Poland sans pression

It's hard having nothing to do. When you're really busy with things you need to accomplish as soon as possible, it's easy to idealise having simply nothing, when in actual fact, it's rather tiresome (at least in terms of the amount of cat-style yawns)! The problem is, you can't do nothing: you have to constantly find something. …

A happy, rainy day in April

How did you manage to import the weather too?! Ok, so that joke may have been said one too many times last Friday, but  apart from the eventual arrival of April showers in Warsaw, the UK national day at the College really couldn't have worked out better. The day began with a full English (what …

April Fools

When you think it's all going to start calming down, the world always knows how to drop a bombshell. Or two. Or even several... With the announcement of the General Election in June, I'm gaining yet another new experience: voting by proxy. It's not much time; calculating based on my experience with post from Poland to make …

8 days, 3 Countries, 1 study trip and a lot of fun

So, my camera arrived! I am still astounded by the generosity of 'Hip' (their term, not mine) Mistral Cafe who sent it all the way back to Poland. It's amazing the faith in humanity travelling can restore for you. As the College split into 4 groups, heading to Georgia/Armenia, Belgium/Luxembourg, the Baltic and of course the Visegrad, …

A journey ends and more begin…

It's still pretty sunny here, which although unexpected is certainly very welcome! I should perhaps heed Claude though when he keeps recounting a wise phrase , "En avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil. Mais En mai, fais ce qu'il te plaît" which roughly means that in April, don't take off your coat (you don't know when it …

Suddenly it’s Spring

Time is flying here. Two weeks ago I left a somewhat chilly Warsaw (a period of warmer weather had melted the snow but this had quickly refrozen into very effective ice rinks around campus) and headed to Brussels. Four countries and two weeks later and it's looking very much like the wintry weather is gone for good. …

The Return

So much for regular blog posts. It's slightly ironic that as life gets most exciting there is less time to think about what's happening, or even to record it. Then again, I probably could have found time for a slightly shorter blog post, so I do apologise for not writing earlier. Life in Warsaw has taken a bit …

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans

That’s it. The end of the first term. If you had told me 6-months ago today I’d be where I am today, after everything that’s happened since, I’d never have believed you. This year has been incredible, painful and fascinating all at once. Many ups have been counterbalanced by a great deal of downs. Huge …

Snow is falling, all around me…

Really. And it's beautiful. It's always a funny time of year though, with lots of ups and downs. Expectations, combined with that inevitable urge to hibernate in light of the changing season, often create a rather mixed bag of emotions and experiences. It's a good time to realise what really matters though and, despite all the …

The Offensive-Defensive

My last post talked rather a lot about nationality and how we are always trying to define ourselves by the other. This phenomenon seems to be increasing with nationalistic rhetoric growing in many countries, in spite of globalisation. The trouble is, once you have that identity, you can immediately begin identifying threats to it. Perhaps more worryingly therefore, is how rhetoric has been …