Yesterday was something. I felt very much in the world with Krraka, who invited me over to make pizza together from scratch. We felt like carefree kids - squeezing the tomatoes in the grocery store, totally immersed in our quest for perfection; celebrating "tomorrow's diet" by purchasing 2 kohuke each, to eat on the walk home (I tried blueberry and orange for the first time); giggling about how awkward we feel and act with Estonians sometimes, who seem so much more composed than we are; standing elbow to elbow sipping our tea and staring at the oven, impatiently awaiting our final product; and finally trying "snuff," or snorting tobacco, which was horrible.
Then another friend and I headed over to a potato-pancake party, one purpose of which was to help our friend put a dent in the mountain of potatoes she currently possesses. She had spontaneously taken an opportunity to work outside for a day in exchange for 40 kg of potatoes! Somehow she used my bike to transport them all to her new dorm. And it just so happens that her building has a "potato room," a common storage space specifically for potatoes! (a fundamental part of general cuisine here)
We shared a nice half hour walk to her place, through a part of town we weren't familiar with. It was beautiful - old, colorful wooden houses, rustling leaves, tree-lined sidewalks, draping vines, quiet atmosphere. Tartu anew. We were so hungry that we opened the cookies before our potatoes were even shredded, declaring, "Our moms aren't here!" Then we realized we didn't have a corkscrew for the wine. When the neighbor didn't answer the door, we pulled a 'Raatuse' (original international dorm, where we all started out our first year) and let ourselves in, shocking a poor Estonian girl who was unaccustomed to both that behavior and foreigners in general. When she finally understood our dilemma, she instantly became focused and waved us into the kitchen behind her, as if we were all suddenly on a serious mission. She then joined us for pancakes and laughed loudly at our confessed perceptions and experiences of Tartu.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Poking with words
In a previous post I mentioned how some Estonians have informed me of their tendency to "complain," and that there is a joke that to be Estonian is to suffer. This always puzzled me because when I think of complaining, I think of someone actively and emotionally expressing their discontentment with something, in implicit contrast with expectations of how it should be, and usually in a self-centered manner. "Mannn I got a flat tire today while it was pouring rain and then my boss yelled at me for being late and to top it all off, I missed out on the free donuts!" I would be surprised to ever hear such a thing from an Estonian. Recent conversations have been more clarifying - "complaining" is not a good translation, at least regarding my own associations with the word. Someone suggested "nagging" but was not 100% satisfied with that either. It's definitely not self-centered, and it's also not necessarily discontentment - i.e. maybe there are no presumptions that things should be better. On the contrary, it seems more like passive commentary reflecting how they see life in general, and this commentary is a form of acceptance of the negative aspects. I remember telling one of the first Estonian guys I met (at a party after a few drinks of course), that he was poking me with words.
One example given was if someone were to say, "That's a nice sweater" to an Estonian, the latter would be inclined to criticize some aspect of the sweater (or complimenter) in response. An official travel website warned not to compliment them too much, because it makes them uncomfortable and suspicious. So also do words like "great," "amazing," "very" etc. These words are rarely used, because they see reality as rarely having such extreme qualities, and more importantly they take things literally. Estonians seem to err on the side of understatements, and "a bit" is a phrase I hear often (such as 'He vomited blood and then passed out from the fever, so he's a bit sick' -just kidding I am exaggerating there). If someone overstates or gives too many compliments, s/he starts sounding hypocritical in this context. I've also heard stories of some Estonians' travels to different countries like the U.S. or Italy, where they get tired of it after awhile because they don't understand why people they have just met would be so forward and friendly. When I try to tone myself down to be considerate, I often don't know how to express myself differently, and resort to an awkward silence (which happens to be more acceptable/common here than back home!). It surprises me sometimes how understanding something and practicing something move at different speeds. A similar case happened with biking laws - I bought a bike and was informed that cars have the right of way at crosswalks unless I am walking alongside the bike. I knew it in my head, but I still flew through two consecutive crosswalks out of habit. An old man even pulled over to get out of his van and yell at me in Russian.
Interpersonal interaction with Estonians was strange and uncomfortable at first, and felt much more different than that with countless other international students. It tends to unfold in negative terms, from the general to the more specific, away from closure, and is less frequently in mutual agreement. Body language/facial expression seems to be less corresponding or mirroring as well, but maybe this just seems so to me because I have a hard time reading theirs. Using negative terms doesn't necessarily mean that they feel negatively, though - in my experience it's often done in a mildly humorous way, if not cheerful. A funny example happened in the closing remarks of a getaway-like summer school, which was more like a retreat or camp than it was school. A foreign professor began expressing his gratitude for the whole event - the beautiful natural setting, the congenial and unpretentious crowd, the ideas presented and unique activities (like the smoke sauna!) we engaged in. He started thanking individuals associated with the organization. Someone else added the bus driver. Then an Estonian professor stated, "But not the cook," and everyone laughed. I think this "complaining" is connected to their value of modesty - they tend to describe reality in relatively modest terms.
One example given was if someone were to say, "That's a nice sweater" to an Estonian, the latter would be inclined to criticize some aspect of the sweater (or complimenter) in response. An official travel website warned not to compliment them too much, because it makes them uncomfortable and suspicious. So also do words like "great," "amazing," "very" etc. These words are rarely used, because they see reality as rarely having such extreme qualities, and more importantly they take things literally. Estonians seem to err on the side of understatements, and "a bit" is a phrase I hear often (such as 'He vomited blood and then passed out from the fever, so he's a bit sick' -just kidding I am exaggerating there). If someone overstates or gives too many compliments, s/he starts sounding hypocritical in this context. I've also heard stories of some Estonians' travels to different countries like the U.S. or Italy, where they get tired of it after awhile because they don't understand why people they have just met would be so forward and friendly. When I try to tone myself down to be considerate, I often don't know how to express myself differently, and resort to an awkward silence (which happens to be more acceptable/common here than back home!). It surprises me sometimes how understanding something and practicing something move at different speeds. A similar case happened with biking laws - I bought a bike and was informed that cars have the right of way at crosswalks unless I am walking alongside the bike. I knew it in my head, but I still flew through two consecutive crosswalks out of habit. An old man even pulled over to get out of his van and yell at me in Russian.
Interpersonal interaction with Estonians was strange and uncomfortable at first, and felt much more different than that with countless other international students. It tends to unfold in negative terms, from the general to the more specific, away from closure, and is less frequently in mutual agreement. Body language/facial expression seems to be less corresponding or mirroring as well, but maybe this just seems so to me because I have a hard time reading theirs. Using negative terms doesn't necessarily mean that they feel negatively, though - in my experience it's often done in a mildly humorous way, if not cheerful. A funny example happened in the closing remarks of a getaway-like summer school, which was more like a retreat or camp than it was school. A foreign professor began expressing his gratitude for the whole event - the beautiful natural setting, the congenial and unpretentious crowd, the ideas presented and unique activities (like the smoke sauna!) we engaged in. He started thanking individuals associated with the organization. Someone else added the bus driver. Then an Estonian professor stated, "But not the cook," and everyone laughed. I think this "complaining" is connected to their value of modesty - they tend to describe reality in relatively modest terms.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Talgud, "Jõudu!" and other Estonian cultural features
Not too long ago, I was slacklining in a nice big park - it may have been one of the several parks around Tartu that are a consequence of bombed residential areas during WWII. That's the second case in which there's a historical catch to something I enjoy in Tartu (see last post). An Estonian man approached me to ask about the slackline. When I asked him what he was doing, he sighed and said, “Well, right now, just enjoying watching him work” - and he pointed to a guy mowing the lawn. I mentioned an Estonian idiom I had learned that directly translates as "eyes rest watching other people working." He nodded and told me that Estonians like 3 things: fire, water, and other people working. However, this list did not ring a bell to another Estonian, who explained that fire and water are sacred elements stemming from their mystical love of nature, which are admired with dreamy eyes, while watching other people working is both profane and lazy. Because it is well known that Estonians are hardworking, it was some kind of ironic joke created by the morally and categorically incongruent last feature of the sequence. Likewise, the idiom of the eyes resting is also meant in an ironic way, though it can also be used positively in other contexts - namely as commentary on a job well-done after a long day's work.
