The fire alarm goes off in the building during break. Iveta sticks her head out and says, "What did you do people?"

Iveta is crazy! :) We have a few pages of Ivetaisms (although most of them only make sense if you know Iveta).

Well, hello from Utrecht! I realized today that I haven't updated since I left Berlin! Shame on me! :)

So, I am in Utrecht! :) We got in on Monday afternoon and checked in and all that jazz. Our hostel is amazing!! I love it. It is very homey and welcoming. Plus they have a garden and a great place to hang out downstairs where you can get coffee and tea and stuff cheaply! :) The only drawback is that we are in close quarters. I am rooming with 3 other people in a tiny room and will have to move into an eight person room halfway through. But it is a nice hostel.

I LOVE Utrecht. It is a much smaller town then Berlin and is a refreshing change. There are trees and canals and coffee shops everywhere. Plus, the weather is gorgeous! It has been in the 60s and 70s all week, though it did rain a little.

Our classes are more spread out here, so I haven't been to too many lectures yet, though we did have one yesterday on diversity in the women's movement in the Netherlands. It was fairly interesting. We have also had two classes, but my brain is too fried right now to go into any details for that.

Now we have a four day weekend ahead! I'm not sure how that happened, but it will be so nice! I think Julie and I might take a short trip somewhere. I hope we can go to a tiny town somewhere.

Ugh! My procrastination is catching up with me! I have so much work to do now! :) Being in a foreign country makes me not want to do anything but explore . . .

Oh well, just wanted to check in.

Love you all!

Jennifer

Hallo!

Well, it´s almost time for "goodbye Berlin" as our site coordinator put it. :( I will miss Berlin. It is a great city.

So hmmmmmmmm what has happened in the last few days? Oh, one of our lectures on Thursday was with a sex worker at her apartment. It was about prostitution laws and was so interesting. We also had a lecture on Fri. about the history of Jews in Germany since WWII, as well as what organizations are doing what now. It was a really good lecture. I also got an interview on Friday! YAY! I still only have two interviews for Germany, though. Ugh, I don´t know what I am going to do about that.

Last night, Julie dragged me to see the new Pride and Prejudice movie with her. It was actually shot well and cast well, but I am not a huge Jane Austen fan.

Today, I went to a Picasso exhibit, which was way cool. It was a biographical account of his life through his works, and it had over a hundred paintings and etchings. I also went to the other exhibits at the museum. I loved the way part of it was setup--there were these rooms made out of huge red blocks that you could see from the outside. That´s a really bad description, but I did take an illegal photo or two. I also went to the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. It´s really interesting but simple. It´s made up of these huge stone blocks that resemble graves and covers a city block. When you walk into the middle of it, you can´t see over the top, which is supposed to symbolize how disorienting it was for people to be taken from their homes. The walkways in it are intentionally hilly. It was very cool. On a side note, I am completely oblivious. Someone told me the memorial was down the street just a little ways. After walking for a while, I thought that maybe I had gone too far. I ask someone, and he says it is back the other direction. so I start walking back. It was just freaking on the other side of the street! I missed a CITY BLOCK SIZE memorial because it was on the other side of the street, and I was paying more attention to what a fall-like day it was than to where I was going. :)

Well, I have to be at the train station at 8:10 tomorrow, so perhaps I should go. Love ya!

Jennifer

Bonjour! :) hehe

Hello.

Now for the rundown of weekend events. :) Well, let's see . . . I don't think I did much on Friday night . . . my roommate and I kind of just stayed at home, although we did get this amazing food from a greek deli. On Saturday, we went to see a movie at the Sony Center--we saw The Brother's Grimm, which was pretty good. It was really nice to see a movie because it's been a while. Then we went to a jazz club. In our guidebook, it said it was "reasonably priced." When we got there, we realized it had changed hands and was rather pricy (we ended up paying 50 dollars with food and cover and a drink). However, the concert was awesome. The lead was a jazz/soul singer named Vanessa Mason, who had won the German equivalent of a Grammy. She was really good, and the band that played with her was also excellent. Yesterday, I mostly hung out around our homestay, but we did go out for a late dinner, and then ended up at a different jazz club/pub, though we didn't stay out too late (It was a school night! ;). Today, we had a lecture at this really cool women's center called Paula Panke. They do social work as well as provide self-help and yoga classes, and they also put on art exhibits with women's work. It was really cool. Plus, in the lecture, they ended up on the subject of what it was like when the wall came down, which was really interesting since most of them were on the Eastern side of the wall. They all have positive and negative things to say about communism. For instance, women were given equality in theory--such as full employment, free childcare, access to contraceptives, and abortion rights, although in actuality women did end up with the "double burden" of traditional gender roles. That is, they were fully employed, and then still expected to do housework, much like in a number of countries. However, under communism, only certain people could get more education, travel was restricted, goods were not available. . . I wish we could figure out a way to use socialism responsibly . . . But for most of these women, it was a really positive thing when the wall came down because they had so many more oppurtunities. One woman, however, was talking about how she was 57 when the wall came down, and she lost her job and was not able to get another.

