Getting the US visa

"Visa is a really bad thing, there is a bad word for that" - told once my friend - "remove all borders, remove all borders please" - contunued.

I totally agree with that statement and I am thinking why countries are issuing visas? Only one answer is - money!

Well how it was with me. I had to take a train from Wroclaw to Krakow, because over there was a consulate. I went out home at 1 am, I got to train station where I was waiting almost one hour. Then I got into the train, where of course there was no places, only on corridor. So I was over there watching people who were fighting with themselfs. Well train had delay because in almost all stations police were coming, until finally they kick few people out of the train.

Coming to Krakow

Finally Krakow - I like this city, but I was a bit afraid to go there, becasue always when I am coming back I am totally sick! Anyway, this time I am still feeling OK.
I went to american consulate, there was a lot of people standing in front of the door. I came there and ask if I can come in when I still have around 30 min to my appointment. What I got to know that I have to join to the huge group of people standing in the opposite side of the street - there were some consulate emloyees who ON THE STREET were checking all the documents and giving numbers - I really couldn't believe of such a treatment.

Waiting, waiting and one more waiting

There was to much waiting, at first long time to scan my fingersprints and then waiting for a meeting with consul. Yhe waiting room was very small and very cold. There was not enough places for all the people and all the time someone were comming to say that people cannot go out from the room. I was at first sleeping a bit, then chatting with people. There were only or young or very old people. What surprised me it was that people was scared!

Meeting with Consul

Finally after long waiting I have heard my name. I went to other room where there was one person sitting in the small box, there was a window between us and we both were talking to microphone. "Hello, how are you" he started, he asked me why I want to go to US, and what I want to study; I answer shortly, he add that it will be interesting for me because of elections and he said that I am qualify for the visa and I will get my passport in 5 days. Thats all the meeting take like 5 minutes.


Ehhhh it took me one whole day to get there and come back just to have 5 minutes conversation with consul.

And someting about costs:

Travel to Krakow and back: 60 PLN
Fee for a meeting: 300 PLN
SEVIS fee: 250 PLN
Calling consulate: 20 PLN
Photo: 16 PLN
DHL fee: 23 PLN

TOTAL: 669 PLN what is about 200 euro!

Last minute - only one possibility

You might think that I will write about "last minute" as the only one option to go finally for my holidays - thats of course true, but that's not what I mean.

"Last minute" thats the way of leaving. Why? I am asking myself simple questions and there is only one answer - last minute.

1. When do I send applications for new projects - always last minute (fortunately the post-office on market place in Wroclaw is open 24h
2. When do I go to my exmas - of course last minute (if it's not to late)
3. When do I send personal documents (like insurence...) - last minute
4. When do I pack myself when I am traveliing - last minute
5. When do I charge my mobile, computer and other stuff - last minute
6. When do I realize that I have to do something - last minute
7. When do I catch plane - last minute
8. even when do I think - always last minute :)

and so one... there are a lot of examples. I cannot do anything earlier. It makes my life very fast, stressfull and active. I don't like last minute, I want to stop that, but - well I guess it is impossible

I need holidays

I need holidays sooo much. It doesn't matter that one month ago I came back from Jordan. This month was so intensive that I have to chill out and have a rest. So whats the plan?

1. Things to do before holidays

- pass all the exams
- get US visa and buy ticket to US
- write to final reports after youth exchanges
- prepare publication after project Time for Dialogue
- write final report after POKL project (from my work)
- be sure that I finished my work, clear my desk and made a final party
- write two new projects of youth exchanges - one in Spain (Malaga) and second in Latvia

well... looks not so easy, but after completing everything connetced with studies everything else seems like fun to me

2. Ideas for holidays

Since one week with my friend we are thinking what to do. One of the most often coming back idea is trip to Egypt, but we wanted also to go somewhere to the lake in Poland for camping, to go to Mano Chao concert in Wroclaw, hitch-hike to Paris, hitch-hike to Malaga, fly to Malaga, somehow move to Lisbon to find nice concert over there, and I have also promissed one of my firends from Latvia to visit her over there...

3. Trip to Egypt - is it realistic?

Yes it is... once with Ania we said, why not? and since then we keep looking for some nice offers. The plan is to find last minute - go there for 2 weeks and try to move all around Egypt. All of my friends know that our final destination will be Alex of course (Alexandria - city on Mediterranean sea). So how the preparations are going on? we were looking for last minutes, charters and normal flights. People last minutes is something amazing! it took me a lot of time, but I have found 2* hotel for two weeks with breakfasts and dinners and flight of course for 860 PLN what is 250 EURO! I am not sure if in this date we are interested this prize will be avaiable but we will see.

