This is such great news. Poland is changing!

Yesterday Poland hold election to the both chambers of Polish Parliament (Sejm and Senat). I am not particularly involved in the political life, especially that I don't really know that much having just returned from the US, but there are some interesting and exciting moments from this day. The first? Right here:

Born as a man, Ms Grodzka, now 57, completed her gender change last year with the help of the Trans-Fuzja organisation focused on gender change.
Topping the Palikot Movement party list in the devoutly Catholic southern city of Krakow - once home to the late Polish-born pope John Paul II - Ms Grodzka was thrilled by Sunday's strong showing at the polls.
"I'm not yet sure if I've been elected, but I'm very happy with the result scored by the Palikot movement," she said at a jubilant election night celebration at Palikot Movement headquarters in Warsaw.
"If I'll be elected in Krakow, I'll be Poland's first transgender woman, and the only transgender MP not only in Poland, but the entire world," she said. "In New Zealand, there was Georgina Beyer, but she is no longer an MP since 2007," Ms Grodzka added.
"Today, Poland is changing. I am the proof along with Robert Biedron, a homosexual and the head of an anti-homophobia campaign who ran for office in Gdynia," a city on Poland's Baltic coast.

Yep. We have a transgender woman and a big out there gay in the Parliament. In the addition to it, a few more unusual and quite out of the mainstream personas... Right in the faces of the tea party mentality PiS and other parties. Finally some anti-clerical, pro social change and openness politicians. We will see how well they do, but I am hopefull :)

small talk

I went to the ob/gyn today. I haven't been in a really long time (more than eight years I think) so I was nervous and anxious. The character of the visit added to the feeling of discomfort.
I guess I can understand that the nurse wanted to make a small talk, maybe to relax me? But somehow I think she had no idea I was anxious and she was just nosy. I can understand some basic questions... But why when people hear that I am from Poland they feel free to dig for details about my private life? Do they really think it's their business to know where I was educated? And do they have to ask about my spiritual road to Judaism just like that, in the third minute of our acquaintance? And then often comes the sharing. About grandparents from Ukraine (close enough), visiting death camps or asking about Anti-Antisemitism in Poland.
I think the fact that I am not an American gives a permission in people's mind to ask, as if checking if I really have the right to be in their presence. They ask about my legal status (on what kind of visa I am here), about the family (if they are still living in Poland and if they are living in Jewish tradition), about my education (again to check if I am really telling the truth of being a teacher in America), and sometimes about seriously private stuff (if I have a boyfriend, how old am I and so on).

Am I oversensitive? Is it that I am much more of an introvert than the majority of the people? But somehow I feel that the fact of me being from another country works as a catalyst in this case. It might be they simply want to connect with another person, but very soon it changes into interrogation with over sharing about dead family members.

I found it interesting as well that the doctor lated commented on me knowing English in a mock guilty way about Americans not knowing any foreign languages. Really? There is quite a strong minority that's bilingual. There will be more and more of children speaking perfect English and Spanish. There are others coming from all over the world speaking their native languages in addition to adopted English. Aren't they counted as "American"?