Insert a soapy finger

Today I woke up and really surprised myself. As I descended the staircase to meet my family for breakfast, I thought what a wonderful day it was to be alive. The morning weather was so pleasant that I could put a stick in my eye (sorry KT). I knew breakfast would be delicious and I had a good lesson for the day. It probably helped that my outfit was cute and was having one of those accidentally great hair days.

Can you believe I actually had that thought? That it was a wonderful day to be alive? A year ago today I never would have thought that. I probably would have laughed at myself. It felt a little out of character for me to be so happy. I ran with it, though, and it’s been smooth sailing so far.

It made me think of this popular song. Can you guess where it’s from? 10 points to the first correct guess in the comments!

It's such a good feeling to know you're alive.
It's such a happy feeling - you're growing inside.
And when you wake up ready to say:
I think I'll make a snappy new day
It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling,
The feeling you know that we're friends.

Did anyone glance at the title of my last post and read it as lap dancer? I definitely did as I was proofreading it later on. I went back to edit it but then thought that I could disguise it as intentional. Now you know my secret. Lap dander just sounds gross.

Maybe 25% of my normal students showed up today. The group of older girls that adore me were there, as well as some of my younger pets, and a two boys who I’m sure had parents that made them come. My translator was absent today. She’s getting married soon and has a lot of work to do for her wedding, so I bet she was working on stuff for that. The younger kids, my second group, didn’t even come.

When my first class was over, I told them it was time to go home and said goodbye. None of them moved. I thought they didn’t understand me, so I told them class was over, told them to go outside and enjoy the weather, maybe go swimming. I did some pantomiming so they would understand, and opened the door and motioned them out, exaggeratedly waving goodbye. No reaction. They all wanted to stay! This made me nervous because I really had nothing prepared for them, only a lesson for the 5 – 8 year old kids who would normally show up at that time. That wasn’t going to fly because it involved learning left and right, the hokey pokey, and playing some simple and energetic games.

I decided to ask what they really really wanted to do for the rest of class. Turns out they really really wanted to play shark tag outside in the sweltering heat. They always want me to be the shark, and since there were so few kids today I really had no way out. Of course I’m wearing a pencil skirt and dressy shoes – perfect outfit for running around and getting sweaty. We made it work, though, and had fun. When that became boring, we played hide and seek and I did a photo shoot. I think I’ll have them give me 5-minute Polish lessons every day now. I can already count to five! They found it rather entertaining to hear my awful pronunciation and enjoyed correcting me. Success!

I’m pretty sure there was just a big misunderstanding with the advertisement of the class to the community. Initially I was told it’d be a four-week period. Then two two-week periods. Then they said the same kids would probably show up for all four weeks. I noticed on the school website that the dates for the class advertised only a two week period. So now I think that the second half of the class was never really advertised, and the kids who showed up today were just taking a chance or had ignorant parents. Either way, I’m really frustrated with all of this especially because of the amount of work I put in already and will have to put in over the remaining class time. My long-term project ideas are fluff now. All the supplies that I divvied out for the classes will probably remain unused because I’ve already done the lessons that require them. I know this isn’t supposed to be a vacation, and it’s certainly not, but hopefully next year it will be a little more organized. I’m thinking about applying for a leadership position with the organization, so maybe I can really make it happen!

On my drive to school every morning, we make a quick stop to pick up Magda. On the corner of her street is a man selling fire extinguishers. He has his little tent and lawn chair, and a display rack lined with bright red fire extinguishers of varying sizes. The little baby canisters are mixed up with the mammoths, and the bright red color is strange there on the side of the road. The handle and spigot parts look like broken limbs that were badly bandaged or awkward elephant trunks. In a way the color feels refreshing against the brown sand, dirty road and dingy faded buildings. But it also seems to be an invasion of industrial harshness into the lovely rolling green hills of Zawada. (If you're pronouncing that in your head, it sounds like Zavada.) Let me tell you, the view from the playground at school is absolutely breathtaking. Every time we go outside to play and round the corner of the building, I get soaked with brilliant vistas in all directions. It’s almost too much to take in at once, and I secretly face each direction for a few minutes to absorb everything when the kids are really into a game of shark tag.

I was in Warsaw over the weekend. It was exhausting. Over half the time was consumed by travel. Trains. Hot. Sticky. Dirty. Awful. So many hours. On the trip there, we couldn’t find seats and had to split up and stand the entire way. A few other volunteers and I were in the car with the toilet. Imagine being inside a handicapped sized Port-a-Potty during an 85 degree day. The refuse runs directly on to the train tracks below, and although I didn’t see it for myself, my friend who braved the bathroom said that if you look down into the toilet you can see the rail passing by beneath you.

In my opinion, Warsaw wasn’t worth the train rides there and back. Krakow is so much better! Everything in Warsaw was bombed in the war and rebuilt during 1945 – 1955. So nothing is spectacular and new, really. The old town district is made to look older than it is, and instead of using real stone blocks on building facades, they are just painted with a stone pattern. The architecture is purposely jagged and uneven so it has that old authentic feel, but the colors are too bright and crisp and do not align with the building structures. It made me feel irritated that they tried to copy a popular style in order to capitalize on it. I feel like Warsaw is an impostor city.