This shed light on a previous interaction with another friend. He invited me to go drink beer and watch his friends clean up their backyard during talgud. Talgud is one realization of the Estonian value of hard work - it describes an ad hoc event in which people, such as family, friends, or a larger community, gather to complete a big work project together. Afterward they have food and go to the sauna, and there is even a special soup called talgusupp (soup of talgud). Confused, I asked, "Shouldn't we help them?" He replied something like no - that would take away the pleasure of our eyes resting. Now I realize there was some sarcasm to this, but at the time I was puzzled by the apparent contradiction.
Finally, there is an idiomatic greeting which might be the one exception where an Estonian says something to a stranger on the street - "Jõudu!" It's untranslatable, but I'm told it means something like power or force for work (a helpful informant joked that it's like 'may the force be with you), so in effect it's a wish that they finish their work well. It is automatically said by passersby to those working outside, often in relation to weather and seasons such as shoveling snow, because they can all relate to this hard and often annoying work. It seems clear that hard work is an integral cultural feature connecting Estonians, especially when it occasions the only habitual verbal exchange between strangers on the street.
This shed light on a previous interaction with another friend. He invited me to go drink beer and watch his friends clean up their backyard during talgud. Talgud is one realization of the Estonian value of hard work - it describes an ad hoc event in which people, such as family, friends, or a larger community, gather to complete a big work project together. Afterward they have food and go to the sauna, and there is even a special soup called talgusupp (soup of talgud). Confused, I asked, "Shouldn't we help them?" He replied something like no - that would take away the pleasure of our eyes resting. Now I realize there was some sarcasm to this, but at the time I was puzzled by the apparent contradiction.
Finally, there is an idiomatic greeting which might be the one exception where an Estonian says something to a stranger on the street - "Jõudu!" It's untranslatable, but I'm told it means something like power or force for work (a helpful informant joked that it's like 'may the force be with you), so in effect it's a wish that they finish their work well. It is automatically said by passersby to those working outside, often in relation to weather and seasons such as shoveling snow, because they can all relate to this hard and often annoying work. It seems clear that hard work is an integral cultural feature connecting Estonians, especially when it occasions the only habitual verbal exchange between strangers on the street.
Poplars: an annoying reminder of the soviet union
When Spring finally graced Tartu with its presence, there was a remarkable amount of cotton-like seeds floating about. I initially thought they were the seeds of dandelions and was astonished by their all-pervasive clouds. Fluffy piles accumulated on the windshields of dormant cars, lined street curbs, and obscured large areas of the ground from view. I would just lay in the grass listening to music for hours, dazed by the dance of the swirling seeds above me - a window into the curious ways in which air currents move. I found them alluring, unaware of their history, as well as their serious damage to those with allergies and asthma.
It turns out that they are poplar (or cottonwood) seeds, and Estonians, like those in other post-soviet countries who experienced this vegetative invasion, hate them. Stalin chose poplar trees as the most efficient way to add a little nature to the monotonous soviet living spaces, because they are cheap, resilient, and they grow and reproduce quickly. Typical (pun intended). Unfortunately mostly female poplars were planted, which spread their seeds like crazy when there aren't enough males around. Just like the stain of the dull soviet buildings that stand in contrast to the old Estonian wooden houses, poplar trees are everywhere as a loud reminder of the unpleasant past, spreading their suffocating snow throughout the month of June.
This is Moscow, not Tartu, but many areas in Tartu were covered just the same (I never had my camera during my naively dreamy expeditions through the summer "snow"). Picture from: http://www.theexpeditioner.com/2011/04/21/sexual-frustration-and-why-it-snows-in-june-in-moscow/
Where I live - typical 5 story soviet apartment building - complete with a poplar tree in front.
Estonian wooden house.
More wooden houses, which are abundant in Supilinn (soup-town), a lovely neighborhood of Tartu.
Speaking of Supilinn, its street names are ingredients of soup such as Herne (pea), Oa (bean), Kartuli (potato), and Meloni (melon..though that one doesn't really fit, unless some kind of melon soup exists). I also think it's interesting how, throughout town, the street names are listed on the sides of buildings instead of posts. It took me awhile to realize this as I first tried to get around.
Completely unrelated to everything above, this slug is screwed. The bird is probably screwed too if he tries to eat such a thing.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Blind rain
An Estonian friend recently (re)informed me of how much Estonians tend to complain. While I haven't personally noticed any complaining from Estonians, I've learned from various sources that to be Estonian is, in one half-joking kind of sense, to suffer. Perhaps it took shape during soviet and nazi occupations, themselves preceded by a long history of wars and occupations by other powers. An easy target for contemporary complaint is the climate, which is often what I am asked about in relation to how I like Estonia. Winter reaches minus thirty degrees celsius with darkness by 3 pm, the ground coated with a frozen, treacherous layer of snow for about 5 months. Autumn and Spring are muddy and rainy. Summer is usually rainy and temperamental, with the addition of hungry mosquitoes and infectious ticks. These somewhat demanding conditions include a remarkable phenomenon that I'm sure we've all appreciated, but happens here quite often from Spring through Autumn. Russians call it "blind rain" - when it rains while the sun is shining. I also like the Hawaiian version - "pineapple rain." It never fails to quiet my mind.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
The solipsism of being a foreigner
A peculiar Finnish friend I got to know during his last few days in Tartu told me that leaving Estonia for a couple weeks or so makes the place great. Shortly afterward, a goofy stranger from England captured me for conversation on the street. I was bored and annoyed until he mentioned that when he came to Estonia 20 years ago, after a life of failures, life got real for him. He didn't stop failing, but life has been real since then, and he calls Estonia his home now, not England.
This morning, 5 days after leaving Estonia after a long 10 months, I was surprised to find that I missed Tartu for the first time. I came to the Netherlands to spend 2 weeks with family, including my american parents, uncle, and aunts, dutch grandma, and her big, amazing family here. It’s the second time we’ve come for one of these reunions - last time was 6 years ago in ’07. They are wonderful, kind, generous people and I'm grateful for this opportunity to visit them. I’ve been sharing a room with my parents in a rustic hotel in Joure - a small, quiet village in Friesland where much of the family still lives.
My mom, dad, and uncle amidst the beauty of Joure.
It started at 3 am, when it was very dark. In Tartu, it would begin to get light around 2 am. I sat awake in the hotel room, waiting for the sun to come out and all the crazy birds to start screaming, but there was no daylight in sight, and Dutch birds were either sane or sleeping. I decided to go for a walk - a totally normal thing back in the student town of Tartu, especially in the summer time.
After unsuccessful attempts to reassure my disgruntled parents, I grabbed my headphones and headed out a side door. The trip started out on a bad foot - a great song had just begun when my ipod died, before I even got out of the parking lot. Then the street got very dark, still, and silent. There was not the slightest stirring. The houses sat tightly together, with explosive flora and narrow, winding, perfectly clean streets. It gave me the feeling that I would be a considerable disturbance if someone spotted me, so I went back to the hotel after a quick loop around the block.
There I discovered that I was locked out of our quaint, respectful building, and needed to make a phone call to the “night porter” in order to get back inside. Naturally, I didn’t have my phone. Unsure of what to do, I creepily paced around the hotel a few times trying to get the courage to throw stones at my parents’ 2nd story window. Three times I passed a fully lit room on the ground level, and the 3rd time, an alarm went off. I ran back to the front doors and spotted a sleepy young staffmember inside trying to figure things out. Confused old people were beginning to wake up and stroll down the hallways. He let me in and I told him that I think the alarm might have been my fault, because I was creepin’ around and possibly scaring some folks. He looked very confused and asked me to show him where I think I might have set off the alarm. I pointed outside and mentioned the lit room and he looked even more confused. He finally said alright - I will look for a fire first, then I will turn it off if there is none.
Turns out it was the smoke alarm and caused by something else entirely, in another part of the building.
I had a good laugh, though my parents sure didn’t. Then I felt my first ever pangs for the physical and social space of Tartu, where there seems to be a special kind of freedom - a lonely freedom from the attention of others. I sat awake awhile longer wishing that the damn sun would come up and the wild ruckus of strange bird calls would piss me off as usual. Tartu is often described by others as a dream. I think I know why, in some sense - I can only share it with my family and friends (and self, upon leaving) through the lonely process of reflection and description. It is also a space that is very much one's own - many people write about "my tartu" because it is such a variable experience for foreigners. Estonians also pay very little attention to individual identity, which has ground me into a comfortable nobody. Also, I never quite know for sure what the hell is going on, and am never quite understood - or am differently understood - by others, so once I'd sort of accepted this fact, I became a bit more autonomous and did a lot of things alone, both with and without people. Yet, because I can't take this space with me when I leave, I wind up being a lonely somebody in the spaces of home - somebody with previously recognized traits/qualities, and somebody whose behavior affects others and is tied to others much more. So the habits I've acquired in Tartu no longer make sense in that context. Lacking a sense of (socially recognized) self has been both painful and liberating, as I'm sure one would imagine.
