Przyjeta!

So today I received my official acceptance letter to Uniwersytet Jagiellonski. Hurrah! Now I can go get my new visa and pay them $4000. Woo hoo.
Anyway.
Not much is new today. I feel lazy. Probably due to the fact that I really have nothing to do. actually, allow me to rephrase that: I have a lot to do, but 90% of it involves money for the doing, so I can't do any of it. For instance, paying for school, buying household necessities, visiting some historical places and museums. Those are things that I would like to have done, you know, before classes start, because I won't have time after class starts, seeing as how I will be taking about 7 classes this semester. Five with the program, two without. (French and German) I am quite excited about my classes though. Including the three language classes. :) For all of you who have cooed over my "skills," here's a year where they will be put through the ringer. Let's see, shall we? I figure, even if I don't get credit for the French and German classes, it will be A: a very good experience (they will be taught in Polish at first!), B: cheaper than in the States ($400 a semester for both languages together), C: a brilliant way to meet like-minded Polish people. Plus, I have both a German and a French flatmate, so hey, instant practice. It'll be like living with tandem partners.
Plus Polish class. Which this year, I will definitely try to get into one that is more on my level. And by the way, I have no clue what that means. :) My Polish has gotten better. It has, it has. However, I am still barely (I repeat for emphasis) barely at a conversational level. I just mainly need more practice. Martina was telling me the same thing. She at least can speak fluidly, but she says that she still feels scared because she uses childish words that (literally) only three and four-year-olds use a lot of the time because that's when she left Poland, and her parents (thanks, Mom and Dad) didn't correct her as she grew. So both of us need practice speaking, speaking, and speaking. While I can order at a restaurant with a good deal of aplomb, trying to have an intelligent conversation about more than the weather or the basics of my stay in Krakow immediately disintegrates into me ho-humming and trying to figure out words.
However, I'm confident that by the end of this year, I still won't be good enough. :) But I will damn well try. It's so funny how relative it is to others--looking in from the outside, I get these amazed English speakers who are tickled pink that I speak Polish. But from a Pole's perspective, I sound like a third grader. Actually, worse than that. I sound like a mentally challenged third grader trying to speak like an adult. I worry too much about grammar and declensions and whatnot, when I should just speak around the words I don't know. In my head and in the solitude of my bedroom, I can do this, but it's quite different on the spot. Nervousier. *grin*
Anyway, enough about my linguistical acrobatics.
I am really excited for this year. With all the loan pyrotechnics and stress of being far away and dependent on an indifferent group of personages in an office somewhere (SFS), I haven't really gotten much of a chance to really express how happy I truly am to be here. This city is in all honesty, a place of wonder. In sheer physical beauty, it is rather unparalleled, and I'm quite smugly proud to get to live here just for that. To walk two blocks and see the spectacular Wawel Castle situated on its hill above the Wisla (Vistula) River is really something else. In addition to that, one of the largest market squares in all of Europe is ten minutes in the other direction, with the soaring Ratusz tower and St. Mary's Church and the Sukiennice dominating the view. Everywhere you go, there is something to see and do. The people are friendly and helpful. They are also quite open to the hordes of foreign students (although they are a little bewildered as to what to do with the masses of tourists that have begun to come to town), and they are even more friendly when they find that a lot of us really do want to learn Polish. On top of all that, it is still a city with thousands of these little hidden surprises: night clubs, bars that regularly have live music, little cafes, random fireworks displays and skydivers, and on top of all of it, it is in Poland. The country itself is absolutely gorgeous. Just to the northwest of town, as I was flying in, I saw all these agricultural fields preparing for harvest, and they were unlike anything I've ever seen before. Many of them were this deep steel blue color that was quite visible from my airborne vantage point. The sun was shining as we landed, and the entire countryside was backlit with gold, rather proving Robert Frost correct when he said that "nature's first gold is green," even if that's not exactly what he meant by it. The Tatra Mountains to the south around Zakopane are stunning, jagged peaks. In winter they are covered with snow and completely annex the entire skyline, and in summer they are a bit more mild, with green valleys and trickling brooks. To the north, there are rolling hills and enough lakes to put Minnesota to shame.
So, yeah. I feel pretty special to be here. Dr. Dyck, if you read this, thanks very sincerely again for everything you've done to help me out. I will track down the perfect cross for you this year. I told my cousin in an email the other day that I think that (I know that) when I finally do finish my undergraduate, I will be able to say with an extreme amount of confidence that I learned. And that my education has been rounded, full, and interdisciplinary. :) The name of the program I am a part of here in Krakow is called the Międzywydziałowe Indywidualne Studia Humanistyczne, which quite literally means "Interdisciplinary Individual Studies in the Humanities." I think it's quite fitting, both if you take it literally/acedemically and figuratively. :)
Thus, (and you heard it here first, folks) my $40,000 or so of loans after this year? Worth it. And if anyone feels the urge to donate to the Emily Owes Her Life to Sallie Mae Fund, let me know at the end of the year. *grin*