Secret taps

One of the best parts about being in Warsaw as a group was realizing that we all miss tap water. Those of us who brought along our plastic and metal canteens revealed that each of us secretly fill them at night in our bathroom sinks! One girl takes a plastic bottle to keep in her bedroom and will drink it and then refill it, making sure to note the level of the water in the bottle and refilling it only up to that amount. This way she can disguise from her host mother that she has been drinking from the tap!

I was pondering this scenario and wondering why Europeans only drink bottled water. Sure, in some areas it might not be safe to drink directly from the tap, but we’re in a fairly modern place here. I know that my family back home has our tap water tested regularly for safety – why is that not standard practice here? It seems like Europeans do a decent job at conservation as is – smaller cars, great public transportation, elimination of plastic bags, recycling, no air conditioning, and more. Why have they not recognized the problems with bottled water?

I can hear a storm coming. Thank god! I hope it provides some relief from this heat. Lately I’ve really been enjoying reading in bed, and utilize the cat-shaped lamp on my desk by which to read. I must then choose between a stuffy room or fairly consistent mosquito attacks. If I leave the window open, it cools down my bedroom but the bugs are drawn to the cat lamp. Why can’t life be complete and simple?

The rain smells so good here. I’m not sure if it’s any different than at home, really, but after a storm the air feels clean and everything is refreshed. And suddenly snails appear everywhere! Last time it rained, I saw one on the patio and took a few macro photos. Then I looked around and noticed they littered the floor of the garden and were clumped together on the posts of the railing.

The storm is really going now. The thunder and lightening are intimidating and it’s kind of scary. I wish I could leave my window open ever so slightly to allow in some cool fresh air, but the rain pounded the panels too harshly and wetness appeared on the sill. I’ll wait for that reward in the morning when the leaves in the garden are still wet and the sun hasn’t had a chance to bake Tarnow and its buildings.

Today, class was rough. More students showed up, so I’m learning that I can’t really plan for anything too specific from now on. I was feeling a little under the weather and the kids were just not participating. They said they understood something, but then the corresponding activities went terribly wrong and it was revealed they actually knew nothing. They were giving me nothing to work with today – nobody answered my questions and I was forced to pick students from the group. Even then they didn’t participate. I felt my patience being overtaken by frustration. I imagined a fiber thread holding an anvil off a cliff like in Loony Toons, and with each failed exercise another fiber snapped until it was one measly thread. But hey – tomorrow is another day right? I get another chance to make it work. Hopefully I didn’t scare them all off today…

And now, folks, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Great American Silverware Smackdown Challenge!

So normally you hold your fork in your right hand, right? Unless you’re a lefty, but most lefties aren’t really real people – we all know this. And if you need to cut your steak, you put your fork down gently and switch your knife over to your dominant hand to commence sawing the muscle fiber into a chewable size. Then when you’re done cutting, you put the knife down gingerly and pick up the fork again. Back and forth for the entire meal until your bellies are swollen with food babies. People in Europe figured out a solution to this nonsense, and it involves the knife in the right hand and fork in the left, regardless of which hand is dominant. You are not allowed to scoop your food and you must turn your fork upside-down to stab your morsels. Go ahead, try it yourself. I’ve been attempting this new eating style for a meal here and there, and it usually includes some loud screeching of metal on porcelain, or some chunks of food being propelled from my plate and flopping onto the perfectly white table linen. I feel like a kindergartener learning to write with those giant crayons, fisting the whole thing and pressing way too hard on the paper. I should probably stop pretending to be European and accept my American status.

For some reason, I can’t successfully access certain websites on the wireless here. It’s not consistent though, and if I hit refresh enough times it will work. Half the time I can’t see my blog, and then the Shout Outs won’t load, and Google rarely works. I learned just to keep important pages like my e-mail and the LE blog open, but even that fails at times. I started using Bing as a substitute for Google, and it works every single time. I feel like a traitor using Bing. I get a little twinge every time I type it in and it appears in my address bar history. My most recent Bing search was to find lyrics for a Katy Perry song that I’m using in my lesson tomorrow on opposites. I had to buy the damn song on iTunes, too. I can’t believe I just paid $1.29 for it! Considering it’s a rather awful song – Hot n Cold. I have to be careful to skip the first stanza because it has a swear word!

I hate the whole idea of swear words. How do you explain that to a kid who is learning to speak? I remember when Isaac was way little and he’d repeat the word “damn” or some other swear word and we all got a good laugh from it. He saw us laughing, and that triggered something in his synapses about the word damn being some sort of silly, unique word. Now of course this is true for any type of learning across all ages, not just Isaac. It’s ridiculous when you think about it that a word is taboo or wrong to say. It’s a word – any word can be made taboo in the right context. Have you ever seen that Friends episode? They’re talking about how anything can be made suggestive. Joey says “Grandma’s chicken salad” and “there’s always room for Jell-o”. Sara would laugh right now.

I just finished a delicious dinner of ruskie pierogi – that’s dough pockets stuffed with potato and cheese. They’re served swimming in melted butter and some chopped chives. I ate way too many since I’m never able to make my own plates for dinner. I probably ate 15 or 20 of them. After, I felt pretty awful and Googled – or Binged (not binge, Bing – although the wordplay is rather fitting here) to find out just how many calories were in one pierogi. Wow, that was the worst idea I’ve had in a long time. I think I just consumed two days’ worth of calories in one meal! Expect me to look a little curvier when I get back…

Twelve days left! It’s like that Christmas song! I think I’ll make up my own to help keep track and nudge the time along.

On the twelfth night of blogging my readers gave to me…twelve e-mails for me to read!

With that, I bid you goodnight. More tomorrow. Maybe. I’m doing some shopping in Krakow so it will be a long day for me. Then Friday the LE group is meeting for a girl’s birthday in Tarnow, so perhaps no blog then either. But Saturday! Wait, Saturday I’m going to the mountains in Ukraine. Sunday? Not making any promises. I'll think of you when I'm traipsing though. Nah, not really. I just wanted to use the word traipsing.

Goodnight!

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