Tartu and peculiar Finnish friend
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Things I've learned in Tartu this year
Just describing my own experience in relation to the when/where and making no explanatory claims as to whether these lessons are inherent to Tartu, traveling, Estonia in general, Europe, grad school, etc. I'll leave that up to you :-)
1. How to roll tobacco.....while walking to class...with one hand (okay now I'm exaggerating)
2. How to walk (and run) on solid ice without even being conscious of it anymore
3. How to rest easy after certain awkward social mishaps because they could be attributed to cultural differences (muahaha..my weirdness is only fully recognized in my own cultural context)
4. How to eat a smoked fish the size of my arm right out of the carcass (head still attached), with my bare hands
5. How to do nothing but listen to music alone for hours, daily, with no guilt/regrets/care in the world
6. What "torrent" means :D my world has expanded
7. How to improv class presentations that I'm unprepared for without even getting nervous
8. How to hang out at a party in which everyone speaks Estonian the whole time
9. New levels of patience
10. That I cannot keep up with Russians when it comes to drinking
11. That ambulances and emergency services are free here (this is related to the last one)
12. How to say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Estonian" in Estonian
13. That the greenish glowing light in Tartu's sky really is due to a cucumber farm (light filtered through the greenhouses). I saw it with my own eyes!
14. How to function academically with very little structure for assignments (generally everyone in the class has a different idea of what we're supposed to do), and no feedback besides the letter grade at the end of the semester
15. How to walk in the rain without an umbrella like a boss
16. That I deeply admire the modesty, patience, honesty, and reason of Estonians and see it as a great model for my own behavior. Actually changing is another story - much easier said than done! :-)
17. How to actually listen to a classmate's entire 45 minute presentation that was supposed to be 10 minutes (common occurrence among semioticians)
18. How to stay calm around the grocery store security guard, who has a default face of suspicion and will follow you around if you make eye contact
19. How to listen to an international student's life story for two hours (I'm finally realizing how much valuable information there is in others' stories) :-)
20. That many Russians still actively hate Americans and long for the balance of the Cold War (some Russian friends and I (half?)-jokingly toast "to the Cold War!")
21. That I love Georgian food most so far
22. That I love traditional Russian songs, food, and superstitions. The most recent superstition I learned was wonderful - whenever you are going to cross a bridge for the first time, you must close your eyes, make a wish, and cross without opening your eyes OR saying a single word. If you make it to the end, your wish will come true.
23. How to not give a f*** (in a positive way), or at least, how to give much less of one :D
24. How to take oral exams that determine my entire grade like a boss
25. That ex-patriot Americans generally avoid/dissociate with each other (very generally speaking, and only in comparison to ex-patriots of other countries - I have several great American friends here and don't know what I'd do without them)
26. That I cannot go to Club Illusion and expect the contents of my stomach to stay put
27. That I cannot control when or where my stomach decides to empty itself after drinking too much, or the violent, dramatic convulsions this sends throughout my body (deep gratitude to all who have served as a scaffold during these times)
28. How to take mosquito bites like a boss
29. That articles in English really aren't so necessary :-)
30. How important being understood by others is to our sense of self
31. How to allow both the utter ridiculousness and profound relevance of my major (semiotics) to exist simultaneously in my mind
32. How to effectively skim academic readings (this took much longer than I expected, especially after being told I would learn this very quickly in my first graduate level course in 2010)
Now. Here is a list of things I hope to learn in Tartu next year.
1. How to keep a poker face like an Estonian (thanks to Estonian Moments for pointing out this ability - http://estonianmoments.tumblr.com)
2. How to be more verbally direct about my feelings, wants, needs, etc...also like an Estonian :-)
3. The Estonian language (hardest thing I've ever tried to learn)
4. The logic of Estonian friendships/relationships (still floating through these very blindly)
5. What exactly is so different about Estonians - it is very difficult to pinpoint or describe
6. How to keep my 12 meters squared flat clean on a daily basis
7. Good places for studying (uncrowded, proper lighting/some natural light, minimal noise/no music, large table space, chair with a back..)
8. How to pronounce the Estonian letters ä, ö, and ü (I think I do alright with õ). Ä is especially difficult. Jäääär is the worst word in the world.
9. How to defend a master's thesis in semiotics while keeping a straight face.
10. What the hell I will do when I graduate! :D
1. How to roll tobacco.....while walking to class...with one hand (okay now I'm exaggerating)
2. How to walk (and run) on solid ice without even being conscious of it anymore
3. How to rest easy after certain awkward social mishaps because they could be attributed to cultural differences (muahaha..my weirdness is only fully recognized in my own cultural context)
4. How to eat a smoked fish the size of my arm right out of the carcass (head still attached), with my bare hands
5. How to do nothing but listen to music alone for hours, daily, with no guilt/regrets/care in the world
6. What "torrent" means :D my world has expanded
7. How to improv class presentations that I'm unprepared for without even getting nervous
8. How to hang out at a party in which everyone speaks Estonian the whole time
9. New levels of patience
10. That I cannot keep up with Russians when it comes to drinking
11. That ambulances and emergency services are free here (this is related to the last one)
12. How to say, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Estonian" in Estonian
13. That the greenish glowing light in Tartu's sky really is due to a cucumber farm (light filtered through the greenhouses). I saw it with my own eyes!
14. How to function academically with very little structure for assignments (generally everyone in the class has a different idea of what we're supposed to do), and no feedback besides the letter grade at the end of the semester
15. How to walk in the rain without an umbrella like a boss
16. That I deeply admire the modesty, patience, honesty, and reason of Estonians and see it as a great model for my own behavior. Actually changing is another story - much easier said than done! :-)
17. How to actually listen to a classmate's entire 45 minute presentation that was supposed to be 10 minutes (common occurrence among semioticians)
18. How to stay calm around the grocery store security guard, who has a default face of suspicion and will follow you around if you make eye contact
19. How to listen to an international student's life story for two hours (I'm finally realizing how much valuable information there is in others' stories) :-)
20. That many Russians still actively hate Americans and long for the balance of the Cold War (some Russian friends and I (half?)-jokingly toast "to the Cold War!")
21. That I love Georgian food most so far
22. That I love traditional Russian songs, food, and superstitions. The most recent superstition I learned was wonderful - whenever you are going to cross a bridge for the first time, you must close your eyes, make a wish, and cross without opening your eyes OR saying a single word. If you make it to the end, your wish will come true.
23. How to not give a f*** (in a positive way), or at least, how to give much less of one :D
24. How to take oral exams that determine my entire grade like a boss
25. That ex-patriot Americans generally avoid/dissociate with each other (very generally speaking, and only in comparison to ex-patriots of other countries - I have several great American friends here and don't know what I'd do without them)
26. That I cannot go to Club Illusion and expect the contents of my stomach to stay put
27. That I cannot control when or where my stomach decides to empty itself after drinking too much, or the violent, dramatic convulsions this sends throughout my body (deep gratitude to all who have served as a scaffold during these times)
28. How to take mosquito bites like a boss
29. That articles in English really aren't so necessary :-)
30. How important being understood by others is to our sense of self
31. How to allow both the utter ridiculousness and profound relevance of my major (semiotics) to exist simultaneously in my mind
32. How to effectively skim academic readings (this took much longer than I expected, especially after being told I would learn this very quickly in my first graduate level course in 2010)
Now. Here is a list of things I hope to learn in Tartu next year.
1. How to keep a poker face like an Estonian (thanks to Estonian Moments for pointing out this ability - http://estonianmoments.tumblr.com)
2. How to be more verbally direct about my feelings, wants, needs, etc...also like an Estonian :-)
3. The Estonian language (hardest thing I've ever tried to learn)
4. The logic of Estonian friendships/relationships (still floating through these very blindly)
5. What exactly is so different about Estonians - it is very difficult to pinpoint or describe
6. How to keep my 12 meters squared flat clean on a daily basis
7. Good places for studying (uncrowded, proper lighting/some natural light, minimal noise/no music, large table space, chair with a back..)
