Classes began today. Prof. Quednau is teaching a class on the konkluda, or inferential, statistics. I went down with him a bit early to help set up -- he was supposed to be able to use a computer lab that is in the dormitory. When he arrived, however, the door was locked and when he spoke with the fellow the behind the desk (in such German as the fellow could speak), he was first informed that he was checking with the director and, after a long wait, was told that money would have to be paid. Eventually, we just met in an other room and went over the introductory materials without a computer and then used my computer to demonstrate a few basics about R.
For my second class, Prof. Quednau's wife had invited me to attend her class to speak about my Fulbright project. For a long part of the class, a fellow from Poland read from a paper he was writing, which was almost intolerably dull. But the rest of the class had a number of interesting and spirited discussions.
Around noon, I headed out from the dormitory and walked to the akademia domo -- about a mile and a half -- and fell in with a group that was about to go and look for a photo exposition about gypsy women. They believed it was at the museum, but when we checked there they said it wasn't there. So we walked to a tourist information center and the woman there gave us directions to another building that was on the other side of a little park. It was fun walking through the park which had birch trees, catalpa trees, maple trees and even a little gingko. The building had a sign in the door that mentioned the exposition, but when we got inside, it wasn't visible and there weren't any signs. We wandered around for a bit and eventually went upstairs. Still no signs. We encountered a cleaning-lady and she directed us to a door down the hallway. Inside there were two women. Luckily one of the party spoke Slovak and could ask about the exposition. One of the women left to get a key and, eventually, we got in to see the photographs. The photographer tries to capture portraits of gypsy women to help humanize them for people who don't see gypsies as people. They were quite interesting and rather touching.
Afterwards, we still had a few minutes before classes began, so I suggested we walk toward the old fort. The road we took led to a section of the fort where a police station and apartment buildings have been built up against the walls, so we couldn't see too much. Maybe tomorrow I'll go again and see if I can get inside the fort, or see it from another angle. Europeans are rather blase about old fortifications -- they are found all over Europe.
In the afternoon, I attended a class on instructional technology. The instructor hoped to cover some basic terminology and then move on with her agenda. It turned out, however, that just dealing with basic terminology resulted in a very interesting discussion about differences in perspective regarding education in various different countries in Europe. Several educational practices are relatively unknown in the United States and the instructor made a variety of distinctions in language (not part of her terminology -- just distinctions in her descriptions that didn't make sense from a US point of view) that led my discovering some interesting differences in perspective between US education and European education. The instructor got a bit tense that we were spending so much time just going over basic terminology. This instructor is Slovak and so I thought to ask her about trying to telephone home, but she wasn't helpful. I'll try asking someone else tomorrow.
Afterwards, I was at loose ends. I walked about a bit more and got a bite to eat in a local restaurant. I had intended to get a gyro, but they were out of gyros, so I got a cheeseburger. It turns out that a "cheeseburger" is a wide, breaded cheese stick. It was fine and, by that point, I was starving. I went back to the akademia domo and listened to another talk... I thought about attending a second talk, but then I noticed that it was going to be in Slovak and decided there was no point in that. So I walked home and had a couple of bottles of beer. A good first day of classes. Now I'm ready to rest.