Livigno Italy

In January I went to Italy to learn how to snowboard in the Italian Alps. Well so far this has probably been one of the best weeks of my entire exchange. The basics of the event was that about 20 exchange students joined a group going to Livigno, Italy for one week to go skiing there, or snowboarding in my case. This started with me getting on a train at 6 in the morning and taking the 9 hour ride to Gorzów Wielkopolski, the city where one of the exchange students from a city near Chicago lived, Luis Cepeda. One of his Polish friend’s dad was the Rotarian who organized the trip for us. So we went to Gorzów the day before we left and were given temporary host families for the night. I stayed with a nice old lady and one of the Brazilian exchange students. That night they gave us a brief introduction to the trip and then let us spend a few hours going through the city. The next day, we had several hours before our bus to Italy left so once again we explored some of the city. One ironic thing was that we found a restaurant selling “New York Hot-Dogs” which, after 6 months away from home, excited the Americans. But after we bought them we found they put Bigos on them, which is a Polish stew made primarily of cabbage. They were good, but obviously not actually American. Then after going shopping for last minute things, like ski pants in my case, we boarded the bus for the 16 hour bus ride through Europe to Italy. We went first to Germany, then to Austria, then on to Switzerland, and finally we went down a narrow tunnel through a mountain and came out in Italy. From Austria to Italy though we drove through the mountains, and this was some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. I’ll post some pictures at the end to prove my point, but I only have so much room so I can’t give a whole lot of them.

Now for the first day, we did very little. We walked through the city of Livigno, rented our skis, or snowboards in my case, and pretty much talked about what we hoped to do the next day. Then we had dinner at our hotel, which was a kind of buffet and it had the first decent steak I’ve eaten since I came to Poland. They also had several other things that were delicious, but I don’t know what they are called, and I don’t want to waste too much time talking about food, I’ll do that in a moment. Anyway, the next day we traveled up the mountain, which makes P mountain look like an ant hill. One of the exchange students who went with us often snowboarded in the US, so he agreed to teach me and the Brazilian guy how to snowboard while the other beginners went with our skiing instructor. After a lot of falling, and having to take my snowboard off a few times, I finally got to the bottom of the first run. I learned a lot that day, but had trouble putting it into practice. The most important thing I learned is snowboarding is hard and that it hurts. Eventually me and my snowboarding partner were tired and cold so we had lunch in the restaurant at the top of the mountain. This was the second steak I had after coming to Poland, though not quite the last. After this we snowboarded a while, got tired and cold again, and then decided to wait for the others when it was time to go back. Though after no one returned we went down the ski lift and waited with the Rotarians, though once again no one returned. After the ski lifts closed we called someone (we didn’t want to before because it was very expensive to use Polish phones in Italy) and found out that everyone else had gotten bored and gone back to the hotel earlier. After dinner that night we went out in the city to see if we could find something entertaining to do. But we also found out that night that in Livigno everything closes very early and there wasn’t much to do.

The next day I decided to stay at the hotel and go see the city with Luis, who was injured and was not allowed to go skiing for the whole trip. We had slept in quite a bit, and just as we were about to go out to find something fun to do, Felipe (the Brazilian) walks in with Pablo (The Mexican/ American [it’s a long story] who taught me and Felipe how to snowboard.). Apparently, Pablo had fallen and gotten a concussion, and Felipe brought him back to the hotel for help. So we took our concussed friend (who had a very comical memory loss) to the hospital, and then tried to get ahold of the Rotarian. It took a while, and a lot of bus/taxi rides, but eventually Pablo was ok, and even then we started playing with him and his memory loss. In celebration that he was alright, and, more importantly, to kill time, we went out to buy some pizza, it was Italy afterall. We found a nice restaurant there and settled in. It turns out though that our waiter was from Argentina, and since most people at the table were fluent in Spanish, we all had fun with the waiter. The waiter even decided to make fun of Pablo and his inability to remember events that had happened five seconds before. The food was absolutely delicious, I had a spicy pizza with something similar to pepperoni and some other stuff on it that was the best pizza I ever ate. And then Felipe ordered a steak, that we realized when they brought it out it was bigger than my head. Not only that, but it was a very delicious steak. I ended up ordering one myself the next time I went to the restaurant, the day before we left Italy. The rest of the day was rather uneventful, so afterwards we went snowboarding the next day. I actually have a video of me snowboarding, but since it is mostly of me falling, I won’t be posting it. If you really want to see me falling and rolling around in the snow, then email me at coycrf70@gmail.com  saying so and I will send you a copy of the video.

