Krakow

Hello again from Poland. I hope everyone reading is enjoying their lives in the US while I am here. Last Sunday I finished Polish Language Camp and returned to my host family, but I figured I'd fill everyone in on what happened after my first week of Language Camp.

The first Saturday, or Sobota, of Language Camp the exchange students were taken to see the Krakow Main Square. This is what I talked about visiting before with my host parents. I got to see some of the same things and saw a few new things as well. One of them was the castle in Krakow where ancient kings used to live. I couldn't take any pictures inside because we weren't allowed to, but it was an amazing place. I did get to take pictures of an ancient bell though, only used on extremely special occasions, the last of which was when the Polish Pope John Paul II became a Pope, which was a historical event for the extremely catholic Polish people. On a side note, it is actually difficult to go five minutes without seeing something Pope related here in Krakow. But after that we returned to the main square and got free time to explore it. During that day there was actually a pierogi festival going on in Krakow so the first thing most of us did was follow my host sister to where the pierogies were being sold. I ate five of the traditional Polish dumplings, though I had already had them with my host family my third afternoon in Poland. With my host family I had pierogies filled with mashed potatoes and a kind of Polish cheese, but in Krakow I had strawberry filled pierogies and meat filled pierogies. So far my favorite are the meat filled pierogies. After finishing our pierogies, my new friends and I (the four of us are from different places in the US) got on a horse drawn carriage. I was actually only $15 dollars for the four of us. That took fifteen minutes, after which I showed my group some of the things I had already seen in the town square. After getting some souvenirs we all went up this really tall tower that is older than the US to get a great view of the city. The problem was that the stairs were steep, the ceiling was low and I was clumsy. I spent most of the climb up complaining that I was going to trip, roll down the stairs, and kill myself and everyone below me..... my friends made sure to climb in front of me. But I managed to make it to the top without dying or killing anything and was rewarded with a spectacular view of the city.....then we had to go back down. This time I did trip though I only tweaked my ankle. The rest of the climb down was painful but manageable. From here we went to see some art and had some really fancy ice cream before meeting up with our group.

From here we went to see some more of Krakow, including the Jewish portion of it. They explained some of the scenes from the movie Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg were shot at some of the places we went to as well as that the movie was entirely shot in Krakow. We got to see many many historical things, more than I have time to write about. After that we went to a portion of the Jewish Quarter where there are a lot of clubs and such that college students hang out at. My friend Luis from Chicago found a kind of sandwich you can only get in Krakow and got mad that I live here and not him after eating it. We found some shops that were interesting, one sold butterfly knives, I thought was interesting to see something that is illegal in the US sold for 45 zloty (50 zloty is about $15 for comparison.), and I also found one of the head massagers from Mrs. Szczepaniak's class. I spent the next hour going around and sneaking up on the other exchange students and using it on them, laughing when the jolt it sends down their backs made them jump. After that though we had to return to the castle where our bus was waiting for us to take us back to the school.

Well I was going to write about everything I did this last week, then I realized that just Saturday (Sobota) took a novel to explain, and the Polish Salt Mines will probably take another one. So I'm going to write about that tomorrow.

Giant Bell

View From the Tower

Polish Language Camp

Well, now that I have a little more time I figured I'd fill anyone who is reading in on my time here at Polish Language Camp.

First of all, Polish is a very hard language to learn, the first day of classes felt like an eternity and I barely understood anything we were learning. But the days that followed it got easier and easier. At the end of the first week we had a test, it was on Thursday. I actually did really well on it, I've always been good at tests. So sadly I was put in the most advanced group, which is much harder. I made a very important realization, I am a lot better at universal languages like math than I am at foreign languages.

But at the same time as that I've met all the other exchange students, most being from the US or Brazil but we have one from Canada, one from Argentina, two from Taiwan, and a handful from Mexico. Most of them are really nice, and it was good to see people who didn't mind me speaking a lot of English. I've learned a lot about different cultures here, and it is really interesting to see the different ideas, morals, and behaviors from each of the different countries. One of the best things is being able to sit down with someone and discuss what someone's country is like and how it is different from your stereotypical impressions of the country. Hell, even with all the Mexicans in Arizona, I've learned a lot about Mexico while being here.

We go on a bunch of little field trips to see different things. One of them was to a monastery on a national Polish holiday, one of the only 12 times every year that women are allowed to enter the monastery. It was really nice, I took a bunch of pictures but there I realized that my camera was dying, so from that point on I have had to take pictures by turning my camera on and then quickly turning taking a picture and turning it back off. The coolest thing about the monastery though was a room where you can stand in one corner and whisper and a person in the opposite corner of the room can hear you as if your were standing right behind them.

We spent some time at a Polish mall in Krakow, where I bought some clothes and realized that even Burger King tastes better in Poland. I think they actually use beef in their burgers here, and they are big enough to actually be called Whoppers. I made my host sister, who is basically an RA here, teach me how to use a Polish ATM, which was sadly harder than it should have been.

We saw a really depressing Polish move about a kid who becomes depressed and kills himself at the end, I'm about to watch another and even though they said it won't be a sad movie, after the crappy movie they showed us, I will never trust films made in Poland again. That really was the worst part of Language Camp so far.