8. How to pronounce the Estonian letters ä, ö, and ü (I think I do alright with õ). Ä is especially difficult. Jäääär is the worst word in the world.
9. How to defend a master's thesis in semiotics while keeping a straight face.
10. What the hell I will do when I graduate! :D
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
The club sandwich
Is American tradition more recognized from without than from within?
Americans are a unique bunch in that we don't take much pride in our culture and are generally less conscious of our "traditions," if we even claim to have them (maybe partly because it is such a young country, it drew in so many different cultures and classes, it has a bad political/colonial track record, it has tended to smear its culture all over the rest of the world anyway, who knows). Russians on the other hand have been described to me as "highly specific" when it comes to their traditions and culture. Thus it was quite interesting to see a Russian translation of an American practice. According to my lovely roommate and her friends, the 'true traditional American club sandwich' is made with both grilled chicken and pork, and three slices of bread. While I'd admit that the club sandwich is widespread (as more of a general theme, and not in a specific form), I personally would never recognize it as a tradition, and am ready to assume most Americans wouldn't either. Here is the official version, made by my roommate, Tanya. :)
It's also interesting that relatedly, we don't really recognize an American ethnicity, which I would consider to be the group who practices a system of traditions. Perhaps there are groups who do recognize American ethnicity that I am unfamiliar with. In my experience, when people ask a white American, especially, about their ethnicity, they often trace their roots to other cultures - if they aren't white, they often hyphenate their ethnicity - e.g. Mexican-American, African-American, Asian-American. Regardless of why this is the case, it's interesting to see what it means to be American from an outside perspective, as above with the "club sandwich." American ethnicity and traditions may not be recognized as much from within, but they are certainly recognized from without (in translated ways) by other cultures.
Americans are a unique bunch in that we don't take much pride in our culture and are generally less conscious of our "traditions," if we even claim to have them (maybe partly because it is such a young country, it drew in so many different cultures and classes, it has a bad political/colonial track record, it has tended to smear its culture all over the rest of the world anyway, who knows). Russians on the other hand have been described to me as "highly specific" when it comes to their traditions and culture. Thus it was quite interesting to see a Russian translation of an American practice. According to my lovely roommate and her friends, the 'true traditional American club sandwich' is made with both grilled chicken and pork, and three slices of bread. While I'd admit that the club sandwich is widespread (as more of a general theme, and not in a specific form), I personally would never recognize it as a tradition, and am ready to assume most Americans wouldn't either. Here is the official version, made by my roommate, Tanya. :)
It's also interesting that relatedly, we don't really recognize an American ethnicity, which I would consider to be the group who practices a system of traditions. Perhaps there are groups who do recognize American ethnicity that I am unfamiliar with. In my experience, when people ask a white American, especially, about their ethnicity, they often trace their roots to other cultures - if they aren't white, they often hyphenate their ethnicity - e.g. Mexican-American, African-American, Asian-American. Regardless of why this is the case, it's interesting to see what it means to be American from an outside perspective, as above with the "club sandwich." American ethnicity and traditions may not be recognized as much from within, but they are certainly recognized from without (in translated ways) by other cultures.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The color of Tartu
One of my favorite things about Tartu are the colors. I hope that these pictures provide a taste of Tartu's special vibrance.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
English proficiency and social recognition among Tartu internationals
Before coming to this small town attracting students from all over the world, I studied cultural anthropology and a bit of post-colonial theology and religious studies. All three disciplines stressed how the dominance of the 'West' has played out - be it politically, culturally, linguistically, or theoretically within academic discourse (which aren't perfectly discrete or continuous). The general idea is that power imbalances create macro or global spheres that are different from the many local spheres, often causing tension between them. In other words, globalization has included establishing certain norms and points of reference for understanding, communicating and interacting with (be it economically, politically, etc.), and thereby influencing the plurality of local perspectives. Since no norm or point of reference can ever be objective, the scales will always tilt toward one side, which, in the context of my studies, has been this ambiguous blob we call 'the West.' Safe within an American university setting, detached from any actual experience, I naively thought that I had a grasp on what this was like.
An Estonian friend, Silver, once shared his invented concept of gastronomic dualism to make a point in class. We can study theoretical aspects of eating all we want, but it will never make us feel full. Studying something academically will always be different than experiencing that something. When I came to Tartu, living in an enormous dorm filled with people from all over, plus being the only native English speaker among the group of Master's students in my year, I experienced a piece of this power imbalance on the ground level. To my surprise, it manifested in a relation between linguistic and social aspects of student life. Sadly, I'm not sure if I would have recognized this relation without the help of two good friends with keener eyes and different experiences than I, because as a native English speaker, I had it pretty easy.
Early on, Krraka invented two important concepts:
An Estonian friend, Silver, once shared his invented concept of gastronomic dualism to make a point in class. We can study theoretical aspects of eating all we want, but it will never make us feel full. Studying something academically will always be different than experiencing that something. When I came to Tartu, living in an enormous dorm filled with people from all over, plus being the only native English speaker among the group of Master's students in my year, I experienced a piece of this power imbalance on the ground level. To my surprise, it manifested in a relation between linguistic and social aspects of student life. Sadly, I'm not sure if I would have recognized this relation without the help of two good friends with keener eyes and different experiences than I, because as a native English speaker, I had it pretty easy.
Early on, Krraka invented two important concepts:
- "Cultural harrassment" - The persistent advances made by non-native English speakers to hang out with native English speakers to improve their English. This can result in a number of negative effects on the native English speakers, such as social exhaustion, or delusions of grandeur.
- What I will call here "the English effect" - When a native English speaker is saying something mediocre, boring, unhelpful, or even incoherent, but because of their perfect English, has an alluring effect on non-native speakers, easily leading them to false conclusions of their intelligence, charm, and other positive, valued aspects of personality.
Later, another close friend shared with me a conclusion that she and a friend from her own culture made in a discussion of social status in Tartu. Before I list them I want to mention that I consider social status as something measured by recognition (being influenced by semiotics). Recognition happens in different ways - saying hello to a person, smiling at them, approaching them, asking them for help or advice, learning about them, opening up to them, acknowledging their identity in any way, etc. Therefore the assumption is that the degree of recognition (in terms of how many people recognize someone and how deeply this recognition goes) is an indication of their social status. Of course, we could argue that recognition can manifest negatively, such as in a social outcast or scapegoat. But that is a rare case and I haven't encountered that here.
The conclusion that my friend came to is that there are two major variables that contribute to increasing social status here: good English and being European. Of course, this is a simplification and there are many exceptions, because there are obviously more variables at work than these two alone, and not all the same variables affect everyone in the same way - English competency and being European may not even be remotely influential for some people(s) here. I haven't put much thought or observation into the European aspect, but I included it as food for thought for any interested readers.
The linguistic aspect is just a general influence that others and I have observed not only socially in that those with good English appear to gain recognition more easily and quickly, but psychologically in that it is often internalized by both sides. While people with these advantages are less conscious of this power imbalance, it seems self-evident that more social recognition could reinforce higher self-confidence, cyclically reinforcing a higher social status (everyone knows how effective self-confidence is socially). [Exceptions come to mind here already though, as not everyone enjoys a lot of social recognition, many are most comfortable with a certain limited/balanced amount, and some even react adversely to it]. On the other hand, those non-native speakers who think that their English is not up to par often feel generally embarrassed about this fact, especially when talking to native speakers. In fact, I've been told that being nervous about one's English-speaking makes it even more difficult to speak it, becoming a vicious cycle of inadequacy and causing them to withdraw and make less of an effort to socialize. Thus, this internalization only reinforces lesser visibility. It was almost impossible to convince my friend (who was afraid of approaching an American friend of mine) that we pay very little attention to English mistakes and see nothing embarrassing or shameful about them - in fact, we enjoy accents and different ways of saying things.
These issues may be stronger during an initial phase of getting acquainted, and might fade a bit as people get to know each other over time and feel more comfortable opening up. However, I don't think they disappear completely, and I think that those who have such advantages should try to be more conscious of this power imbalance (it's easy not to recognize if it's not a problem for you). One thing I learned to do early on is always speak clearly and bit slower (especially in class when people don't have the opportunity to stop you as easily). It also helps to be approachable and welcoming by recognizing others - say hello, make the first move and initiate some small talk every once in awhile. If you're like me and you like to be alone and keep to yourself often, be aware that this could be misinterpreted and internalized by someone else in a totally different way.
