So less than twelve hours after putting this picture of the President of Tatarstan (autonomous republic in Russia) up as my facebook profile picture I got a facebook message from a random angry Tatar telling me to take it down. What the hell? He isn't in my network and we don't have any friends in common. Was he combing facebook to see if there are any pictures of random Tatar politicians being misused? Had run a random search seen the picture of the President of Tatarstan, gotten all excited thinking he could be his friend making up for his complete lack of friends in real life and then was crushed when he realized the real President of Tatarstan is not on facebook? Is he maybe just a jerk? Perhaps it was just his love and worship before the copyright alter, we all know how Russia is revered for its strict following of copyright law and how that is not at all the issue keeping them from joining the WTO. Clearly that must have been it. I mean, instead of a picture of himself the guy had a Jackie Chan movie poster for "the Tuxedo" as his profile picture, so clearly he was someone who felt everyone should use actual pictures of themselves, and someone with great taste in films. Jerk. Nobody cared when I did it with Ataturk, you know the founder of modern Turkey on account of whom youtube was shut down in Turkey because some Greeks had put up some videos calling Ataturk a homosexual.
So the dorms here have cleaning ladies that go in your room and clean things (profound, I know). I suppose it is important considering we have showers in our rooms (though not toilets oddly) and I am not so good about cleaning those (read: I don't). None the less, after a few months here I understood why there was a specific provision in the student handbook saying that the school is not responsible for things broken by the cleaning ladies: they break things, kind've a lot of them. Though my personal experience is small compared to others, in a period of two weeks I went from having two drinking glasses in my room to none, also my knife suddenly disappeared (no not into a corpse, I always check when that happens). As I suddenly had no glasses I finally asked the cleaning lady if she knew what had happened (my room is smallish and box like so after several weeks of searching I decided they probably weren't hiding) , she started to freak out and then admitted to having broken one of them and tried to give me a glass she had found somewhere else though. Still don't know what happened to the knife though.
Rex: Socks?
So I am pretty random, which leads to random Internet searches. Basically I found out that the OSCE offers a masters in Central Asian Politics taught in Bishkek and on full scholarship. The program is mainly meant for Central Asians (though it taught in English), but also allows limited applications from students from other OSCE countries (the US is one of those). They have had 'westerners' in the program. That being said, I don't know how good the program is. It is tiny there are only about 35 students. I am also not sure how the degree bit works either as it doesn't seem to be accredited by a university even though it is approved by the Kyrgyz Ministry of Education. All of the teachers had Central Asian surnames and they didn't' list where they had studied so it was hard to tell how western-oriented the program would be (though it is the OSCE so it really should be). Still seems cool and it would be a way to hand out in Central Asia for another year.
So my brother told me I should go to Moscow, I think I am going to listen. 
I am lazy and as such I am not fixing the post bellow which went all whack one me when I posted it. Also I am mad at Georgia. No not the state, though it is in the south so I may be mad at it too, but the country. Mainly because I have been writing about it for three days now and I came to the point where I need to neatly summarize its constitutional changes and I have found three different sources telling me three different things. I don't want to have to go through the Georgian constitution (if I can find it) and figure it out for myself. I feel like whatever I write will end up not being true so I might as well make it up. I would like making up the Georgian constitution. I would rename the capital Atlanta or something, make English with a southern drawl the official language (it would attract call centers!), and forbid people from Georgia from clarifying while abroad that they were not from the state of Georgia [ironic note: I know a Georgian-American exchange program, almost all of the Georgians were sent to Georgia, you guess which one. That is cruel. It is something I would do]. That is all.There is a pressing need for analysts who combine mastery of analytical tools with in-depth familiarity with the culture of the geographic area of the Middle East and Central Asia. These regions have become central to contemporary security studies in that they are both the location of substantial world oil reserves and of its most intractable conflicts that have been viewed as generating the threat of international terrorism, clash of civilizations and are proposed to be the object of democratization experiments.
The course builds on the University of St. Andrews’ existing and long-standing research expertise in these regions, and will be taught by internationally recognized scholars who already enjoy an institutional history of collaboration. These scholars are primarily located in the School of International Relations and in association with the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies (MECACS) which is co-sponsored with the School of History. The training program here will offer opportunities for researchers also to be involved in MECACS and in the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. Additionally, the course offers the possibility of intensive language tuition.
