I was able to get a network connection for a few minutes this morning during Prof. Quednau's statistics class. We were able to get into the computer lab and found a room with a bunch of PCs with Windows XP and a good network connection.
Now class is over and it's time to move on to other things. Hopefully, we'll be able to get back in here and I'll be able to check my email and update my journal every day.
When I got on the net this morning, I learned some bad news from home. It turns out we won't be having another child in April. After morning classes, I grabbed lunch and then walked to the akademia domo where I got directions to the Slovak Telecom office. When I got there, I found that none of the employees spoke English, but luckily there was a customer who spoke a few words and was able to help translate. He helped me get a 200 krono (about $6) calling card, showed me how to scratch off the covering over the number, and showed me how to recognize which phones are the ones where you can make international calls. Then I had to type in a long telephone number to get to an automated system that could be made to operated in English so I could make my call -- it gave me 13 minutes and I was able to get through to Alisa before she went to the hospital. It was nice to chat and hear that she's in good spirits. I got to talk to Lucy and to the boys each for a couple of minutes too. Charlie informed me that he had gotten a mammoth skull and had put it in his gyroid for me so that I would be finish the fossil collection in my town in Animal Crossing when I get back.
I've noticed a couple of small observations about Slovakia. People don't make eye contact with you on the street. If you look at people, they either won't look at you, or they stare back at you like you're offending them or something. It's rather odd. People also don't smile at strangers here. Another thing I've noticed is that all of the toilets run all the time. I would hate to have the water bill for the building we're in right now. I don't know what it is: maybe the systems are intentionally designed to leak continuously, but you can always here water running in all of the toilets.
It's been very interesting to participate in the classes -- especially the education classes. Educators begin from a largely different theoretical basis here, which provides a useful opportunity for me to re-examine my own philosophical and epistemological commitments regarding how I ground and come to understand pedagogy. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the theoretical frameworks being presented -- indeed I think that a number of their assumptions need to be challenged, but it's simply interesting to learn that people make fundamentally different assumptions about teaching here.
In the evening, there were departmental meetings of the Akademio, to elect officers and vote on proposals. I was nominated and confirmed as an Asistanta Docento, which is kind of like an Assistant Professor and was elected to be the vice-chair of the biology sekcio of the natural science sektoro. Again, its interesting to come to understand different perspectives on how an academic enterprise operates.