I also think that those who feel invisible because they don't have such advantages should try to understand that most native English speakers don't get what it is like to feel generally unconfident or embarrassed due to language proficiency (unless they've had a corresponding experience themselves). If it seems like they disapprove of your English skills because they aren't saying hello or indicating they want to talk to you, they are just shy or clueless and it has nothing to do with your language abilities. It might get a bit tiring trying to communicate, but we are never blaming the non-native speaker for not trying hard enough at learning English in school - many Americans feel inadequate because we aren't forced to learn second and third languages from elementary school on, and therefore we don't feel like we are in a position to judge your second/third/fourth language. We think you're the impressive ones for being multilingual, and we pay almost no attention to your mistakes. If we do notice them, we never connect them to you as a person, though we're happy to help you improve your English if you like. Therefore, if you want to, don't be afraid to make the first move and say hello either, even if we have a stony, lifeless default face (I've been told this is mine). :-)
The linguistic aspect is just a general influence that others and I have observed not only socially in that those with good English appear to gain recognition more easily and quickly, but psychologically in that it is often internalized by both sides. While people with these advantages are less conscious of this power imbalance, it seems self-evident that more social recognition could reinforce higher self-confidence, cyclically reinforcing a higher social status (everyone knows how effective self-confidence is socially). [Exceptions come to mind here already though, as not everyone enjoys a lot of social recognition, many are most comfortable with a certain limited/balanced amount, and some even react adversely to it]. On the other hand, those non-native speakers who think that their English is not up to par often feel generally embarrassed about this fact, especially when talking to native speakers. In fact, I've been told that being nervous about one's English-speaking makes it even more difficult to speak it, becoming a vicious cycle of inadequacy and causing them to withdraw and make less of an effort to socialize. Thus, this internalization only reinforces lesser visibility. It was almost impossible to convince my friend (who was afraid of approaching an American friend of mine) that we pay very little attention to English mistakes and see nothing embarrassing or shameful about them - in fact, we enjoy accents and different ways of saying things.
These issues may be stronger during an initial phase of getting acquainted, and might fade a bit as people get to know each other over time and feel more comfortable opening up. However, I don't think they disappear completely, and I think that those who have such advantages should try to be more conscious of this power imbalance (it's easy not to recognize if it's not a problem for you). One thing I learned to do early on is always speak clearly and bit slower (especially in class when people don't have the opportunity to stop you as easily). It also helps to be approachable and welcoming by recognizing others - say hello, make the first move and initiate some small talk every once in awhile. If you're like me and you like to be alone and keep to yourself often, be aware that this could be misinterpreted and internalized by someone else in a totally different way.
I also think that those who feel invisible because they don't have such advantages should try to understand that most native English speakers don't get what it is like to feel generally unconfident or embarrassed due to language proficiency (unless they've had a corresponding experience themselves). If it seems like they disapprove of your English skills because they aren't saying hello or indicating they want to talk to you, they are just shy or clueless and it has nothing to do with your language abilities. It might get a bit tiring trying to communicate, but we are never blaming the non-native speaker for not trying hard enough at learning English in school - many Americans feel inadequate because we aren't forced to learn second and third languages from elementary school on, and therefore we don't feel like we are in a position to judge your second/third/fourth language. We think you're the impressive ones for being multilingual, and we pay almost no attention to your mistakes. If we do notice them, we never connect them to you as a person, though we're happy to help you improve your English if you like. Therefore, if you want to, don't be afraid to make the first move and say hello either, even if we have a stony, lifeless default face (I've been told this is mine). :-)
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Things I miss about America
Well the winter here has not been very cold (from my experience), but it has been long, and the ground has been more or less covered in thick, solid ice since November. I think I've developed weird new muscles from walking on it. Sometimes certain sidewalks are miraculously clear, and I was told that they take a blowtorch to it at night - apparently one of my course-mates saw a fire guy in action around 2 am. Anyway, I hear Spring is marvelous, with nonstop pagan-ish festivals throughout May and June. I can't wait, as I've been slogging through each slow day exhausted by my environment in all respects (physical, social, academic, etc). In the spirit of wanting to come home, I decided to make a list of the things that I miss.
1. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It truly is the cheesiest.
2. Mexican food!
3. "Home people" - those friends and family with whom I don't have to think about how to say things/how they will interpret me. I'm tired of feeling self-consious and engaging reflexively, and I miss simply being.
4. Social laxity. Cultures this side of the Atlantic tend to have stricter rules (in varying forms and degrees) for how to be polite - or maybe just a higher value for politeness/etiquette than Americans. To give an example, social events generally flow in more specific ways for Russians, including what to offer and when, how long it should last, how to reciprocate the host and more importantly, accept someone's reciprocation, etc. I appreciate it and find it elegant and productive toward building relationships, but I also miss the ease of doing my own thing without the danger of offending someone (such as, telling a visitor that I'd like to be alone now without offering them tea and an hour of my time first). To turn the lens back toward America, we probably look selfish, crass, and/or superficial, but I miss the freedom that comes with this comparative lack of social etiquette.
5. Hardware stores. And more generally, stores that follow stricter paradigmatic organization, instead of products dispersed in seemingly random places.
6. Mountains/more diverse landscape! My heart aches every time I see Colorado friends post their outdoor adventure pictures.
7. Drinking fountains. I've never seen one here and stressed out about it for a few weeks before I grew comfortable using the sink to refill my water bottle.
8. Pizza that is not thin-crust with minimal sauce. To use my dad's description, who resorted to dousing his with ketchup after we failed to communicate to our waitress what we meant by more sauce, it tastes like cardboard. Even Little Caesar's sounds amazing right now.
9. Bathrooms in grocery stores. Doesn't happen here, though it is much easier to enter restaurants/cafes and use theirs without buying anything.
10. Brownies, and soft chocolate chip cookies. Soft any cookies. Things either crunch, crisp, flake, or crumble here, reminding me of my Dutch grandma's style of cookies that divided our family into crunchy vs. chewy lovers and created an ever-surfacing war over how long to bake the cookies. Dad vs. Mom style - symbolically, Europe vs. America.
11. Greater variety of grocery store ice cream. I particularly miss ice cream with candy in it, like snickers or oreos. I miss chocolate milkshakes too, and reeses peanut butter cups.
12. Good beer. Particularly IPA's! There are a couple here, but they are expensive.
13. That Colorado sun. It's out there all winter!
I know that when I return to America, there will be many things I will miss about Tartu, including the wealth of diversity it attracts through its ample academic opportunities. My roommate is Russian and I've been learning a lot about their habits, but she was born and raised in Riga, so she shows me Latvian traditions, too. Most of my friends are international. Wherever these things originate from, here are a few that I anticipate missing when I leave this special place:
1. Trashcans on every block. They are everywhere. If you want to litter, you have to try pretty hard.
2. Not feeling compelled to respond or engage with people. Silence can be liberating! So can chugging along alone.
3. Wifi everywhere, of course, including on the busses. It's the claim-to-fame here, along with the fact that Estonia invented Skype. :)
4. Believing that the food I'm eating is generally healthier and less processed. High fructose corn syrup is illegal here.
5. The clocktower bell music and generally happy atmosphere of the town square.
6. Cloak rooms in all the school buildings. The library rule of leaving your coat with the cloak-tender (might that be what they're called?).
7. The subtly beautiful skies, and sky dynamics - the long gray periods make the sunny days more awesome and glorious. Also, I started to notice variations in the grayness - degrees of translucence and consistency, different colors.
8. Tea time with friends/the more official social gatherings in which it is important for everyone to be at an equal level - where people don't divide into small groups but always sit in a congenial circle with equal access to everything. A positive aspect of the stricter social behavioral rules is the prevention of social hierarchies - for example, hazing/initiation, whether explicit or implicit in various social circles via differential treatment, is nonexistent here.
9. The ability to buy alcohol in any grocery store and lack of liquor stores - this is more relevant in comparison to Colorado than Indiana (having different liquor laws). It saves time and extra trips. A benefit of the dispersed products I complained about earlier.
