Dober Dan...

Last night I was exhausted. The Slovene language swirls around me all day – I sit in my office and listen to people discuss, shout (excitement, anger?), shriek and giggle. My brain processes these sounds and listens for words it understands (prosim (please/excuse me), Hvala (thank you), Dober Dan (hello/good day) plus few others..). Slovene is a difficult language. I feel incredibly illiterate in the face of these people who speak English, German, Slovene, Italian and often French. It is good to be in the minority, to be in a different culture and place – but at times I miss understanding the conversations that go on about me…

The faculty here are excellent. They all conduct interesting research and are highly published. I attended a diploma defense – which is essentially a senior thesis defense. The young woman had cataloged the neuropterans in the collection and mapped the range of each family. She seemed fairly knowledgeable when grilled by the 3-person committee. Her study was impressively hard bound and formally signed by everyone on the committee. The best part was that her mother brought bread, meat, cheese and wine for everyone for after the defense (it was 10:00 in the morning). I lectured right after the defense feeling fine! This event inspires me to work with my Unity colleagues to improve our thesis program – we could use more consistency in quality and type of project, and, most importantly, we could really use a nice party afterwards to celebrate!