Then this afternoon we had a class. For all our classes, we have an article (or several) to read. Most of them we have already read and wrote papers on. Today, our article was "Whiteness and European Situatedness," and I was one of the faciliators for the discussion. Basically, the article was about how most white Europeans and white Americans view whiteness as "normal" . . . and learning to look at it as its own color . . . basically, learning to think about whiteness and the implications that has for the way we view other people. Europe has had a history of not acknowledging discrimination. The US has too, but the black/white discourse has become at least a little more central . . . which in its own way is problematic . . . I think we create a dicotomy, where anyone who doesn't fit in "black or white" gets left out . . . which is problematic considering how diverse our nation is . . . in Texas, obviosly we have a large hispanic population, and there is racial tension there, but most of the time, that is left out of academic discourse. Although, as one of my friends pointed out, the goal shouldn't be to create a sort of hierarchy of reversing discrimination . . . that is, we shouldn't stop trying to solve black american issues to solve hispanic issues or asian issues or whatever . . . or qualify who has been discriminated against the worst . . . the question is, how can we move beyond looking at race as something that divides? . . . how can we move beyond race as something that is biologically constructed, when, for the most part, it is socially constructed? In Europe, they are having similar problems . . . For instance, I've heard a great deal said about differences between new migrants and idigenous people, but obviously there are people in between that who get left out.

The frustrating thing about this trip is we are continously faced with what is messed up in the world but not with any sort of solution. I guess it's our job to become part of the solution, as cliche as that is . . .

Jennifer

"oh God, she's home."

This was my roommate's reaction to our homestay host coming home. :) Our host is actually pretty nice, but she is a little intense.

Today Julie and I went to this absolutely HUGE book/CD/DVD store. When I say huge, I mean like 5 levels. It was amazing. Of course, we did spend way too much time (and money) there, but it was a great store. :) And they actually did have books in English, so I had to buy one. of course. I bought Village Incognito by Tom Robbins. I've never read a book by him, but I hear he is good.

We also hit a couple of thrift stores. I bought 3 scarves for only 1.50 euros. And I bought a skirt that was five euros that I am going to turn into a purse. YAY new project. :)

We also had a lecture today. It was about the German feminism movement, which in a sense is nonexistent. That is, there are many feminist projects, groups, and women in politics, but because of the different ideologies between eastern and western Germany, a unified "movement" as such isn't happening. But there is still a great deal of women's projects, as I said. For instance, there is an area of Berlin (where we had a lecture the other day) where all the shops and businesses have to be owned by women. I thought that was kinda cool. It's so interesting learning the different forms that feminism takes in different countries. For instance, in Czech, feminists are not so apt to push full employment for all women because most women were employed under communism and it did not equal emancipation, an idea that is often pushed by feminists in the US. It is also interesting to learn about how communism worked in practice because there are both positive and negative aspects. . .

Anyway, I should run. I am getting kind of hungry.

Jennifer

"You must learn to breathe through your vagina . . . "

Need I say that our director is a bit crazy? :)

Well, here I am writing again. I got to my homestay fine last night, although I ended up being in a different one then I was assigned to. I was supposed to stay by myself in a homestay, but ended up with another student. Our homestay person's name is Mahida, and she is kinda crazy and fun. She doesn't know a whole bunch of English, but she does know sexual terms (as she showed when pointing out the 'clitoris' of a key and the 'nipple' of the door). She is also convinced that the person I am rooming with and I are lesbians and in a relationship (and in denial about being lesbians). There is also a window between the bathroom and the kitchen, which we will soon remedy with a piece of cloth. Anyway, it should be an interesting homestay.