10. Lots of different foods here, oh gosh - persimmons (has anyone from America tried this incredible fruit?), big amazing mandarin oranges (a major feature of Christmas in many traditions), prjaniki, much better quality chocolate (American chocolate just tastes waxy now and is totally ruined), the fresh-baked croissants/other flaky things in the grocery stores including pirukas (with sweet or savory fillings), pelmeenid (modeled off of Georgian dumplings with juicy meat inside), black pepper cookies (similar to gingerbread but better), these small chocolate-covered bars made out of some milk product tasting similar to cheesecake but not as sweet.. the list goes on.
11. Some WHO study announced recently that Estonia has the cleanest air, so my body will probably miss that. http://www.greenconduct.com/news/2011/09/28/cleanest-air-in-the-world-who-ranks-the-best-and-worst-places/
12. Those amazing old Estonian ladies who trudge onward through the bitter cold, not breaking their path for anything and looking like the toughest, most peaceful veterans of winter I've ever seen.
13. All the new concepts and ways of looking at the world that are produced by the self-conscious, reflexive intercultural/interpersonal interactions. The learning that happens when I'm exposed.
Well now that I've sort of illustrated my love-hate relationship with this experience, I think I'll call it a night.
sigh
1. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It truly is the cheesiest.
2. Mexican food!
3. "Home people" - those friends and family with whom I don't have to think about how to say things/how they will interpret me. I'm tired of feeling self-consious and engaging reflexively, and I miss simply being.
4. Social laxity. Cultures this side of the Atlantic tend to have stricter rules (in varying forms and degrees) for how to be polite - or maybe just a higher value for politeness/etiquette than Americans. To give an example, social events generally flow in more specific ways for Russians, including what to offer and when, how long it should last, how to reciprocate the host and more importantly, accept someone's reciprocation, etc. I appreciate it and find it elegant and productive toward building relationships, but I also miss the ease of doing my own thing without the danger of offending someone (such as, telling a visitor that I'd like to be alone now without offering them tea and an hour of my time first). To turn the lens back toward America, we probably look selfish, crass, and/or superficial, but I miss the freedom that comes with this comparative lack of social etiquette.
5. Hardware stores. And more generally, stores that follow stricter paradigmatic organization, instead of products dispersed in seemingly random places.
6. Mountains/more diverse landscape! My heart aches every time I see Colorado friends post their outdoor adventure pictures.
7. Drinking fountains. I've never seen one here and stressed out about it for a few weeks before I grew comfortable using the sink to refill my water bottle.
8. Pizza that is not thin-crust with minimal sauce. To use my dad's description, who resorted to dousing his with ketchup after we failed to communicate to our waitress what we meant by more sauce, it tastes like cardboard. Even Little Caesar's sounds amazing right now.
9. Bathrooms in grocery stores. Doesn't happen here, though it is much easier to enter restaurants/cafes and use theirs without buying anything.
10. Brownies, and soft chocolate chip cookies. Soft any cookies. Things either crunch, crisp, flake, or crumble here, reminding me of my Dutch grandma's style of cookies that divided our family into crunchy vs. chewy lovers and created an ever-surfacing war over how long to bake the cookies. Dad vs. Mom style - symbolically, Europe vs. America.
11. Greater variety of grocery store ice cream. I particularly miss ice cream with candy in it, like snickers or oreos. I miss chocolate milkshakes too, and reeses peanut butter cups.
12. Good beer. Particularly IPA's! There are a couple here, but they are expensive.
13. That Colorado sun. It's out there all winter!
I know that when I return to America, there will be many things I will miss about Tartu, including the wealth of diversity it attracts through its ample academic opportunities. My roommate is Russian and I've been learning a lot about their habits, but she was born and raised in Riga, so she shows me Latvian traditions, too. Most of my friends are international. Wherever these things originate from, here are a few that I anticipate missing when I leave this special place:
1. Trashcans on every block. They are everywhere. If you want to litter, you have to try pretty hard.
2. Not feeling compelled to respond or engage with people. Silence can be liberating! So can chugging along alone.
3. Wifi everywhere, of course, including on the busses. It's the claim-to-fame here, along with the fact that Estonia invented Skype. :)
4. Believing that the food I'm eating is generally healthier and less processed. High fructose corn syrup is illegal here.
5. The clocktower bell music and generally happy atmosphere of the town square.
6. Cloak rooms in all the school buildings. The library rule of leaving your coat with the cloak-tender (might that be what they're called?).
7. The subtly beautiful skies, and sky dynamics - the long gray periods make the sunny days more awesome and glorious. Also, I started to notice variations in the grayness - degrees of translucence and consistency, different colors.
8. Tea time with friends/the more official social gatherings in which it is important for everyone to be at an equal level - where people don't divide into small groups but always sit in a congenial circle with equal access to everything. A positive aspect of the stricter social behavioral rules is the prevention of social hierarchies - for example, hazing/initiation, whether explicit or implicit in various social circles via differential treatment, is nonexistent here.
9. The ability to buy alcohol in any grocery store and lack of liquor stores - this is more relevant in comparison to Colorado than Indiana (having different liquor laws). It saves time and extra trips. A benefit of the dispersed products I complained about earlier.
10. Lots of different foods here, oh gosh - persimmons (has anyone from America tried this incredible fruit?), big amazing mandarin oranges (a major feature of Christmas in many traditions), prjaniki, much better quality chocolate (American chocolate just tastes waxy now and is totally ruined), the fresh-baked croissants/other flaky things in the grocery stores including pirukas (with sweet or savory fillings), pelmeenid (modeled off of Georgian dumplings with juicy meat inside), black pepper cookies (similar to gingerbread but better), these small chocolate-covered bars made out of some milk product tasting similar to cheesecake but not as sweet.. the list goes on.
11. Some WHO study announced recently that Estonia has the cleanest air, so my body will probably miss that. http://www.greenconduct.com/news/2011/09/28/cleanest-air-in-the-world-who-ranks-the-best-and-worst-places/
12. Those amazing old Estonian ladies who trudge onward through the bitter cold, not breaking their path for anything and looking like the toughest, most peaceful veterans of winter I've ever seen.
13. All the new concepts and ways of looking at the world that are produced by the self-conscious, reflexive intercultural/interpersonal interactions. The learning that happens when I'm exposed.
Well now that I've sort of illustrated my love-hate relationship with this experience, I think I'll call it a night.
sigh
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Disorientation, is vs. ought, learning, culture shock
Disorientation is a concept that was initially planted in my mind by a chart on culture shock that measures its levels over time. When I was first shown this in one of my classes, I thought nothing of "disorientation" and subconsciously equated it with depression or some other negative feeling. It wasn't relevant to me as a concept at the time so I automatically ignored it. Here is the chart I was shown, which was part of Peeter Torop's lecture at the University of Tartu on 10.10.2012. It refers to perestroika and the subsequent revolutions in Eastern Europe.
Claudia Feichtinger, Gerhard Fink (1998). The collective culture shock in transition countries - theoretical and empirical implications. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 19:6, 302-308.
It wasn't until roughly 2 months later that I noticed a strange pattern in my behavior and mindset, a pattern that I couldn't remember experiencing before, at least not consciously. This pattern was a particular combination that included: a lack of coherency in making sense of my experiences/what I was learning in school, social bewilderment, feeling spiritually lost, difficulties making even minor, everyday life decisions, and underneath all of the above, trouble focusing my attention on what was relevant - because I didn't know what was most relevant. I'll give one simple example: I dreaded grocery shopping because I would spend an hour trying to decide how best to spend 10 euro. I would have too many irreconcilable variables in mind that I could not (or would not) prioritize, such as finances to a new extreme (my first time spending all of my savings with no source of income plus what I'm spending it on - a Master's in semiotics - is a bit unnerving), getting a balanced diet (I endured four months of physical issues that I'll spare you the details of), wanting tasty comfort food (for the compulsively eating inclined, the gray dorm & skies, lack of things to do in this small town, and grocery store right next door = a recipe for the munchies), and getting food that complied with my only available cooking option - 1 working stove burner and limited cookware. So there I'd be, walking from one section of the store to another, carving a star-shaped path in the linoleum.
When I finally became conscious of this pattern, I remembered the chart on culture shock and realized that maybe I was not generally inadequate at life, but disoriented. Disorientation might be a useful concept to understand a state of mind that may not only result from culture shock, but may include any kind of disruptive change, such as the death of someone close to us, a career change, a break-up, a serious illness, a physical accident, etc. What happens is that our usual ways of approaching life - our habits of behavior, including our decision-making processes, are no longer adequate because of a loss, addition, transformation, and/or reorganization of the various elements of our life - e.g. our social environments, experiences, people, places, and ideas we've internalized and relied on to develop our own mental models for functioning. Such changes can explode our meaning-making systems and we lose a sense of control in our daily life processes.