Plainly put though, the rest of the trip was just snowboarding, snowboarding, and more snowboarding. I won’t waste your time writing about how to snowboard, but I eventually got a bit better, and since leaving Italy I have gone snowboarding with my host family and I’ve actually gotten pretty decent at it. To end the story, right before we left to go home I bought a new balisong (butterfly knife for most people) and it so far is my favorite one. Then we had another long bus ride back to Poland, and I stayed one more night with the nice old lady from before, and finally ended with another incredibly long train ride back to Krakow.

Polish New Years

Alright this will be a fairly short post even though it is an important holiday. The fact of the matter is that New Years in Poland is celebrated almost identically to New Years in America. So there isn't a whole lot to tell you other than skimming through what I did on New Years Eve.

On New Years one of my classmates invited me to a party at his house, so I accepted. My host parents drove me (after I had spent the entire previous day getting explicit directions on how to get to my friend's house by bus.) and then I met my friend's parents, and was surprised that they spoke fairly fluent English. It was pretty much a normal party with people standing around and talking to eachother, some of the guys played poker and such. At one point some of the more fluent English speaking girls were asking me about their accent, as one was very proud that I told her that she spoke English with a British accent, and the other mad that I told her she sounded more like an American. (In Poland they learn only British English, so when they speak many want to speak with a British accent.) Later we went outside and shot off some fireworks and welcomed the New Year with a bottle of Russian Champagne. Then we went back inside, talked for several more hours and eventually went to sleep. The next day I slept through my bus so my friend's dad drove me to the city, I wandered around for a couple hours waiting for my bus home, ate a kebab (one of my favorite things to eat in Poland), and then finally went home. My New Years wasn't all that exciting, but it was still interesting enough. Oh and I should mention, in Poland the traditions of "The Dropping of the Ball" and kissing your significant other at midnight don't exist. And after new years day, school started once more. :'(

Sorry but I didn't bring my camera to the party so no pictures this time. Look forward next time I get around to writing (hopefully sooner rather than later) because it will be about my trip to Livigno, Italy and me trying and failing to snowboard. I'll also have plenty of beautiful pictures of the Italian Alps.

Polish Christmas

Well of course, now I'm going to talk about Christmas in Poland. I'm sure you're all very excited to hear about this, but to tell the truth it wasn't all that exciting. Being away from my family and all of the normal traditions simply didn't make it feel like Christmas, only another strange Polish holiday. Still, there were some interesting new traditions.

First I should mention that on the last day of school before Christmas Break (we get 1 and a half weeks off, but don't confuse this with Winter Break like in America, we get two weeks off in January for that.). School ended much earlier than usual, at about noon. Then we brought in all kinds of food and turned the class room into a giant table. Then we passed the food out, passed out the opłatki (O-pwat-kee) which are little wafers that have some kind of Christmas picture in them, and had a little Christmas dinner right in the class. We started with the tradition of the opłatki, where you walk around, break bits off other people's opłatek, and exchange wishes. I only knew one wish in Polish, but it was a really nice tradition. The only thing I disliked was with a large class it took a long time to finish it, and I couldn't eat until we were done. After this I had some kind of Polish burrito with cabbage inside, but it was really good, we had barszcz (borscht in English) which is a soup that is almost only eaten at Christmas time, and of course cookies. After an hour or so I had to leave though to go see Skyfall with some of my Polish friends. A lot of movies in Poland are simply American movies with Polish subtitles, so I can watch movies here without needing to try and translate it.

Moving on, Christmas also features a Christmas Market in the Main Square. This is a bunch of wooden stalls selling little gifts. During Christmas break I actually bought a balisong (butterfly knife to most) there as a Christmas present to myself. But my favorite thing about it was that they had big stalls where they sold grilled meat, such as kielbasa. Very delicious kielbasa, which I had a few times. It is also there I got my host parent's Christmas presents.

And now I'm sure you're excited to hear about Christmas dinner in Poland. On the first day of Christmas (in Poland Christmas lasts 2 days) we got dressed up in suits, and my host mom's father and sister came along, with her German husband and their 1 year old child. Then we started dinner. First we wished each other well with the opłatki, and then started the 5 course meal (it is usually twelve courses in Poland, but my stomach was spared from exploding.). First was my favorite part, the czerwone barszcz, then we had a mushroom soup that I choked down, followed by pierogi's, carp (I was saved from eating it by their daughter calling from Colorado where she is currently on an exchange), and finally cake. But back tracking a bit, the skype call with their daughter was interesting. She had sent a giant box with presents from America for her whole family, even one for me. So they all opened her presents on the webcam and we all thanked her. I got some American candy (Red vines and a gingerbread cookie). Then we had the cake and opened the other presents. From my host family I got a big winter coat, a sweater, and so much candy that I'm still finishing it 2 months later. Honestly if Daly is reading this, I'm going to have a lot of work until I can get back down to 195's. Then after that we just kind of sat around talking for a while before people had to start going home and bid everyone farwell. The next day we went up to my host aunt's house and had obiad there. This meal was one of the better that I have eaten in Poland, with pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, green beans, and some kind of tomato soup that was delicious as well. Other than that though I kind of just read a book while everyone else was watching the Lord of the Rings on television, or I played with Bartusz the baby, he seemed to enjoy my yoyo.