4. What is my dream holidays?

Spontaneous... I don't want to plan. I just have some golas, things I have to do being in Egypt, but when, how, it doesn't matter. So what are those things?

a) I want to ride a camel - I know maybe it's funny and typical, but I always wanted to do this
b) shopping in Cairo - well there is one scarf I really want to have:) I just want to have time and spend one day for shopping (the whole day)
c) Swim in meda and red sea.
d) Spend one night in JIJI in ALEX, from sunset to sunrise! I want to see them both one night
e) Make sightseeing trip one day - which main rule will be: don't take any map, don't look for monuments, go wherever you want to, and look for interesitng places by yourself
f) make one reunion party, with as many people as possible
g) tougch Abdallah's hair
h) don't be in hurry, don't rush, take time for youself, if you want to spend more time in the bathroom - spend it, if you want to wear makeup - wear it, if you don't want to - don't do it. Feel free
i) and the last think - I am looking foreward for many interesting conversation with people about politics, life, habbits, differencies, culture, everyday life

Well - there is one more thing, I want to do it spontaneous, I want to have some small globetrepping trip, because I want to check how it is to travel with Ania, we are planning one year trip to Asia soon, and before that I just want to check her:)

ending

I am really courious what will happened? if I would have my dream holidays?

My theory of being homeless

Since long time already I am jocking that I am homeless. And I really believe it. How do I understand this term "homeless"? Thats the person who doesn't have home and is sleeping in different shelters or in the fresh air. For me being homeless is the situation when you have hause, or some place in any building but you don't have home.

Am I homeless? you can judge it yourself.

Starting from my sleeping place - well I have place to sleep, I have my bed, I have even my "own room". This place where I am sleeping quite often has one bed, one window, one desk, few closets. You can find there a lot of papers on the floor (my study materials), cloths mostly laying somewhere on the floor too. Wardrobe is always open, and cloths are hanging in it. I would say that I am using only things which are on the floor, rest... well I have no idea where is what. In all the closets you can find some wired toys from my childhood, cloths from times when I was 120 cm and much smaller, and some things which are only taking place. I dont remember when I lastly done my bed. I even don't have any sheet, and I am sleeping under the blanket.

How much time do I spend there in my "house"

I am working, studying, doing some voluntary work, organizing different stuff, answering a lot of phone calls, travelling - let's say I don't have time for anything. My typical day looks like that I am going out at 7am, at 8 I am already in the office, I am starting my day in the office from make-up and then breakfest. I am finishing my work at 4 pm. "Finishing" ! because usually I am staying there much longer. Mostly in the evening I have some meetings (either working in the bar on new project, either organizing film festival or simply I just want to dring a beer). Because my "place for sleeping" is quite far from everywhere. Because of that it is not worth to come back to this place during the day... and sometimes during nights too.

Places for sleeping

My motto is "you can sleep everywhere". This is very practical, especially if you normally don't have a lot of time for sleeping. In past few years I follow my motto. Quite often I used my friends flats, then of course offices (different kind of), university (I can recommand staircase), train stations (including Wrocław PKP), airports (in Amsterdam they have even beds), parks, bars, cinema and many others.

There are two my favourite places: first one it was really nice park in the city center of Lubljana. We hitch-hike with few friends over there, very spontaniusly and we didn't have any place. We bought some alkohol to warm up, we went to see nice concert and then we went around the city to find a nice place to spleep. And we found it. It was very nice park, and we were sleeping under the tree which was almost like a tent. Just in the morning there was a lot of people with dogs going around us:)

Second place it was cinema. It was kind of exciting because we broke in to the cinema. It was during film festival, and we were renting cinema - so it was not so illegal, we had keys, but I am not sure if we could be there. Well got into the place, it was not easy to force the door (even when we had keys), but finally we manage, just w couldn't close doors. Just in the morning people in the cinema were quite shocked.

Travelling

In my room in the corner there is a backpack. Still there are some cloths inside. I have also beautician already packed. It looks like this because I am travelling a lot. Sometimes I can go in 3 different places during one month. I already wrote how exhausting it might be, but also there are once more a lot of places to live, new roomates. Right now I am preparing myself for leaving in one place for 4 months! (of course abroad) and I think it is long enough to prepare a cosy place... what can I take to my new room?

