A very Swiss experience

A few weeks ago, we were told to be ready to go on an "excursion" this last Wednesday with the other members of the Institute for Public Communication. It was all very hush-hush, to the point where we didn't find out where we were going until we were on the bus. Even then, they mislead us into thinking we would be going to the construction site of the new Gotthard tunnel between Zurich and Milan (which would have been interesting, I guess). Anyways, we roll up to this strange building with a bunch of people dressed in camouflage in front of it. 

The view from the mountain we had driven up was amazing.

They then tell us that we are actually at a military training base for the Swiss army. The entire day  consisted of a tour of the base, an explanation of the role of the Swiss army, and a demonstration of your average medical intervention. The whole thing was mostly in Italian, with some French and a little bit of German so, I only understood about half of what was going on at any given time. 

The demonstration was interesting, as some of the recruits were from the German- or French- speaking part of Switzerland, and communication took place in a mixture of the three.

They were very hospitable, offering us copious amount of the (in)famous military chocolate

At the end of the whole affair we were also treated to a beautiful aperitivo, with some very delicious finger foods and desserts.

After that, it was time to take our bus back home through the beautiful Ticino landscape. All in all, the experience was indicative of the multiculturality that constitutes a big part of the Swiss experience. It's probably not something I would have chosen to do, but I'm glad I did it. 

So much to do!

Welcome to my University. I arrived back from my Easter Break in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, and dove back into the academic swamp in which I know find myself. First, it was a qualitative research methodologies course that was pretty much a week's worth of head-poundingly interesting subject matter. I can now say I have a pretty solid handle on what is expected of us as PhD students here at Universitá della Svizzera Italiana when it comes to methodologies. 

After that week was over, my professor decided that I need to get back in touch with my communication studies roots, and then brush up on what it means to approach things from a critical standpoint. What does that mean? You guessed it! Theeeoorryyy!! Whoo. So now, I've pretty much been reading Foucault, Derrida, Saussure, Lacan, Hall, Barker, Butler, Martin and Nakayama,...the list goes on and on and on. Every time I see my professor, she hands me another book to read. 

                 

In addition to that, I've also been brushing up on discourse analysis for a project I'm going to help her with, reading/grading mid-term papers for our class, creating a lesson that I'm going to give on microagressions this coming Monday, refining some ideas for my dissertation, and trying to be social and whatnot in between. This has had detrimental effects on my health (my back is killing me) but, all things considered, I'm pretty happy to be where I am. 

Pictures

After coming back from Berlin, I jumped back into the swing of things by taking a week-long seminar in qualitative research methodologies. It was really interesting, but I didn't get much of a chance to do anything else. So, research and dissertation and whatnot took sort of a backseat...

In other news, I finally bought the phone I was talking about. It's called the Fairphone and it's pretty cool. Here's the link if anyone is interested. Basically, it's a phone that tries to be as fair and ethically sourced as possible. It was comparably priced to other mainstream phones but the producers are transparent about their business practices, which is something that I appreciate. Now that I have a phone that can take pictures, I made sure to jump headfirst into Generation Y and get on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Selfies and pictures of Lugano abound!

Berlin

Last week, we had Easter break at USI so, I took the opportunity to visit Berlin. There was also a festival taking place Easter weekend which I had been looking forward to since attending it last year while living in Berlin. The festival, Stretch, is about spirituality, intimacy, vulnerability, and all that touchy-feely stuff.  It was pretty interesting/helpful/difficult, particularly Saturday, where I was forced to come in contact with some pretty deep-seated emotions that I've apparently largely been ignoring. All in all, I would say that the weekend was necessary, and that I'm still processing a lot of what happened.
During the week, I met up with friends that I hadn't seen in a while and recounted the last two months of living in Lugano. The whole experience made me realize two things: 1) I am very happy to no longer be living in Berlin and 2) this PhD position is an awesome opportunity. To the first point, I won't say that I dislike Berlin, or even that I will never live there again. I will, however, say that I'm glad I'm not in that distracting, transitory hub for all that is impermanent at the moment. The festival (and to some extent my friends) reminded me that everyone in Berlin is very focused on themselves, which is not inherently a bad thing. Although, when confronted with this I find myself feeling ignored/unwanted/lonely most of the time. This was the case at the festival as well, which I experienced as sort of a hyper-Berlinesque microcosm. The atmosphere of the city produces a feeling of having overwhelming options. I noticed that I don't enjoy this feeling in a similar way to the people I know there. So, there's that. Also, I really feel good about the work I'm doing here in Lugano, my research, the feedback I'm getting, and the direction I'm headed. Berlin was a great place to have lived and now it's time to move on. 

Poland

I've been pretty lax about updating recently, which can only be attributed to the approximately 189283 bajillion things on my to-do list. One of those things was a trip to Poland, which took up most of last week. My university is part of this network of (mostly German-speaking) institutions that make up what is called the Intercultural Campus (here is a link if you're interested). There was a meeting where representatives of each Uni got together and discussed their research, possible collaborations, and the future of the Intercultural Campus. It was pretty cool to get out and network so quickly after starting my PhD. 

Another aspect of the Intercultural Campus meeting was the cultural program that the organizing university in Poznan coordinated. All of the participants were taken to the Centrum Kultury Poznan, which is housed in a castle located near the University.

The building itself had a lot of history, especially given Poland's situation during World War 2

We were also taken to a cute little cafe near the town hall, Cafe Misja, where we were audience for a few musical performances and book readings. 

All in all, the 5 days I was gone were fairly well spent

Now, I've had to catch up on work that was left here in Switzerland. Unfortunately, the travel and general stress of having so much to do has caught up with me. I'm pretty sick and had to take off even more days of work, something that was not ideal but necessary. I hope that when Monday arrives I'll be ready to go. Like I said, there's so much to do!

LAC: Markus Raetz

Last week, we went to the Markus Raetz exhibition at the Lugano Arte e Cultura Museum (LAC)

It was a nice exhibition, by an artist called Markus Raetz. A lot of his works were characterized by shifting perspective, like this video that I took:

I kind of like the idea of NO turning into YES...in any case, it was a cool little excursion and, even though we didn't get to speak a lot of Italian, I would say it was worth it. 

Un giro

This Thursday, I went on a city tour with my Italian class to some of the more picturesque places in Lugano. It was nice to be out of the classroom, even though part of me just wants to be fluent yesterday...

Here is the city building of Lugano, with the nice seal of the city itself. Apparently there were a lot of revolutions and whatnot fought right in front of its steps. 

This is the lake and one of the beautiful mountains that surrounds the city. 

This is the Franciscan church on the left, with a beautiful fresco (that I unfortunately couldn't get a good picture of)

and look! snow! It's nice being able to view it from afar...

All in all, I would say that I'm growing accustomed to living here. It's officially been about two weeks and, although I don't have a lot of the bureaucratic things 100% lined up yet, I'm slowly finding my feet. The next few cool things going on include: lots and lots of reading for a project where I'm doing the discourse analysis (in Spanish!), going over the syllabus for the bachelor's level class that I'm going to be TA'ing, and figuring out a rough timeline for my dissertation. Fun times, but a lot to do!