That's about all for Christmas, I'll try to get my New Years written down in just a few minutes as well. As for pictures, honestly I never really took a lot because it would have mostly been pictures of my host family and such, and those aren't all that interesting. Sorry again, but I'm not any kind of photographer, so my last thought is usually to take pictures of things. So I'll give you pictures of some of the more foreign foods that I ate for Christmas, and a funny picture from my class during our dinner.

Wojtek acting like a Roast pig. We even stuck an apple in his mouth.

Czerwone Barszcz

Pierogi

Class Christmas

Alright, this post will be rather short, and I'm sorry once again that I'm so far behind. But eventually I'll find a way to get everything written down for y'all. I'm just a bit lazy, doing nothing school related and purely having fun for the last 6 months kind of does that you.

Anyway, I'll be talking about my "Class Christmas". This is basically a Secret Santa that I did with my Polish class. I drew the teacher so my present was fairly unexciting, simply an extra calendar with pictures of the Arizona that I had because I give them as a present to my host families. But still, I wrapped it nicely and she seemed to like it (oh and she's also an English teacher at the school, so I had no trouble telling her anything.) My present was from one of my friends, but since he started the school day by telling me "oh and when you get your present, don't let the teacher see it." I probably shouldn't tell y'all either. Needless to say it is funny, and since I got it I hid it in my suitcase so my host brothers don't see it. All in all, it was fun and cute, and a lot better than anything we do for Christmas in PHS.

Below is a picture of Kascpar, our class President, and Ignacy. Kascpar was in charge of sitting in the chair at the front, reading off the names of who gets the present and giving them out. Ignacy decided he'd sit on his lap like Santa Claus.

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.

Freshman Orientation

Well it is about time to get my butt in gear and catch up on this blog. But one of the reasons that I haven’t written in so long is because there are very few things to write. A lot of my time is spent at school where I sleep and read because other than me everyone has to do classes. I’ve learned I hate trying to learn French even more than Polish and I’ve explored the city a few times. But even then there was nothing specific to really say went on. But at one point of walking around the city I realized that what makes a foreign exchange great isn’t the big events such as meeting Holocaust survivors and visiting different parts of the country, but the small differences that emphasize that you are in a different country and culture. Of course the big events are still more exciting and fun to do.

So I have decided that I am going to start giving you guys some of the differences between Poland and the US. And because the Monday of the week I am writing this blog post for (October 14th-20th) was my Freshman Orientation in my high school (Here I was demoted to Freshman again.) I will talk about the difference between my Freshman Orientation in America and the one in Poland.

First I’ll explain what happened in Poland since I’m sure most of you know what my orientation in America was like. The first big difference is that we were asked to wear formal clothing to school on the day of the Orientation. That itself can tell you a lot of the differences of how schools are run here versus how they are run in America. At the end of the day we got out of class about a fifteen minutes early and we were taken to an auditorium that the school had rented in a big conference building. At the time I was helping one of the English teachers with her advanced English class so I at least got to talk with people pretty well. The actual ceremony is hard to describe because my Polish still isn’t great and I couldn’t really tell what was going on. They made some people swear oaths to the school and then they made each class of the school say a little thing together, which I managed to do even if my pronunciation was a little off. Then when everyone wanted to leave we had to wait and sit through a mini art show of paintings by students and one little orientation video some of the Seniors (called third years here) made.

During most of this time I kept pointing out the differences between this and the Freshman Orientation for Parker High School, personally I prefer the American way of doing things. The formality doesn’t work well with most American teenagers (how often do you see kids in Parker High School all wearing suits, and I mean the entire student body, not just the wrestling team before a bus ride). Beyond this is the fact that we did it before high school, which really didn’t matter much between here and there. And the biggest difference between American Freshman Orientation and the Polish one is that the American one was more fun, the student council dresses up like idiots (I still have the picture of Mr. Daly dressed as Peter Pan on my phone and my classmates couldn’t believe a teacher would show up to school dressed like that, though they said the same thing when I showed them a faculty picture from the Parker High School website.), there are interesting games, and it gives you a sense of school spirit, something that completely doesn’t exist in Polish schools. Though I was also told that one high school in Poland did do a little game thing, but theirs was gross. They had to lick whipped cream off the knee of the headmaster or a priest, which got the school in a lot of trouble from what I understood.