Ending

I don't know if you also think that I am homeless, I feel like that. Sometimes I am dreaming to have place and time to make some cosy place, to invite friends over, organize party or just chill out. Maybe someday I will find this place...

Best practicies

If you are planing the life like that, always on the way, always in hurry remember about some important things.

1. Always have tooth-brush in every bag (you never know when you will need it, and bags you are changing quite often);
2. Buy a small and light laptop - you never know which data you will need, having laptop always with you is very useful;
3. You have to feel good, if you feel like stinking find place where you can take a shower - don't be shy, you can always call your friends, it wont be a problem if you will use a bit of theis shampoon
4. If you need clean cloths borrow or buy them:)

wish you all the best...

Open Your Borders It's Time for Dialogue

"Open the Borders, it's Time for Dialogue" - this beautiful quote were singing participants of the project I have done in Wroclaw (Poland) in April 2008. I like this quote even more now, it gain for me new meaning, deeper one, more personal.

The first idea behind this quote was to speak up about problems we faced while preparing for exchange. We wanted to make euro-med youth exchange about intercultural dialogue; we have invited people from 6 countries (3 EU and 3 meda) and we were so close not to have our time for dialogue, because people from meda countries couldn't get visa. We were fighting for 2 months with administration, finally the group from Egypt didn't come and group from Jordan got visa in the last moment, one guy went to the embassy in the day when he flew to Poland.

But there is something more then just the borders we cannot cross because of visa. To have intercultural dialogue we need to cross our personal, mental borders. What's that?

1. Lack of knowledge about "others"
2. Personal stereotypes
3. Prejustices
4. Being ashamed of asking
5. Lack of patient and forbearance
6. Being self-oriented

I realized plenty of times that intercultural dialogue is not easy. When you are meeting someone cultural different from you, first days are amazing, you are learning each other, having fun. But later on you are starting freaking out, you don't know why. There might appear some situation, that you don't know why but you are getting into some conflicts with people. There are a lot of misunderstandings between people, which build conflicts. Most of us, instead of try to solve problems, they are building theories. Misunderstanding some behaviours of "others", some expressions and basing on this they are building the negative impression about this person.

Solution? Don't try to guess what other person think. Don't over-react! Respect what people are saying! OK, it was quite general and ideal, but from my personal experience if you are talking about something and it looks that conflict may appear or you feel that the second person doesn't understands you - DEFINE WORDS YOU ARE USING! and in what context they were used.

Be aware that if you say to someone "you are stupid" as a joke, for some it can be funny, but some can be really thought. And there is many other examples...

Open Your Borders, It's Time for Dialogue

elevator night

One of the purpose why I have started writing this blog is "save memories" mostly from my travels (I think that this word "travel" will appear in this blog quite often). I still haven't decided if I want to share those "saved moments" with my friends or not, we will see. Besides those moments are important for me, I will not say that they changed my life, but they were somehow enriching, funny, unforgettable and simply worth remember and sometimes come back to them.

One of those moments I would live to save is "elevator night" - the name was created just after "the moment" by it's participants. But let's start from the very beginning. I would say "elevator night" has started in the place called "beer garden" in Amman, Jordan. I was spending some amazing time over there with my friends. I enjoyed that evening because I have spent time with people I really wanted to spend time with, I had few interesting conversation for example about implementing communism in Palestine, I have found other traveller (pilot) with whom I was talking about our best journeys and I was helping him with bottle of vodka, ordered just for him. In gerenal, very nice evening.

We were coming back home as the last ones. I think we were around 12 people, all willing to continue the party. Because in Amman everything was already closed, we decided to move to hotel, to room number 309. We arrived to hotel, got out from the car and get into the elevator in order to continue party on the 3rd floor...

Door closed, elevator moved, then the information to which floor we are going, disappeared and we stucked in the elevator. I am trying to remind myself reaction of people. There was no panic in the very beginning, just all started screaming and calling to ensure that someone will take care about us. Fastly we came up with en idea to open the door to get more air. Ehab, guy from Palestine was communicating, rest was patient - very racional reaction.

Somehow the atmosphere wasn't that nice. In the beginning we was starting hugging and cooperating, but then there was rather feeling of stress around. I was hiding quite often and laughing a bit and I have seen a lot of people wanted, but "society" didn't accept such a behaviour, so we didn't. We were serious.

