vana Tallinn, the rum-like liquor that is made here (absolutely delicious!). I guess you never know what you might like until you try it out.

Today is the closing concert of the Tartu Organ Music Days here. Although I would have rather attended a concert in one of the churches, I have tickets to the gala concert this afternoon. Promises to be really nice... I'll keep you posted!

Weather can be lumi-nating

Living abroad makes you an expert in discussing, in detail and repeatedly, the small things in life. Striking up conversations with strangers and acquaintances can only be done with some artful small talk. I don't know that my proficiency at initiating small talk might be rated as eloquent, but I certainly get some brownie points for frequent practice.

Of course, my favorite topic (and I think that I am not alone in this!) for these chance encounters and initial meetings is the weather. I can elongate a simple comment about rain, snow, wind, sun for a good chunk of time. After all, even my family enjoys this kind of banter. My grandmother used to write me about the weather in her letters (and I refer to a lengthy paragraph or two, not a single sentence). When I talk to my father on the phone, we spend the initial minutes (or sometimes the entire conversation!) discussing temperatures, forecasts, and such.

I begin most of my classes with some sort of commentary on the weather. My students, in tune with the predisposition of English speakers to talk about the weather as a form of "meaningless" small talk, don't always understand it or willingly participate. However, I am genuinely interested in the conversation, even if I have already had the same exchange several times in the day. I find it comforting and a good way to warm up to my audience. After all, there is nothing threatening about a short weather-related exchange. The banter is predictable and patterned, but I am not patronizing my students or new acquaintances with meaningless chatter. Perhaps it is a bit strange, but I enjoy these conversations and find them genuinely interesting... And why not when the weather can be so fascinating?

Last week, I wrote you about the sunshine and fall colors. In the last seven days the world has shifted. November came and it didn't rain. Rather, I awoke to our our first skiff of snow on Thursday morning. Chilly temperatures aside, I am quite taken with the icicles and frosty feel of everything. With the darker days and time change, it just feels right. The Estonian word for snow is "lumi." An appropriate name for something that lights up its surroundings, I think. Click below to get a feeling for the changes outside my window as lumi sadab or snow falls!

Snowy November Window