Anyway that is about it. Not much else to report, but I’m going to try to get caught up this weekend and manage to write about All Saints Day which happened a couple days ago.

Nothing to Report

Like I said last week, there wasn't really anything special that happened between September 30th and October 13th. I simply went to school, learned a little Polish, once I went biking and saw some beautiful countryside but I didn't bring my camera so I didn't grab any pictures for you. I've continued to lift weights, practice MMA, and wander around the city. The only thing slightly interesting that happened was my host brother wore a suit to school for teacher appreciation day and I knew my school was supposed to wear a suit on some day that was close by so I decided to wear one too. I went to school and found out that it was the next Monday so I was really happy I brought back up clothes in case this was another case of me getting dates mixed up and making a fool of myself. So I changed into normal clothes and had to iron the clothes I wore when I got home. Hope Parker is a little more eventful than Poland, but I've been there too so I know it isn't much different.

Things calm down a bit.

Honestly there isn't much to write about. This will be about two weeks because very little has happened in two weeks. So the blog post will be from September 30th to October 14th.

What to say about these weeks. The first week I went to the pool again and went weight lifting. Things have started to settle down though. I didn't really do much but lay around the house, use my laptop, read, sleep, and generally be a lazy teenager. During the week my family was often out of the house for church related things. I am exempt from this because I'm not Catholic and I can't imagine anything more boring than sitting in a church when you don't believe in the religion and listening to a sermon in a language you don't understand. So thankfully I didn't have to go. Sunday my host parents wanted to take me hiking but it ended up raining so we didn't do anything but stay inside.

The next week was a little more interesting. I had gotten bored laying around the house so twice that week I stayed after school and walked around the city. The first time I went to the mall to pick up some things I needed and ended up getting a yo yo to kill the time as well. Since I have found out that I hate the yo yo I bought, but it still technically works so I bring it to school to kill time while I'm there. It ended up being kind of funny because most Polish people don't even really know what a yo yo is at my school so they think I brought it from America. This leaves them more surprised when I explain I found two different stores where you could buy decent yo yos in the mall. The other time I simply walked around the city center, explored a bit, and did nothing in particular. A lot of what I saw I had already seen.

Saturday I have come to find is my family's do-nothing day. So I usually sleep 'til noon and then lay around on Saturdays. Sunday my host father took me and my host brothers to a zoo. It was similar to zoos I saw in the US though it was in the middle of a forest rather than in the city. The only really curious thing I saw there were that some of the animals were loose and walking around the zoo. Before I saw the peacocks in their habitat I saw three of them walking around in front of the bird cages. Some of the animals were hard to take pictures of because the bars in front of them were thick, so not all my pictures turned out too well. Still I was fun, though I think my host brothers had a little more fun than me. Zoos are more for little kids than teenagers afterall.

I haven't put the pictures from this time into my comp yet. So when I do I'll add them. And I haven't forgotten about adding pictures from Warsaw, but I'm still too lazy to spent the two hours needed to find pictures. So I'll post them when I get around to it.

First Week With My New Host Family

Once again I’m sorry for taking so long to get another post in. Honestly it isn’t always the first thing I think about and it also isn’t always the most fun thing to. But I feel I owe it to you all so I’m going to try and catch up to where I currently am. So far I’m about 3 weeks behind. Without further ado I’ll tell you about the week from September 24^th to the 29^th.

I should start by talking about my new host family. I have two younger brothers, one is 14 and the other is 10. They have both their parents, which is actually rather normal in Poland from what I can gather. My host dad works at the post office doing something I don’t really understand, and my host mother is a stay at home mom. Since I’m at school most of the day I’m not always sure what she does while we’re all away. And the biggest fact about them is that they don’t speak almost any English. This is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because my Polish is improving a lot faster than before because I use it whenever possible. If I speak in English I often just get “Ok” which is kind of like when I smile and nod when people speak to me in Polish. On the other hand, if it is any kind of complex question or conversation we have to go on Google Translate and hope that it doesn’t mess up the understanding, or I just have no clue what is going on.