I benefited from this concept because I realized that disorientation is not an inherently negative thing. It may give rise to temporary uncomfortable feelings, but my initial conflation of disorientation with depression was incorrect. I think the biggest source of my own depression resulted from focusing on how things should be instead of how things are during times of disorientation. There are times when our ideals play a vital role in motivating us to strive for more, to improve ourselves and all the imperfect and sometimes horrifying conditions of our world. There are other times when our ideals distract us from learning, and I think one of these times is when we feel disoriented. Unconscious of the fact that I was naturally lacking a model to navigate my novel circumstances, I was attempting to resolve it by cramming my feelings and behavior into ideas of what they should be - e.g. I should be socializing more like everyone else, I should be studying more on a daily basis.. when the reality was, I was starting to thrive alone much of the time, and I had about one-third the amount of homework that I did at a graduate school in the U.S. (my only source of comparison/model for grad school). My homework here was different in that it was less horizontal and more vertical: that is, less work a daily basis, and deeper thinking for the work I did have. Focusing on how things are instead of how they should be included accepting that I was disoriented, that figuring things out would be messy and mistake-ridden, and that this alone said nothing bad about me as a person.
Becoming aware of this also helped me realize that this was a time to learn how to develop new models. And in order to do this, I needed to direct my attention to how things are before I could move to ideas of how they should be. When I was doing this backwards, I was ignoring important novelties in my life by using inadequate models to fit new situations. Of course, this cannot be avoided entirely - it's not possible to approach a situation with no framework, forgetting our own history! However, we can be more or less flexible, not only in the moment of confusion but in our reaction to/reflection upon it - I needed to spend more time rolling with things as they unfolded, as well as less time analyzing and judging them afterward. I needed to accept that things were imperfect and turbulent and would be that way indefinitely.
Here's an amusing social example of post-disorientation consciousness. General background: Estonians don't really communicate via facial expression, body language, and tone of voice, though they can be bluntly honest with their words. At the same time, I rarely see them look nervous or uncomfortable with themselves - they always appear calm, collected, and attentive. Therefore, they also tend to notice certain things about the way that I communicate that I've taken for granted, especially kinetically and paralinguistically, and make different meaning of them than I intend. This mutual misunderstanding makes me feel like we are communicating past each other and not with each other at times. Specific example: A friend of mine was talking to an Estonian I've seen around our department. My friend noticed me standing there and said, "Have you two met?" In a very Midwestern American manner, I gave a big smile, with open body language and a friendly tone of voice, and said, "No, we haven't," and awaited his response. I think the only part of his body that indicated he heard me was a very slight twitch of his mouth, almost like he was going to crack a smile. Looking very relaxed, almost bored, keeping his hands in his pockets, he kept eye contact with me for a few seconds before calmly strolling away to the dessert table. My normal way of understanding this would consider it strange and/or rude. Fortunately, this occurred at a time after I had ceased to emotionally respond to social behavior that was incongruent with my American expectations. I still don't know what it means, if anything, but I have realized it is common (not strange), and isn't necessarily insulting.
I was also able to apply this to the research process. I was very disoriented when facing the different European school system, let alone the bizarre study of semiotics. Yet, the biggest source of my school-related anxiety was that I wasn't measuring up to a productivity schema in my head - an idea of how research is supposed to be done, what a real grad student is supposed to do, how much on a daily basis, etc. Then I got to go to a dazzling 5 day winter school where they somehow made school really fun (I think the free coffee breaks with cake, lunch, and dinner + wine every night helped a lot). They were all very congenial, there were no social hierarchies (despite diversity of academic experience and backgrounds), the pace and structure of the week was a brilliant combination of learning and leisure, and they enabled as much freedom of thought as possible, deviating far from any kind of institutional feeling. The lectures were exhilarating and the very first one talked about how messy the research process actually is, that rather than climbing up some marble staircase as our final works imply, it's full of unexpected turns, looking in the wrong places, and realizing things when you're doing the dishes or catching a bus. It was refreshing to hear that I wasn't an impostor, and that I can relax and let the research process unfold as it will, instead of trying to cram it into ideal boxes, failing, and consequently thinking I'm a failure or not good enough.
Now when I experience and reflect upon bewildering situations, I am starting to become aware of when I am disoriented -when my navigation system is in flux and/or failing. This heightens my attention to the context and what is going on - it helps me quiet my inner voice and listen. Its not just about learning something, but is also about learning how to learn - how to discover what is relevant and when. This has helped lift the depression and anxiety that I experienced in response to a comparison of how things are with how things should be (including myself) based on my mistakes. I needed to let go of a desire to control things and humbly embrace being clumsy. Laughing at myself helped a lot! Disorientation may be uncomfortable at times, but it is also the best time to learn and grow by shifting our attention to the present moment. It is a time to patiently await inspiration instead of rely on memory.
This blog has three endings that I couldn't reconcile in a logical sequential order, so it's more like a choose your own adventure, but they all have the same theme in that they were experiences that were mystically synchronistic with my mental models that emerged out of disorientation - namely, my models OF disorientation (this post). In other words, they are all happy endings.
Ending 1:
In the spirit of going with the flow, an ice sculpture dedicated to the Chinese year of the snake recently appeared in Tartu's town square.
Chinese New Year was on January 10th. More specifically, 2013 is the year of the water snake - I don't think I could imagine a better symbol for the theme of this post - a flexible organism going with the flow of its environment! I stuck a coin to the ice and contemplated making a wish. I decided not to in the spirit of awaiting what comes instead of imposing what I think I want.
Ending 2:
On the culture shock graph, you see the later part of the line called "new take off." After a few months of feeling disoriented, I started thinking things may never make sense again. Then, about a week before all of my grade-determining papers were due, we had a rare stretch of 5 days of sun. Everything started clicking for me and I suddenly knew how I was going to write those papers I'd been trying to figure out all semester. I had visited several different libraries, checked out countless books I wound up not using, traveled from topic to topic, and emailed/visited professors whose explanations (including the same professor explaining a paper about 10 different times) would change my entire idea of what I thought I was supposed to do based on their previous explanation (also a problem of our different cultural/linguistic backgrounds). I felt newly inspired, as if I suddenly woke up and started living. It felt like redemption. Then, to top it all off, as I was strolling across the pedestrian bridge during one of those special sunny days, I spontaneously stopped to photo some birds on the frozen river. As soon as I went to take it, they took off toward me. I smiled because I felt like I was finally taking off, too.
When I finally became conscious of this pattern, I remembered the chart on culture shock and realized that maybe I was not generally inadequate at life, but disoriented. Disorientation might be a useful concept to understand a state of mind that may not only result from culture shock, but may include any kind of disruptive change, such as the death of someone close to us, a career change, a break-up, a serious illness, a physical accident, etc. What happens is that our usual ways of approaching life - our habits of behavior, including our decision-making processes, are no longer adequate because of a loss, addition, transformation, and/or reorganization of the various elements of our life - e.g. our social environments, experiences, people, places, and ideas we've internalized and relied on to develop our own mental models for functioning. Such changes can explode our meaning-making systems and we lose a sense of control in our daily life processes.
I benefited from this concept because I realized that disorientation is not an inherently negative thing. It may give rise to temporary uncomfortable feelings, but my initial conflation of disorientation with depression was incorrect. I think the biggest source of my own depression resulted from focusing on how things should be instead of how things are during times of disorientation. There are times when our ideals play a vital role in motivating us to strive for more, to improve ourselves and all the imperfect and sometimes horrifying conditions of our world. There are other times when our ideals distract us from learning, and I think one of these times is when we feel disoriented. Unconscious of the fact that I was naturally lacking a model to navigate my novel circumstances, I was attempting to resolve it by cramming my feelings and behavior into ideas of what they should be - e.g. I should be socializing more like everyone else, I should be studying more on a daily basis.. when the reality was, I was starting to thrive alone much of the time, and I had about one-third the amount of homework that I did at a graduate school in the U.S. (my only source of comparison/model for grad school). My homework here was different in that it was less horizontal and more vertical: that is, less work a daily basis, and deeper thinking for the work I did have. Focusing on how things are instead of how they should be included accepting that I was disoriented, that figuring things out would be messy and mistake-ridden, and that this alone said nothing bad about me as a person.