So, today we had a class about trafficking and people in Germany. For those of you who don't know exactly what that is (and I only had a small idea about that before I left), trafficking is when a person agrees to migrate to somewhere else (usually to another country) on certain terms (ie will have a specific job with certain pay and benefits) and then is exploited when they get to where they are going (such as horrible pay and working conditions). This can be associated with sexual work, but it is not limited to that. We have had a lecture on trafficking in each country, but today's was the most well-thought out. I enjoyed it.

So to answer Dad's question (see comment on last post). . . This trip is, obviously, focused on women's studies. We have four classes. One is an independent research project, for which we are interviewing people in several countries. One of the classes is called Situated Feminims. For that class, we write a paper before we enter a country. The first paragraph has to be before we read anything about a the country--about our expectations. Then the rest of the paper is written after we read material. Then we write a paper as we leave a country to compare to our expectations and other countries. Also, all the lectures we are getting from people in each country are for this class. Then we have Feminist Methodologies and Comparative Theories. We read all the material and wrote papers on these before we left, and then we are having classes on the material here. We can also rewrite our papers. And that is all our classes. But we have a lecture almost everyday, and classes 2-3 times a week. It's not as academically demanding as it is at home, but that is because we are having to navigate another country with another language, etc.

So, tonight we are going to grab some dinner, and then head home, I guess. I need to read for our class tomorrow.

Anyway! Gute nacht!

Jennifer

Hallo!

Hello!

Well, as I said, I am in Berlin, but I would like to catch you up on Praha first.

I really enjoyed Praha. The city was so beautiful! The only problem I had with it was it was extrememly touristy. Of course, all of us on this trip are trying to figure out what our role is--student or tourist? I think most of the time we are all a little of both. Regardless, too much "touristy" stuff is annoying.

Well, what did I do in Praha? I went to the Franz Kafka museum with Julie. I thoroughly enjoyed it because it was kind of . . . mystical? That's not the right word. . . it was just very other-wordly (yay for made-up words), mysterious, and a little creepy. However, it did, unfortunately, freak Julie out a bit.

I also spent some time in old town, which is extremely touristy. I haven't heard that much of a concentration of English speakers since I left the Chicago airport. But it is beautiful, and I did end up buying some stuff there.

I also took a walking tour of Praha with the group. We walked along the river and went up to the castle. The castle is massive, of course, and up a winding hill. Our director Iveta, who is from Czech, has this theory that a city in Europe isn't really a city unless it has a castle on top of a windy road. (Praha, of course, qualifies. Berlin does not.) She's funny.

I also visited a few churches, but they were kind of touristy as well.

The lady we stayed with was fun, as I said earlier. She lived in the states for quite a while, actually, mostly doing PR work for Amnesty International. She now works in Praha doing PR work for a theater company.

Well, that's about all I did in Praha, except for classes, of course. I spent a lot of time at our homestay because it was so nice.

Now I am in Berlin, trying to get my bearings again. I can't believe this trip is almost halfway done! Eek! It has been crazy and draining at times, but also a truly awesome experience.

Jennifer

hey

Hey all!

Well, I don't have much time to write (again), but I am in Berlin! We just got here today, and I am exhausted! The train ride was short, though--only five hours!

We are staying in a hotel tonight, and tomorrow we go to our homestays. I'm a little nervous because I am staying by myself with someone! Eek. :)

Anyway, just wanted to check in. Hopefully, I'll be able to write more soon since we will be in Berlin for about two weeks.

Love ya!

Jennifer

Ahoy!

So, hello (informally) in Czech is Ahoy! :) That's fun.

Well, obviously I am in Prague (which is actualy Praha). The trip here wasn't too bad--only nine hours this time with a short layover.

I REALLY like Praha. It is a beautiful city, with a river (the charles river, I think) running right through the middle of it. It also has two beautiful castles. The architecture is amazing! :)

Our "homestays" are awesome, too. I am staying with a girl named Rachel, and we have a place to ourselves. This crazy lady named Eva is our "homestay mom," but she is staying with her boyfriend. We have a kitchen, a balcony, and a wall full of books, 2/3 of which are in English. It is a nice apartment. :)

Nonetheless, there is a lot going on right now, which is really challenging our group.

Sorry, my internet is about to run out! need to go!

Jennifer