 My youngest host brother is very intelligent, he is very good at playing the piano already and his normal hobbies are doing projects on different cultures around the world. His English is amazing considering the fact that he is only 10. My other host brother is my “official babysitter” since he is the only one who speaks a fair bit of English in the house. This kind of annoys me because I don’t like a middle schooler telling me what to do all the time, and his lack of language skills makes him sound arrogant most of the time even though I know this isn’t the case. At the same time he is very nice, and doesn’t sound at all arrogant when speaking in Polish, I just rarely know what he is saying. He is a huge fan of Legos and Star Wars (the animated Clone Wars ones. I’m not even sure if the kids have seen the real movies). My host mom cooks a lot and is always doing some kind of house work it seems. Poland sometimes reminds me of America in the 1920’s with how my host mothers have acted. Still she is very nice. I don’t see much of my host father because he works from dawn till dusk and he speaks absolutely no English. It is awkward talking to him, and he teaches me random Polish words that I’d almost never use so I end up forgetting them 2 minutes after he tells me.

Now onto the things I did this week. All in all it was a pretty interesting week. Monday was entirely uneventful. My oldest host brother’s middle school is across the street from my high school so he escorted me to school and picked me up after, taking me straight home. Honestly that is as exciting as it got Moday. Tuesday was exactly the same except for after school my host mother took my host brothers and me to the pool fairly close to our house. The pool itself was boring compared to the river as all pools have been to me for years. Also the hot tub was like the hot tub from the GCU tournament last year (that was for wrestlers, it just means the water was barely warm, kind of like a glass of tap water left outside in Arizona for twenty minutes). But the fun parts were the sauna I found, which my youngest host brother only lasted about 2 minutes in, and the waterslide which I went down and broke just about every rule they wrote about the thing….I think, I didn’t understand what the rule board said. Wednesday I finally got to work out for the first time in 4 months, though I also came to respect just how good the weight room in Parker is. Sadly I have to be careful when I work out because I have no spotter and everything is in kilos so I don’t know how much to use on everything. Still it felt good working out after so long. I’ll skip to Friday from here because I want to save the best for last. So Friday was pretty normal though in PE we finally hit the weight room even though all we did was max bench. Honestly it was pretty funny, even after only having one work out I still out benched all but one of them by 20 kilos. Also, apparently Sunday is "Men's Day" or something (my classmates translated the best they could for me) so Friday all of the girls stood up during our first class and gave us all these little bags of homemade cookies with a hand drawn card and message on the back. They were even nice enough to translate my message into English for me. I though it was really cute all in all, plus the cookies were good.

Finally Thursday, I had been warned the day before that there would be some students from other countries visiting our school because a few of my classmates would be hosting the students. They had some presentations on Thursday that were in several languages including English so I got permission to skip classes and go to the presentations with them. I didn’t know this until after, but I’m extremely lucky to have got to do this. There were several presentations but you could only sign up for one of them. I just signed up to the one my classmate went to (the host siblings went with the other exchange students to the presentations, partly for translation). This turned out to be a meeting with a Holocaust survivor and an insurgent from the Warsaw Uprising, which is why he was in the concentration camp. Honestly it is one thing to read about the events in a history book, watch someone on a video, or any of the other ways we’ve heard about the Holocaust, but it is an entirely different matter to shake hands with and hear the firsthand story of someone who went through that hell while he is sitting across the table from you. I got to see patches from his uniform in the camps as well as several drawings done by an artist in the camp (he went to great lengths to get the paper to draw) and heard stories about the cruel things down in the camps.

Though I don’t like being lighthearted after saying something serious, after that we had a lunch break. I took this time to talk to the British people I who were in the school during this time. I’ve now come to the opinion I don’t like British people. (I know I shouldn’t characterize a whole country, but since they are the only British people I’ve met, I can only form my opinion around them. Similar to the way people forming their opinion of Americans after meeting me here.) After talking for a few minutes the conversation ended up turning to how I don’t speak English correctly because I call things trashcans instead of “rubbish bins” and how I’m a warmongering psychopath because my family owns weapons. Luckily for the UK later I talked to their teacher and he was much nicer and less snobbish, so some of my opinion of the race was saved.

And lastly I’ll skip to Sunday, because I did absolutely nothing but sit on my butt or sleep on Saturday. My host family decided to try and entertain me by taking me to a few places near Krakow. The first was a large cave that was pretty cool, and luckily this time I didn’t hit my head on the roof. I’ll show some pictures of that in a moment. After that we went to this very pretty area that had an old castle, which had a museum inside. By the time we were done though I was pretty worn out, and I was tired of my host father’s Polish lessons so I pretended to sleep on the ride home.

Now I’m sure after reading all of this you’ll be happy to hear that the next couple entries will be much shorter than this one. Or maybe you’re thinking “shut up and get to the pictures already”.

