Monday October 15th, 2007

Bialystok City Square

Orthodox Cathedral

I awoke at 9:00 am and had a breakfast of smoked salmon, feta, cucumbers, and tomatoes which was followed by delightful hot tea. I have showered and dressed and I am waiting for the appointed time of 11:00 am to meet with the Dean.

My meeting with Dean Wieslaw Czolpinski went exceedingly well. I will conduct eight lectures during the time I am in residence here. I will also conduct scene work with a select group of English speaking students. I am very pleased and happy at this prospect. The administrative director, also in attendance, had a new refrigerator installed in my apartment along with a new bed and the IT specialist put in an internet connection for me. Tomorrow he will complete the wiring. At the conclusion of my meeting I went with Ms. Anna Gulinska to inspect my new bed which was wonderful in comparison to the pull out I had been using for the past few days. We then walked along the streets of Bialystok with Anna pointing out the many sites including the home of XXXX the inventor and developer of the Esperanto language. Esperanto was developed as an international language to allow peoples of many nations to communicate. Today Esperanto is employed mostly in the hard sciences. We returned to the Academy after our walk.

I walked in the afternoon, discovering the “Russian Market” which is a large knock-off market here in Bialystok. In the evening I attended church and walked the city square. I met with Pawel later in the evening after his rehearsals with the 4^th year students and we discussed his Ph.D. program. I am very happy for him as he is such a capable and talented artist. This will lead to his appointment here at the Academy as a professor. His dissertation will discuss the role of improvisation in performance. I returned to my preparations for my lectures and drifted off to sleep somewhere around 2:00 AM.