POPE JOHN PAUL TAUGHT AT MY UNIVERSITY.

There’s also a good chance that the 5 week highly intensive program will kick my butt.

Today we had our introductory meeting and first lecture in the same class room that Karol Wojtyla taught in before he became the Pope…and I can’t really think of anything cooler than that. Except, perhaps, the photos of JPII that are mounted on the walls…my favorite shows a young and hip Jana Pawel II strolling around campus in a cool pair of shades that would give Bono a run for his money. There is also the statue of Pope John Paul in the main court yard, with an eternal flame in front. The French nun in my class is just another element of awesome. You might not know this about me, but I think nuns are really, really cool. It’s all I can do not make eyes at her all during class.

Our first lecture was a history of the Katolicki Universytet Lubelski Jana Pawla II. The fact that KUL employed the Pope is just one of its claims to fame. It was established in 1918, when Poland received independence after 100 years of being partitioned by Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Prussia. Its purpose was to collect the intelligentsia to take charge of the newly reformed nation. In 1938 KUL got full state status, which is a big deal for a private university here. During World War II, the school was officially shut down, many professors were killed, and the building was used as a hospital. That wasn’t enough to stop the priests, though, and they organized secret classes throughout the city. During the 1950s and 60s, the university was persecuted by the communist government, but they were still able to exist as the only independent university in the Soviet Block and to employ many professors who were fired from other universities. How’s that for important?

The crucifixes in my dorm and in all of the class buildings bring back flashbacks of my 13 years at Catholic school, especially in Michigan, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like it a little.
That said, whatever comfort I get from familiarity is much needed because I think I signed up for a course that will kick my butt. Not necessarily because it’s too hard-I think my language placement is about right-but because for the next 5 weeks I will spend 37 hours a week learning Polish. Then I will spend 2 weeks researching my thesis, which I need to find time to prepare for while in Lublin. This sounds great, but it puts me back in Atlanta the day before school starts. Nothing like starting out senior year and an honors thesis with jet lag and 7 weeks of summer school. I’m honestly scared.

For the next 5 weeks, my daily schedule looks something like this:
8:30 Breakfast
9-12:15 Grammar
12:30-13:15 Lecture in English
14-14:45 Lecture in Polish (I will probably generally opt out of this, for mental health purposes)
15-15:45 Individual Lesson
17-18:30 Conversation
18:30-on Dinner…and homework

The program has a very different feel from last summer’s program in Krakow. I think this will improve my Polish much more-the teachers and other students seem to be taking Polish more seriously. I’m going to be so in touch with my Polish identity come the end of August-by that point I will have spend 8 months of the last 12 in the Old Country. Damn.