 The Holocaust Survivor

Part of His ^ Uniform

The P shows what he was in the camp for

My cookies from "Men's Day"

The Entrance to the Cave

The Castle

Warsaw Meeting

Well in my quest to catch up to where I am now, I'm going to tell everyone about my fairly recent trip to Warsaw. This was during the week of the 17th to the 23rd. Monday through Friday I'm just gonna skip over, as they were fairly uneventful rather than learning a bit of Polish, and getting invited to go hiking in the mountains with my classmates, which I was forced to turn down because it was at the same time as going to Warsaw, though I wish I could have done both. Still, on Friday I skipped school and got on a train to Warsaw.

Anyway, for the third time I've taken a train now, though this was definitely the worst. Since we didn't get on the train fast enough (meaning we weren't in front of a door when the train stopped) we were forced to find a place to sit other than an actual seat. But by the time we found this out even the cart that only had people sitting on the floor along the walls was full so we were forced to sit in a big bunch in front of the door. Lucky me, I got to sit with my back against the door, getting pushed to the side whenever it opened and curling into a ball every time someone wanted to walk in or out the door, so about every ten minutes. Coupling that with the fact that I sat on a metal floor for three hours straight made this a miserable train ride. But still, when we got there I got to see a lot of my friends from Polish Language Camp, so we spent several hours greeting eachother. When everyone was finally there we went to our hostel, not hotel but a hostel. The difference between the two is you rent a room in a hotel, in a hostel you rent a bed and if someone you don't know rents a bed in the same room. We were lucky because Rotary rented all the beds in each of the rooms for us, but it was still from 8 to 12 people in a room. The rooms were really nice though, all had some kind of theme. I ended up in the horror themed room though I didn't sleep under the painting of the devil or under the painting of the girl from The Ring, so I was good. I decided to name the room New Mexico though because of the ten people in the room only three weren't Mexican. After this we basically just partied in the hostel for half the night, enjoying eachothers company and basically acting like teenagers. Needless to say we were stupid and went to sleep late, something we regretted when we had to get up early in the morning.

The next day was the day when we got everything done. So it was a pretty packed day. First we got on a bus and got a tour of Warsaw, driving past a lot of well known places and hearing about the city's history, even if the history was only a few decades ago, something rare for Poland. Most of it was about the Warsaw Uprising, when the Nazis held the city and the city of Warsaw fought back. This ended with Hitler leveling the city, only 13 buildings were left standing. The reason Warsaw isn't a very historic place is actually because all of the history there was destroyed and the city had to be built new. (On another note, Krakow and Warsaw are like Parker and Wickenburg. Those from Krakow think Warsaw is horrible because it has no history and is all modern and efficient so they think it is ugly. On the other hand people from Warsaw view Krakow as old and run down without having much to do in the city. I personally like both cities, they each have their own unique qualities but I've decided not to mention this to my classmates. That'd be like going to Parker High in a Wickenburg school shirt during Spirit Week.)

We spent several hours at the Warsaw Uprising museum, which I thought had a similar feel to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. It seems Hitler's atrocities inspired a few very nice museums. After this we went on another bus tour of Warsaw and stopped briefly at several monuments. We saw the Polish version of the White House, and then we went back to the hostel for a few minutes to get our Rotary blazers and head to the orientation.

We started it by making every student introduce ourselves in Polish. A lot of the kids did a very good job, though introductions were something all of us knew well, and though it makes up the largest amount of my comprehensible Polish I have yet had need to introduce myself. When I meet people others are always quick to explain who and what I am for me. When I got passed the microphone though I choked and made a couple mistakes. After feeling like an idiot I sat bad down. After that we got a speech on the rules of being an exchange student, most of which were half common sense and half things that rarely happen. Finally we got to the thing that excited most of us, information about the EuroTour. This is the trip we take toward the end of our exchange that takes us around the whole continent of Europe. We were all a little disappointed as well as excited after the presentation. While it looked like something that would be a shame to miss, a month going through and seeing several of the most well known countries in Europe, we were all sad at the fact that Italy was pretty much skipped over. I guess we complained a little too loudly because at the end of the meeting the asked if we'd like to use the program that they did last year which went to different countries, but saw most of Italy. This made us all happier, and I've seen the new program since and I really can't wait.

After this we finished the night by going to a part of Warsaw and getting some free time. I spent this shopping for pins for my blazer with some friends (I got some really nice ones.) and we even found a shop owner who spoke fluent Spanish. This didn't really interest me but one of our group was a Mexican and another was a Mexican-American so they were really excited, as was the shop owner. They ended up taking pictures together and getting his email. After this we went to get ice cream and got utterly lost. We finally found our group a half hour after we were supposed to meet and after that we went to the Dancing Fountain. This was a really cool water show that used lights and at some points they would use a mist to catch the light of a projector and by doing so they turned the water into a moving movie screen. I would put pictures of this, but a friend took a video of it and she agreed to send it to me so I'll put that on here as soon as I get it from her. After this we went back to the hostel and since I had caught a cold by standing out in the rain I went to bed early.