Becoming aware of this also helped me realize that this was a time to learn how to develop new models. And in order to do this, I needed to direct my attention to how things are before I could move to ideas of how they should be. When I was doing this backwards, I was ignoring important novelties in my life by using inadequate models to fit new situations. Of course, this cannot be avoided entirely - it's not possible to approach a situation with no framework, forgetting our own history! However, we can be more or less flexible, not only in the moment of confusion but in our reaction to/reflection upon it - I needed to spend more time rolling with things as they unfolded, as well as less time analyzing and judging them afterward. I needed to accept that things were imperfect and turbulent and would be that way indefinitely.
Here's an amusing social example of post-disorientation consciousness. General background: Estonians don't really communicate via facial expression, body language, and tone of voice, though they can be bluntly honest with their words. At the same time, I rarely see them look nervous or uncomfortable with themselves - they always appear calm, collected, and attentive. Therefore, they also tend to notice certain things about the way that I communicate that I've taken for granted, especially kinetically and paralinguistically, and make different meaning of them than I intend. This mutual misunderstanding makes me feel like we are communicating past each other and not with each other at times. Specific example: A friend of mine was talking to an Estonian I've seen around our department. My friend noticed me standing there and said, "Have you two met?" In a very Midwestern American manner, I gave a big smile, with open body language and a friendly tone of voice, and said, "No, we haven't," and awaited his response. I think the only part of his body that indicated he heard me was a very slight twitch of his mouth, almost like he was going to crack a smile. Looking very relaxed, almost bored, keeping his hands in his pockets, he kept eye contact with me for a few seconds before calmly strolling away to the dessert table. My normal way of understanding this would consider it strange and/or rude. Fortunately, this occurred at a time after I had ceased to emotionally respond to social behavior that was incongruent with my American expectations. I still don't know what it means, if anything, but I have realized it is common (not strange), and isn't necessarily insulting.
I was also able to apply this to the research process. I was very disoriented when facing the different European school system, let alone the bizarre study of semiotics. Yet, the biggest source of my school-related anxiety was that I wasn't measuring up to a productivity schema in my head - an idea of how research is supposed to be done, what a real grad student is supposed to do, how much on a daily basis, etc. Then I got to go to a dazzling 5 day winter school where they somehow made school really fun (I think the free coffee breaks with cake, lunch, and dinner + wine every night helped a lot). They were all very congenial, there were no social hierarchies (despite diversity of academic experience and backgrounds), the pace and structure of the week was a brilliant combination of learning and leisure, and they enabled as much freedom of thought as possible, deviating far from any kind of institutional feeling. The lectures were exhilarating and the very first one talked about how messy the research process actually is, that rather than climbing up some marble staircase as our final works imply, it's full of unexpected turns, looking in the wrong places, and realizing things when you're doing the dishes or catching a bus. It was refreshing to hear that I wasn't an impostor, and that I can relax and let the research process unfold as it will, instead of trying to cram it into ideal boxes, failing, and consequently thinking I'm a failure or not good enough.
Now when I experience and reflect upon bewildering situations, I am starting to become aware of when I am disoriented -when my navigation system is in flux and/or failing. This heightens my attention to the context and what is going on - it helps me quiet my inner voice and listen. Its not just about learning something, but is also about learning how to learn - how to discover what is relevant and when. This has helped lift the depression and anxiety that I experienced in response to a comparison of how things are with how things should be (including myself) based on my mistakes. I needed to let go of a desire to control things and humbly embrace being clumsy. Laughing at myself helped a lot! Disorientation may be uncomfortable at times, but it is also the best time to learn and grow by shifting our attention to the present moment. It is a time to patiently await inspiration instead of rely on memory.
This blog has three endings that I couldn't reconcile in a logical sequential order, so it's more like a choose your own adventure, but they all have the same theme in that they were experiences that were mystically synchronistic with my mental models that emerged out of disorientation - namely, my models OF disorientation (this post). In other words, they are all happy endings.
Ending 1:
In the spirit of going with the flow, an ice sculpture dedicated to the Chinese year of the snake recently appeared in Tartu's town square.
Chinese New Year was on January 10th. More specifically, 2013 is the year of the water snake - I don't think I could imagine a better symbol for the theme of this post - a flexible organism going with the flow of its environment! I stuck a coin to the ice and contemplated making a wish. I decided not to in the spirit of awaiting what comes instead of imposing what I think I want.
Ending 2:
On the culture shock graph, you see the later part of the line called "new take off." After a few months of feeling disoriented, I started thinking things may never make sense again. Then, about a week before all of my grade-determining papers were due, we had a rare stretch of 5 days of sun. Everything started clicking for me and I suddenly knew how I was going to write those papers I'd been trying to figure out all semester. I had visited several different libraries, checked out countless books I wound up not using, traveled from topic to topic, and emailed/visited professors whose explanations (including the same professor explaining a paper about 10 different times) would change my entire idea of what I thought I was supposed to do based on their previous explanation (also a problem of our different cultural/linguistic backgrounds). I felt newly inspired, as if I suddenly woke up and started living. It felt like redemption. Then, to top it all off, as I was strolling across the pedestrian bridge during one of those special sunny days, I spontaneously stopped to photo some birds on the frozen river. As soon as I went to take it, they took off toward me. I smiled because I felt like I was finally taking off, too.
Ending 3:
Around New Year's I stuck a bunch of colorful sticky notes with positive messages on them to the gray wall above my desk. They did wonders to brighten my mood, especially the phrase at eye level that read, "Everything will be okay." One morning after finishing my last big paper of the semester, I noticed that the "okay" had fallen from the series. I decided to leave it, because it couldn't be more appropriate to where I was at.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Merry Christmas!
Today is Christmas for the Orthodox Christian world, and this morning is a glimmer of peace, inside and out. It is a peace that feels both melancholy and joyous - letting both feelings coexist without disturbance. The sun peeks out from behind lighthearted clouds. Small, delicate snowflakes fall gently from the sky, lingering in the silvery opaque sunlight. Their slow movements and ample spacing remind me of floating dandelion seeds, which seem to slow time down and make me feel like I'm in a fairy tale. Now the clouds have cleared the sun's path and it softly colors the frozen world gleaming. The ambiance feels like atemporal hope - the essence of possibility behind all dynamics, silently but powerfully bearing its own mode of existence.
Last night I enjoyed a magical Christmas Eve. My Georgian flatmate, Eto, prepared a traditional Christmas dish of baked fillo dough folded over cheese and halved hard-boiled eggs. It was a salty, flaky dream. We shared a few thoughts and stories about the ineffable aspects of life that compel us to believe in something. Her stories reminded me of how easily I forget those very special moments in life when everything makes sense without answers. Then I prepared peanut butter cookies, because in addition to being associated with Americans, peanut butter appears to be rare on this side of the Atlantic. My roommate, Tanya, returned later from being home in Latvia for the winter holiday. It was nice to have her back. She has become a sister to me. Our similar struggles and goals help me feel the least estranged around her. I am so grateful that I have found a roommate who is also the person with whom I feel the most comfortable, and who is also a first-year Master's student in semiotics. She shared her grandmother's Russian secrets for the occasion, which involved fortune telling, ending the night with a playful exploration of the mysterious power of belief.
A picture of this morning - the snowflakes are too small and far apart for the camera to catch.
Last night I enjoyed a magical Christmas Eve. My Georgian flatmate, Eto, prepared a traditional Christmas dish of baked fillo dough folded over cheese and halved hard-boiled eggs. It was a salty, flaky dream. We shared a few thoughts and stories about the ineffable aspects of life that compel us to believe in something. Her stories reminded me of how easily I forget those very special moments in life when everything makes sense without answers. Then I prepared peanut butter cookies, because in addition to being associated with Americans, peanut butter appears to be rare on this side of the Atlantic. My roommate, Tanya, returned later from being home in Latvia for the winter holiday. It was nice to have her back. She has become a sister to me. Our similar struggles and goals help me feel the least estranged around her. I am so grateful that I have found a roommate who is also the person with whom I feel the most comfortable, and who is also a first-year Master's student in semiotics. She shared her grandmother's Russian secrets for the occasion, which involved fortune telling, ending the night with a playful exploration of the mysterious power of belief.
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