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world travelin'
Sep. 13th, 2011 01:05 amI'm in Bulgaria!
This is for RANLP, which is pretty interesting. There's been some interesting talks so far, but of course the most interesting bit is the Hallway Track.
On the way out here, I spent a really long time in the Toronto airport. This would have been kind of unpleasant, except Ryan (formerly Lloyd) came to visit me, and it was amazing! I so rarely get to see him, so several hours to hang out with him and catch up were really appreciated, and got me pumped up for the rest of the trip, and for the conference. It sounds like Janice might do Teach for America, and so they might move back to the States, which would be OK because he's dissertating soon.
And now I'm in Bulgaria. I should have done more research before showing up -- I didn't know that there's a local currency here -- it was kind of surprising when something other than Euros came out of the ATM in the airport. In my defense, the conference organizers sent out email that was like "NB, when you register, you'll pay for it in Euros..."
Bulgarian sounds, and looks, to my untrained brain, like Russian -- it's done in the Cyrillic alphabet, and I hear "da" and "nyet", and some of the same phonemes. It's not mutually intelligible, though, although apparently a lot of Bulgarians also know Russian, just due to the Soviet dominance until recently. (Bulgaria was in the Communist Bloc, but never part of the USSR as such) . There are a lot of signs in Engish, though, and some in Bulgarian with Roman characters. Things aren't particularly upscale here -- the hotel rooms are really spartan, and the buildings look really sturdy but kind of unmaintained.
The weirdest thing has been the American culture here -- on the shuttle over, there was The Backstreet Boys on the radio. The hotel has posters of Tupac and Elvis (and Haddaway!) and at dinner they have videos of Tony Bennett and Louis Armstrong in the background.
The other striking maybe-pattern I've noticed: revealing pictures of women in public places. On the menu at the restaurant where we had lunch, actually, next to the pictures of appetizers, a woman looking all sultry in a bikini. The Poster Room, as we've started calling it, has at least one lady lounging suggestively (pretty much nude) on the beach. Actually, the conference dinner, after the Bulgarian Folk Dancing (which was amazing!!), there were some pretty suggestive dancers in some pretty skimpy costumes. I could see this making people uncomfortable. Sandra remarked "where are the guys, for me?!"
Giving my poster tomorrow -- it's OK, I guess, but it's honestly only so exciting. I need to do more work faster: maybe I should stop taking classes and traveling to Eastern Europe for a week at a time, huh?
This is for RANLP, which is pretty interesting. There's been some interesting talks so far, but of course the most interesting bit is the Hallway Track.
On the way out here, I spent a really long time in the Toronto airport. This would have been kind of unpleasant, except Ryan (formerly Lloyd) came to visit me, and it was amazing! I so rarely get to see him, so several hours to hang out with him and catch up were really appreciated, and got me pumped up for the rest of the trip, and for the conference. It sounds like Janice might do Teach for America, and so they might move back to the States, which would be OK because he's dissertating soon.
And now I'm in Bulgaria. I should have done more research before showing up -- I didn't know that there's a local currency here -- it was kind of surprising when something other than Euros came out of the ATM in the airport. In my defense, the conference organizers sent out email that was like "NB, when you register, you'll pay for it in Euros..."
Bulgarian sounds, and looks, to my untrained brain, like Russian -- it's done in the Cyrillic alphabet, and I hear "da" and "nyet", and some of the same phonemes. It's not mutually intelligible, though, although apparently a lot of Bulgarians also know Russian, just due to the Soviet dominance until recently. (Bulgaria was in the Communist Bloc, but never part of the USSR as such) . There are a lot of signs in Engish, though, and some in Bulgarian with Roman characters. Things aren't particularly upscale here -- the hotel rooms are really spartan, and the buildings look really sturdy but kind of unmaintained.
The weirdest thing has been the American culture here -- on the shuttle over, there was The Backstreet Boys on the radio. The hotel has posters of Tupac and Elvis (and Haddaway!) and at dinner they have videos of Tony Bennett and Louis Armstrong in the background.
The other striking maybe-pattern I've noticed: revealing pictures of women in public places. On the menu at the restaurant where we had lunch, actually, next to the pictures of appetizers, a woman looking all sultry in a bikini. The Poster Room, as we've started calling it, has at least one lady lounging suggestively (pretty much nude) on the beach. Actually, the conference dinner, after the Bulgarian Folk Dancing (which was amazing!!), there were some pretty suggestive dancers in some pretty skimpy costumes. I could see this making people uncomfortable. Sandra remarked "where are the guys, for me?!"
Giving my poster tomorrow -- it's OK, I guess, but it's honestly only so exciting. I need to do more work faster: maybe I should stop taking classes and traveling to Eastern Europe for a week at a time, huh?