The next day was uneventful, we got up and then quickly left to catch our trains at the train station. I got to see a friend from Krakow who had gone to the Coldplay concert the night before I came to Warsaw, someone I hadn't seen since the Language Camp. Then we loaded onto the train, I got the task of kicking the Polish people out of the seats assigned to us since "my English was the best" (not true considering we brought an extra American back with us.) and I also guess because I seem to look intimidating. So after about 20 minutes of convincing the people in our seats that they were in the wrong seats using broken Polish and English we sat down and headed home.

When I got back home I packed up. Because of some misunderstandings I had learned at the beginning of the week that I would be changing host families. So I had two hours to pack all of my worldly possessions (mostly clothes) and I met my new host family. My host mom talked to them for about an hour and then I left to go to my new home.

Now time for the pictures. Once again I managed to forget my camera though, so I have to steal pictures from other exchange students that were there.

And sorry if you are reading this now, it is late at night here (I'm 9 hours ahead of y'all in Arizona if you didn't remember) and my new host family only has internet in their kitchen. Considering I have to go through the room of my two little brothers to get to mine I try not to stay up too late so they won't be asleep when I do decide to retire to my rooms. Anyway I'll put up pictures tomorrow.

Lakes of Mazury

Well, when it takes me several weeks to write a new blog post that means one of two things, I'm so busy doing amazing things in Poland that I don't really have time to write or I'm just being a lazy good for nothing and wasting my time. These last few weeks have been a mixture of both. I have got to do extraordinary things, but at the same time I have had several chances to write and have just goofed off instead. :P In either case, I have finally gotten down to it so I'll start where I left off, the week of September 10th through the 16th.

Now, like almost everyone my age around the world I spend the majority of my week simply going to school. Of course I've mentioned before that this is different for me because there is absolutely nothing for me to do in school. I don't mind it too much, I like lazing around throughout the school day. Though I should mention that there is one class that I have to work in, French Class. This teacher decided that since none of the other students understand French then I could learn with them. I was put in the lowest possible class, there are students at my school who are fluent in French in the upper classes. Language classes in Europe start a lot earlier and they actually teach you in hopes that you become fluent in the language, because since their countries are the same distance and size as some of our states, they go on vacations and things to other countries rather than just to another state. Anyway, the problem with me learning about French though is that half the time I can't figure out if she is talking in French or Polish during the class. Honestly I keep getting in trouble, but I've already given up trying in the class and now I spend it checking my wristwatch to see how much longer I have, and deciding if she is speaking to us in French or Polish. Also I have to buy my text book (Schools don't provide them for you in Europe. But they are a lot smaller and cheaper so it isn't too big of a deal.) but I have absolutely no idea where to buy this book.Though, besides French class, my days are almost all lazy and uneventful. After school I often am really sleeping and go take a nap. I've started to run for an hour every couple nights because I still haven't been able to find a sports club (I'm still trying to wrestle but it is beginning to look like I'll have a year off the mat.) and with the huge servings of food my family gives me I'm getting fatter. And since I refuse to end up like Nelson I shall find some way to exercise all this Polish food off.

Now for the fun stuff. This weekend skipped school Thursday and Friday because I spent 4 days in a part of Poland called Mazury, which is very far from Krakow. Mazury is where Poland's form of the "Great Lakes" are and it is absolutely beautiful. I probably won't write too much about it because this is one of those places you can't describe with words. Hopefully you can get a small glimpse at what I saw through the pictures. Though sadly I have to steal my fellow exchange students' because I have the bad habit of forgetting my camera.

But before that I'll explain a little of what we did. First I got to ride on a train for the first time. This actually isn't a big deal since I will be doing this every once in a while. In Poland if you want to go a decent distance you don't drive, you take a train. I found that they don't all look like Hogwarts, the first time was actually seats similar to a plane, though the second ride was a little booth with random people in it, just like I remember from Harry Potter. From here we got on a van-bus thingy and they drove a few hours to Mazury. Most of the people on the trip were Brazilian or Mexican so Portuguese or Spanish was the languages spoken most during this trip. I spent the bus ride asleep because I rarely knew what was being said.