The program will allow students to combine modules from several different disciplines, or to specialize in one area. Examples of possible optional courses include: Central Asia in Global Politics; Nations, States and Nationalism; Conflict in The Middle East; International Relations of the Modern Middle East; Political Economy of the Modern Middle East; Politics & State Formation in the Middle East; The Political Role of Islam in the Contemporary Arab World; The Promised Lands: Great Britain & the Arabs, 1914-23; Egypt:1798-1970: Imperialism and Nationalism in the Middle East; Modern Arabic Literature : Exile and Identity and Special Topics in Modern Middle East Politics.
Students will also be offered the possibility of language tuition either at the University of St. Andrews (Arabic) or at the intensive language summer school at Indiana University with which it has an agreement (for example beginners’Azeri, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, Pashto,Uyghur, and Georgian).
In the first two semesters as part of your coursework you are required to take FOUR options, of which ONE is compulsory (IR5501) and the other three optional.
Animal rights activists want to kill this polar bear cub in the Berlin Zoo. When he was born his mom rejected him and his brother, his brother died but the zoo keepers were able to save him and keep him and incubator. Since then one of the zoo keepers has slept with him every evening to tend to his every need. Apparently that was cruel. Animal rights activists want Knut (the polar bear cub) put down, because they say life in captivity is cruel. Yes the animal rights activists want to kill the adorable animal. No they don't want to give him a snack or a new ball or even do some sort of hippytastic re-enactment of Free Willy, they want to kill the polar bear cub, who looks really happy, because apparently his soul is barren and empty on the inside for living in captivity. You know, I have some sympathy for animal rights activists when they are like "hey drilling holes in animals heads to see the effects of drilling holes in animals heads is not a good science guy idea!" But when the animal rights activists want healthy animal dead I take issue. Sort of afraid they will try and assassinate him as they are clearly crazy.
It is spring break time and young American college students are out and about in the world. Specifically, in Vienna as in more than I am used to. It has just been interesting since two friends from NYC randomly appeared in Vienna on Friday and then one of the other Fulbrighters has a whole groups of friends from Barnard/Columbia visiting. It is weird suddenly having loads of people around who are from my university/high school/home town. It is also amusing to notice how I have sort of assimilated. Granted I still talk like a German when I speak German and by no means an Austrian, but the guys dressed up like Mozart selling concert tickets don't give me a second look, where all the visiting American get pounced on as if they were holding bird feed and were surrounded by pigeons. Also one visiting friend said I had a German way of speaking in English (i.e. not quite right English). The language bit is weird because granted I do with a lot with languages these days, but I also do a lot English, but I really do have trouble remembering a lot of English words. This has been painfully obvious as I have been writing my research paper and I am searching for a word and I play the game of sounds like, nooo, similar though. I think I knew the word once. It is kind of link not having a mother tongue and struggling in every language. So this is a bit of a down beat entry, but as I plot the course for the coming year and consider going to yet another, albeit fascinating country, I just sort of wonder what it will bring.
I really don't know what I will be/should be doing next year and I need your help. Here are some possibilities:
I really liked Slovenia. In many ways Slovenia is Eastern Europe lite, the train station in Ljubljana is brite and new , there were no masses waiting to over charge you for a cab ride from the moment you got off of your train, and everyone spoke English and was pretty friendly, but those aren't the reasons I liked Slovenia so much. I just think that Slovenia and Slovenians are really intriguing. First of all there is the national history, i.e. being conquered by everyone and pretty much no one letting them use their own language. They were part of the Roman Empire, Venice, Carenthia, Austria-Hungary, and Yugoslavia, but they pretty much all (I don't know about the Roman Empire of Venice so much) tried to assimilate the Slovenes. Ljubljana is probably one of the few placed outside of France to still have a monument to Napoleon, who was the first one to let the Slovenians use Slovene in school. A lot of Slovenian history seems to be an underdog story and I respect that.
but Ljubljana is much more dynamic. Austrian cities are almost pretty and well kept, but especially the smaller ones lack any sort of a youth culture, to the point where they are nice to visit during the day, but God help you if you are stuck there at night (not true of Vienna to be sure). They are the equivalent of an old person's house, everything is pretty and in order, but the plastic cover sure as hell isn't going to come off the couch. In Ljubljana you got the feeling there were a lot of young people, there was interesting graffiti, and just the feeling that something was going on. It was nice to have the plastic off.
In other news:
I cannot tell you how long I have wanted a Zommunist graphic of my own, not only because I think Zommunism is an awesome political affiliation whose ranks grow larger each year (all those Eastern European communist are getting any younger people), but also because I think the mixed zombie/communist imagery is pretty awesome. So thanks to my good friend Antonella I now not only have an awesome letter, but this awesome Zommunist graphic. All hail Nella!