The crutial moment was when one person fainted. That moment I realized that situation might be somehow serious, but I was not afraid: from one side one guy explained how lifts are build and there is no way that something would happened, from the second hand we had 2 doctors with our.

I was very surprised with reaction of many people. One girl told that she will call her parents after getting out, and she was afraid that we might not get out, one guy was about to faine too, someone wanted just jug someone else.

In the meantime someone came to us. They were trying to lift elevator to the first floor, then put it down to the ground floor; sometimes light was disappearing.  Finally something had happened. Someone jumpped on the elevator and remove the ceiling. It was almost like in the movie "Die Hard". There were firemens and Jordanian Civil Defense forces telling: "give us hands, give us hands", and they were taking one by one out of the elevator. It this moment I gos scared. I really didn't want to go that way, I was thinking, maybe to wait until they will fix the lift. But finally my friends lifted me, then I catch someone's hands and went up. When I was standing on elevator there was not so much climbing anymore, I don't remember exackly how far was that, but far enough to get totally dirty.

When we got out finally - everyone was hugging us, supporting, like after the huge tragedy. There were firemans, jordanian civil defence forces, ambulance and even psychologist! Someone asked me if I am ok, I said: yes, they put something on my finger and said: "yes, you are fine". I didn't want to be over there. Someone was crying, people were in so bad moods, and I was just afraid what have we done! We were to much in this elevator.

But fun started in front of the hotel. We were taking photos with ambulance and with each other; we were just sitting and chilling out, that's what we really needed.

Night ended finally in 309, where we planned to go in the very beginning. Whole night we were sitting, chatting listening to music; being honets it was amazing time, and so integrating for us. We had to fight with our fears together, we needed to cooperate and be helpful for others. This episode change the whole project. We become elevator group hanging around together.

What was interesting: in the elevator there was 10 people, we had gender balance, but within this 10 people 5 of them were Poles!

I need to decide where to live

traveling... isn't it interesting, tempting, exciting... Of course it is, I am addicted to traveling, since I remember, and for sure since last 6-7 years I am traveling a lot. One day Warsaw, second Amsterdam, them maybe Philippines, but I cannot stay there longer after the training because I am starting another one somewhere in Poland and of course in the mean time I have few "important" meetings. I love this life. I do. Small problem is that Europe is a bit to usual for me right now and I need something more. I cannot get excited when I see something, even beautiful, even interesting, even when I have never seen it before. I am just going to another country, another place and feeling like at home, isn't it wired? The most important thing in travelling are people. Mostly I am attending or leading different seminars, youth exchanges or other type of meetings, which aims are: intercultural learning, dialogue between cultures and so one. So mostly I am going to different country to meet people. And fuck!, I have to say that those who wanted integrate me with "others" (here I understand just other people, not from my city, those to whom I don't have easy access to) has really succeeded! Because of that when I want to complain of my university I am opening msn and chatting with friend from Egypt, when I want to talk about guys I am writing to friend from France or Latvia and in one moment it's better. I didn't know what to do during new years eve - I took the train, went to Prague and realized that there was much bigger group of friends who done the some. It was amazing. But sometimes I am asking myself how is my life here, in the city where I live? Do I have life here? I would say yes, it's not that bad. I have work and amazing people over there, I have some groups of friends from the "old times", I have university, but I will not call them friends. The problem is that I don't care; I don't care about those people as much as about my "others", foreigners. I am afraid about myself. Lastly is even worser. I have two intensive months of travelling and most of the time I was with the some people (just different places). It was so intensive, we were living together, having stupid problems together, falling in love with each other, sharing our secrets (btw. this is easier with people whom you will not see again, therefore it is so integrating). And now I came back home and I cannot come back to my normal life. That life move to facebook. So in the office I am checking what's new. After school I am coming back home and looking on people's profiles. I can still see the conflicts which we had somewhere away. I am following how people are still flirting with each other (maybe even without knowing about that). There is our second life! I cannot believe. And what is the worse - it takes too much time!!! When I am looking forward, I know that next year will be the some. I will get to know new people, spend with them few amazing month, doing everything with them and then I would move out to some other place. Shall I just avoid getting closer with people or shall I go like this and then miss "the moments". How to deal with it? NEXT TIME: most probably I will write my theory about being homeless:)