That night we went and had "the best pierogis in Mazury" at least that was what Pawel claimed. They were very good, but honestly almost all pierogis are starting to taste the same, all of them are just very good. And them we got to the two cabins that we would be staying in. The first thing they did was ask two of the biggest guys to help move a couch bed upstairs, so me and a Brazilian, Iuri, headed over to the girls' cabins to help. After breaking the couch bed and figuring out that there was no way for it to fit through the door leading upstairs, we kind of left the broken bed where it wouldn't cause too much problems and someone could still sleep on it. Then we got back to our cabin and had last choice of best for our troubles. I ended up sleeping in the living room on the boys' couch bed, which wasn't the most warm or comfortable place to be. After all this they told us that we could have a little party and left us to do our own thing. We all went to sleep at about three in the morning and got up at 7 the next day.

The first thing I noticed was that I forgot a towel, so I had to get as dry as I could after my shower and then just go to breakfast wet. This was especially uncomfortable since it is about 40 degrees in Mazury at this time. After breakfast they got all of the guys together and we went to chop down a tree with the two axes we found. It was fun cutting down the tree, though I was blind in one eye most of the time thanks to a flying wood chip from the tree. We then had to carry the 20 foot tree down the road back to camp, which we got a lot of pictures of..... well everyone else did, I didn't have a camera. After making some of the only clothes I had dirty and covered in wet tree and mud we started cutting the tree into small logs for the campfire that night. This was fun, but it soon became clear that a few people could use the axes and others would take all day to cut the tree and would probably hurt someone. A few hours later we left to go explore the area.

We drove through some of the large towns that are around the lakes. The first thing we did was go to the Wolf's Lair (which is the translation from German to English). This was one of Hitler's most important bases during WWII. He had lived there for several months and there was even an assassination attempt on him by a German officer while he was there. It was cool, but it was supposed to be hidden in the trees and everything was mostly large broken cement buildings covered in moss because the Germans blew the whole place to bits when they left it. Then we saw a Bishop's Palace, an really big old castley building with a great view from the tower, and I had a weird "French hot dog". It was a hotdog put into a breadstick sleeve thingy. It didn't taste bad but Polish people use way too much ketchup, and it was just really weird to eat. After this we went to see an organ concert, one of those giant church pianos with the giant pipes that makes Baby Grand pianos look like a childs toy. This one was really cool because it was largely automated, some of the sounds coming from the angels decorating it shaking bells, or spinning wheels or whatever. After this a lot of us guys got cheap airsoft guns (though I really wanted to get one of the switchblade knives they sold. I love how some of the things that are illegal to own in the US are perfectly normal here.). Most of the guns were broken by the end of the night, but we did have fun shooting eachother and cussing in several languages when we were shot. Dinner that night was kielbasa or Polish sausage, and some weird stew thing they cooked in the camp fire we made. We would have made smores but the only marshmallows you can get in Poland are little bubble gum flavored ones and those are hard to find, plus they would be horrible for smores.

The next day we went to explore some of the other towns in Mazury. At one point we were being led somewhere and I was walking with a couple of the Mexicans and the Columbian kid. We got left behind and lost because they went nuts over seeing a duck (and it had nothing to do with them never seeing one before which is usually the reason exchange students go nuts when they see something. They all have them in their countries but they just seemed to love the duck...I named it Aflac.) When we called to tell them we had gone missing they told us that they were on a tight schedual so just to meet them back at the bus in an hour. So we went to a pizza place and had second breakfast. While we ate we found the group, and it turns out they had just gotten turned loose for freetime too. Since they didn't have as much time as us they couldn't get their own pizzas and went off to find different food. We then had some ice cream before loading onto the bus to head off to go on a cruise on the lakes. It was cool, the Rotary club of the town we were in took us on this big party boat and invited a bunch of teenagers from the Polish high school (I never learned what they had to do with Rotary but there was something.) A bunch of the guys thought it was really cool to meet an American so I spent the entire boat ride talking to them about random things. I was happy however to find out that one of them was a wrestler, mostly because I miss wrestling, I haven't found a club for it in Krakow yet. Wrestling isn't very popular in Poland, most people don't even know what it is. After that we were all pretty tire so we went back to the cabins and got to have another little party again, though this time half the people were outside dancing with the bus driver. (His name is Arthur, but you pronounce it like AR-TOO-ER). It was a fun night, and the next day we went home. But the kids from Krakow took a later train so we could stay in Warsaw and see it a bit. All we did was go to the mall and then had some munchies at the Hard Rock Cafe but it was still fun.

Now what you have all been waiting for, pictures of the Mazurian Lakes!

This is the view from the front of our cabins. And yes, that is me shooting the photographer with an airsoft gun, the only one that was still working.

 The view from inside one of the destroyed buildings of the Wolf's Lair. Most of them looked pretty similar to this.

This is the Bishop's Palace

 

 The duck that got us lost

The view of the lake we sailed on. It would be prettier if it hadn't been cloudy and rainy all day.

 

The church where we heard the organ concert.

The Organ