More Rain and Cold

The last few days have been dreary, yet trees are blossoming, so spring is clearly on the way. I did not even leave the house yesterday, though I did a fair amount of work at home, writing syllabi and preparing for tonight's class. I teach my research methods class at 6 pm and am looking forward to interacting with the students again.

I found out Monday that I will soon have another class to teach, American culture and folklore, I think it will be called. This apparently required various kinds of negotiation and permission, because all of Europe is switching their university systems to what is called the "Bologna Process." I don't fully understand what that involves, but apparently it will be an effort at standardization and will make European universities a bit more like American ones (or so it was briefly explained to me). Anyway, in spite of this hurdle, Maja (pronounced Maya), the department chair here, managed to get it approved. Maja seems very nice and interesting, like all the faculty I've met here. She did her PhD in Oxford (England).

There's another vegetarian restaurant in town, MacroVega (maybe I've already mentioned it?), which is quite good. I've eaten lunch there three times this week. Today I chose a mashed potatoes and greens dish with a tomato like sauce, and some beets and corn (kind of a salad I think), and a patty of some grains and veggies, kind of a veggie burger, but smaller and fatter. It was filling; in fact I did not finish the beets. I spoke to one of the owners briefly to ask her if they had a religious affiliation (often vegetarian restaurants are run by Hari Krishnas). She said that no, she and two friends were just very committed to animal rights and being vegetarian, so they decided to open this restaurant. It seems to do a good business. It has brightly painted, orange walls, yellow patterned curtains, I think green patterned table cloths, and many Indian prints on the walls.

A bit later-- I also found a nice tea room today, not far from the office. I was actually driven away by a non-stop smoking office mate. This is the first time we've been in the office together. I had a lot of prep work to do, so I couldn't really leave. But once I finished my prep, some of which I did in an empty classroom to escape the smoke, I went out looking for a cafe, hoping I might find one uncrowded or non-smoking. I wandered some back streets near the office and quickly came upon signs pointing to an interesting seeming tea room. It was non-smoking(!), had an excellent selection of teas, and was a great place to spend an hour on a rainy afternoon. Lots of atmosphere with pink walls, paper lanterns, distressed wood tables, and all the huge variety of tea served in nice porcelain. Everything came with its own little dish, a timer to tell me when to remove the tea bag (green tea with Japanese cherry flavor), a little dish to put the empty tea bag into, another little dish with a sugar cube in it, another with a little cookie in it.