I should talk about the good things too. It wasn’t awful. The tallest building in Poland (don’t hold me to this claim) was there, called the Palace of Culture and Science. It was initially constructed by Josef Stalin and was previously known by his name. The people of Warsaw changed the name as soon as they possibly could, which was actually fairly recently if you’d believe it. We went up to the very top and enjoyed a great panoramic view. They also had a photo showcase of this display that I’ve seen before and really love: four different families photographed with all the food they consume in one week. Really a thought provoking display!

While we were at the top of the tower, someone made a comment about how well the city was planned out and arranged. I thought about this for a while, and then realized they had a second chance to create the city since everything was destroyed in a grim tale only six decades ago! A do-over, if you will.

It was, however, so amazing to see my group again. We shared teaching ideas with one another and had a great time partying in the evenings. We found a club called Tomba Tomba and bargained the cover charge down to half price to get in. We even met some girls from Chicago! It had maybe 6 floors and a basement, and different rooms designated for certain, ahem, activities. In order to find the entrance to the club, we circled the building about seven times before realizing we had to climb up a spiral staircase and weave through some castle ruins to get to the main entrance. A few of us decided to wear our sunglasses while dancing and it made me feel really cool, although my face was so sweaty that they kept sliding down my nose so I'd have to shove them back up with my index finger every five seconds like a librarian.

After the club we walked home together through the main part of the city. It was late but the downtown rynek was still busy. As we walked through the town square we noticed some people laying a man down on the ground and stopped to snoop, or rather investigate. He was inebriated in some fashion or another, and was making strange breathing noises. It seemed like he was unconscious. Then he started seizing on the ground and produced noises that were stranger yet. I thought we were going to have to perform an exorcism. That stopped after a minute, and he awoke and still wasn’t fully aware, but realized that there was a group of people staring at him and became angry. We left at that point but some people were really worried and felt the need to pray. I think it was a good excuse to draw attention and occupy the good Samaritan position. I’m probably just cynical though. The ambulance eventually came for him – we watched as it sped down the sidewalk and a group of people were forced to scatter and didn’t know which way to run. It was like that experiment when you take a bowl of water and put pepper on top and then insert a soapy finger and the pepper runs away.

We also took a bus tour that ended up lasting about 4 hours. I was tired from sitting by the end of the tour. We did get to do some walking for about an hour through a nice park. Warsaw has 86 parks including one called Bathroom Park, in Polski of course. Chopin was French and Polish and Warsaw was all about him. This year is the 200th anniversary of something related to him, but there are permanent parks in his name that have his music playing, his favorite flowers, a sculpture of him covered by a willow tree that is shaped like a hand resting on a piano, and more. The most interesting part of the tour, though, was when I met some nice people named Timbak and Piotr. They noticed our tour was speaking in English, and asked me what we were doing in Poland (I happened to have fallen to the back of the group and was strolling at a slow pace, making it more feasible for them to approach me.) We started talking about LE and Timbak shared some of his background. He was also an English teacher there, giving private lessons. He was raised in Canada, but spent many years living in Israel and even served in the military there. Of course the service is mandatory in Israel and he willingly moved there for the experience. After he decided he didn’t want to hold a gun, he was placed in military jail for a few weeks and then became a cook to finish his time. He said he ended up deserting the service, though.

We talked more and I hung back from my tour group, but stayed close enough so I could still hear parts of what the tour guide had to say and keep comfortably close to the group. Timbak was really excited about the LE program and shared some NGO ideas of his own, including a syndicated journalism project for Polish schools. We talked about my job at CMD and he said he had heard of us! We had some videos online that were pretty popular and of course some fame chalked up to W. Potter when he testified before the Supreme Court. It was a rather refreshing conversation for me!

The program director Katie and I found a neat map at the hostel that had various points of interest within walking distance, including a Riot Grrrl Club. If you don’t know what Riot Grrrl is, you should probably look it up, but if you’re too lazy it’s a feminist group with a punky feel. We really had no idea what the Riot Grrrl Club would hold for us: is it a dance club? is it a store? but the description made it sound like an infocenter. We walked a good two kilometers (metric, folks! I know that a 5K run is like 3.3 miles or something, so use that for a reference point) to the listed address, and found some type of warehouse with broken windows and tons of graffiti. To be fair, graffiti was everywhere so it’s not that unique to mention. The address system is so strange here and I still don’t get it – like six buildings can have the same address – so it took us a rather long time of running up each flight of stairs in each building and then down each dark hallway to try to find this place. We really kept looking and exhausting every possible building and strange hallway for a good hour. We even asked several different groups of people and no one had heard of it. Hearing native Polish speakers pronounce Riot Grrrl was awfully hilarious and we had a good laugh about it on the way home. It came out sounding like reee-oat garl club. Later we gave up and decided to find the vegetarian restaurant that was listed on the same map, but was nearer to our hostel in familiar territory. We walked all the way back and circled around the block with the vegetarian place’s address, and it was also nonexistent. We concluded that the map was outdated and gave up on it. Starving, we searched for a veg-friendly restaurant, passing about a dozen before finding a hip café with writing on the windows that specialized in fresh juice and smoothies. So worth it.

Oh, boy, I have so much more to write but I’m losing my will rather quickly. I didn’t bring my laptop to Warsaw so in order to salvage my thoughts I jotted them down on scraps of paper, and am marking them off one by one as they are transformed from bits and fragments into paragraphs. I suppose I will save the rest for tomorrow. Get ready for some exciting things, including a silverware challenge and descriptions of odors that I’ve never encountered before and are impossible to have been made by a human.

Goodnight.

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