Birthday in Poland

Well I think it is time to write about my Polish adventures for the month of December. Of course the first thing I have to mention is my birthday, as it is first chronologically. Sorry in advance though, I didn't expect to really celebrate my birthday, so I don't have any pictures. Surprises usually make it hard to have a camera on hand.

Anyway, that morning luckily I didn't have school since it was a weekend. So I got out of bed at roughly 11, something that hasn't changed whether I live in Poland or in the US. Then I showered and tried to go to the kitchen for breakfast. My host family told me to stay the hell out of the kitchen and handed me a bowl, cereal, and milk and told me to eat in the living/dining room. Then I spent most of the day goofing off at home, watching movies, or other random ways to kill time, as I didn't actually plan on doing anything for my birthday. My friends had a lot of tests the following week so all of them were busy studying for the weekend.

Still, later that day I had obiad, which is kind of like dinner eaten at 3 o'clock or so. It turns out my host family kicked me out of the kitchen so that my host brothers could cook pizza. It was completely different than the idea of pizza that popped into your mind. A normal pizza in Poland doesn't use tomato sauce and has odd ingredients, like corn. Still, the pizza was really good, and I still didn't realize that they made it for my birthday. So I went back to goofing off once more until several hours later, my family walks into the living room and asks me to turn off my computer. After I do they bring in a home made cake and start singing "Happy Birthday" which was really surprising because no one in the house really speaks English except one of my host brothers, and even his English is about as good as my Polish. Anyway, they then had me blow out the candles, served the cake, which had my name and 17 written on it. Sorry I can't give you pictures, but it was a really nice cake, it had several layers and was all kinds of little chocolates on top to decorate it. Then while we all had cake and tea (in Europe everything is eaten with either hot tea or coffee) they gave me presents. Those I'll look forward to showing people when I get back, because they gave me two books, both in English. One was about Krakow and has some pictures of my city that I can show you, and the other was a book on Poland which is my favorite because it has a lot of beautiful pictures of Poland, plus it is even cooler because looking at it reminds me of the times I saw those places in person. I also got a scarf that had Polska written on it, which is one of the several ways to say Poland in Polish (sorry but I'm not explaining why). By now I'm starting to get a pretty nice collection of scarves, except I only wear one of them because they others I don't want to get dirty or lose.

After all this they explained that while doing something at my school my host mom saw my birth date on a piece of paper which is how they learned that it was my birthday in the first place. So I spent my birthday happily surprised and, as always in Poland, full of cake. Still, I then felt the need to personally celebrate my birthday, so the next day I went into the city alone.

For the most part my trip to the city wasn't extremely eventful. I went around the Christmas market in the Square for the most part. This is basically like the Potpourri (or however it is spelled) in Parker, except with wooden stalls, hot wine, kielbasa, and a lot more traditional things sold. I ate dinner in the city that night, a big kielbasa from one of the several meat stalls. I listen to random plays and singing that was done on a stage in the Square, and I also looked around for Christmas presents for my host family. Not a completely exciting night, but it was fun, even if it ended with me waiting for my bus for an hour in -5 to -10 degree (Celsius) weather.

Next y'all will get to hear about my Class Christmas, which wasn't too exciting, but I found it funny so I figure I'll write about it. Look forward too it, hopefully I can get it out soon. :)

Sorry

Thank everyone who has been waiting diligently for me to make another post. The reason I haven't posted in a while is simply because there wasn't much happening that I thought worthy to tell all of y'all about. But the funny thing about an exchange is that one month can be completely uneventful, and the next is so busy and crazy that I barely get an hour to sit down and type about what has happened. This is being posted on Christmas day, because I got a little bit of time while my family is sitting around me singing Polish Christmas carols, but since I don't know the words I just get to listen. Christmas lasts 3 days in Poland, and I have one more day to go, so I won't get around to posting about it for a couple days, but after that I have a few days of Christmas break to talk about all the things that I've done this month, like my birthday in Poland, my trip to Wroclaw, the concert I went to, and of course Polish Christmas. It might take me a while to write about that all. But I wanted to let everyone who is still looking at my blog know that I'll be getting back to informing you of my exploits soon and to apologize for leaving you in the dark for so long.