And lastly we had a dance, before supper we all showed dances from our countries, and learned two Polish dances, one was a very formal one that are used at Polish "proms" on the entrance where you basically walk around in beat, and the other is a really fun one where you jump around in a circle and send the girls around the circle to dance with each guy.

With all the fun stuff explained I should tell you about my schedule here. I usually wake up at 7:00 AM, which since I'm 9 hours ahead of Arizona is probably about 10:00 PM where you are, go back to sleep until one of my roommates gets out of the shower at about 7:30, 10:30, and then I shower, get dressed, and go to first breakfast at 8:23, 11:23. From here I have class at 9:00, 12:00AM, and second breakfast starts at 10:30, 1:30, and I go back to class at 10:50, 1:50. This second class lasts until 12:20PM, 3:20, and I have a fifteen minute break. At 12:35, 3:35, I go back to class until 1:20, 4:20. After this we have free time at 2:00, 5:00, until 3:00, 6:00, when we have to study. I get all of this done before most of you even consider waking up. From there we have random activities until supper and then after supper we have random activities to make sure we don't have too much free time. We'll finish just before 10:00, 1:00, and be in bed by 11:00, 2:00. So basically I finish my whole day before anyone is out of school in Arizona.

The Monastery

 The View from Polish Language Camp

My First Few Days in Poland

Alright, so now onto the more exciting stuff, well more exciting for you, I'd still rather be eating. My first time in Europe was when I got off the plane in Munich, Germany. I spent a little bit wandering around the airport trying to navigate everything that was written in German. But eventually I found my terminal and waited for my flight. I also explored some of the gift shops while waiting, and they were all about 50% German alcohol, 25% German chocolate, and 25% other German stuff. Then I got on my plane where instead of telling you to fasten your seat belts in English they first said it in German, then Polish, then English. The next thing I noticed was that instead of giving you honey roasted peanuts in the airplane, they gave me a small loaf of bread with some kind of cheese in the middle. I prefer the bread. Then I landed, and in the small airport in Krakow, or Krakoov as I now say, rather than having those little bridges from the terminal to the plane they hooked up a set of stairs to my plane and put us on a little bus to get us to the airport. Then I met my host family.

The next thing I noticed about Poland is the driving, they drive on the right side of the road like us.....sometimes. There are really only lines and things like that on highways and freeways. On normal roads you just have asphalt and crazy Polish drivers. My host dad drove us home in the middle of the road, only moving a few feet to the side when another car came. Plus the roads in Poland are about 3/4ths as wide as they are in the US. Getting into a car here is one of the scariest things you can do. But I found my house, which is exactly what I had seen when I searched my address on google maps and got shown a picture. It is 3 stories tall and the roof is really slanted. And in the middle of it a brick wall runs over the roof splitting the house in two, which is kind of odd, but realizing that your house is only on one side of the brick wall and the other side is actually an entirely different house is pretty easy to get used to. For the next four days I mostly laid around my host family's house, finished two books, watched Iron Man, Iron Man II, Captain America, Thor, and the Avengers with my host sister that speaks perfect English.

On Friday my host family took me to see downtown Krakow, where just about everything is older than the US. I had a great time there, found out that Polish ice cream is good, and that instead of hot dog stands on the streets they had pretzel stands, which have very good pretzels. I got to see the castle, heard the story about the dragon in Krakow, saw the statue about the story which actually breaths fire. I got to see my school, which looks like a college compared to Parker High. And too many other things to name but I'll post some of my favorite pictures here so you can see what I'm talking about.

My School

The Dragon Statue

FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I finally got to Poland. I've been here for just over a week but it already feels like I've spent a year here. I'll do another post after this about some of the stuff I've done so far, but I realized after getting here that the first post on my blog must be entirely devoted to Polish food.

First I should explain Polish meals. We don't have breakfast, lunch, and a big dinner here. We have breakfast in the morning, second breakfast at about 11, dinner at about 3 which is the largest meal of the day but I usually just think of dinner as lunch because of when we have it, and finally we have a small meal at about 8 called supper. I don't really know the polish names for all the meals, and I doubt you would know what they meant if I named them. For now most things I talk about will be English translations. Now on to how the food tastes.

THE FOOD HERE IS SO F***ING GOOD! I'm a little scared to go back to America because the food here is so much more fresh. All the bread is cooked that morning, all the meat is slaughtered that day, and Polish food in general is delicious. So far the best thing I've had here was what my host mom cooked for me the first afternoon I was here. It was chicken rolled up like a tortilla with cream cheese filling, so something like cream cheese. It was so hot when they served it that I had a burn mark on the room of my mouth, but after that it was so good. Since getting here though I have only not liked two things, one was part of a dessert I got from my host parents, it was this sugary cake that was really really good, it tasted like honey, chocolate, and sugar. But served with it was almost like cinnamon whipped cream, which I ate all of, but it wasn't very good. The second kind was this rectangle of white goop that I couldn't even swallow, luckily it wasn't around my host parents, I got this at the language camp I am at currently. Other than those though, even things I didn't like in the US are delicious here. And I still can't get over just how fresh everything is here. Rather than going to a supermarket once a week or so like in America, Polish families go every morning to a small store right down the street and get their food for the day, which is all butchered, baked, or whatever else they need done to it fresh that day.

Just above this I'll post about all of the things I've been doing since I got here, but for now I'm done ranting on the deliciousness of Polish food.