Go Gdańsk!

What lovely timing, just when I am really missing Poland and Europe, that this article came out in the NY Times travel section. It really paints a positive picture of Gdansk and Sopot. What is even more impressive is that the Times readers who voted where this correspondent should travel overwhelmingly chose Gdansk over Copenhagen and Hamburg. Plus, the writer gives props to the Solidarity museum - definitely one of my highlights.



I am so happy that I made it to this beautiful city. It was definitely one of my favorite weeks of the entire year; the Trójmiasto, coupled with the journey to my family's villages, northern Poland is fantastic. Take me back...

WDN article

Here is the pre-publication version of my latest Winona Daily News article. (It certainly been a while since I have written one of these...) It felt good to get it down. I think finally that I am feeling better about being here/being back home.

What’s in a name?

We tend to think about foreign travel in terms of what we can gain: experience, photographs, souvenirs, new ideas, new friends, and a broader perspective. But what if we shifted our focus to think about everything we could stand to lose as a result of travel? Some answers are obvious. Keys, money, and passports stand among the most common. You can easily lose your way in an unfamiliar place. Meaning gets lost in translation – just think of reading the English on a menu in a foreign locale. You might lose your stomach if you are my mother on an airplane. (Sorry, Mom.) But one of travel’s prime benefits is that it can strip us of some of our stereotypes, our prejudices, and even our fears.

Now that I am returned from my year in Poland, I can thankfully say that I have gained everything from that first category and lost little among the materials from the second group. However, I might end up losing something more personal, something that is literally who I am. Thanks to living abroad, I might lose my “witz.”

I don’t mean that a year in Poland permanently damaged my hold on sanity, although certain moments during a dark winter brought me close to the brink. I am referring specifically to my last name. W-I-T-Z is not an ending common among the Polish nation; rather, it should end in W-I-C-Z (pronounced “vitch”).

In May, I took a solo trip up to Kashubia and to my ancestral villages in northern Poland. I gazed at the pages of an old church register over a century old. Sure enough, the children among my antecedents who were born, baptized, married, and buried all bore the surname “Merchlewicz.” CZ at the end.

Wondering if the change took place as one of those countless Ellis Island-type mistakes of orthography, I reported my find to my grandfather, the oldest living family member of the line, who replied, “Oh, no, it got changed when I was about seven or eight years old.”

That fact indicates that I am only two generations away from the way my last name, my very inherent identity, had been known for who knows how many generations before that.

The question now is whether or not I should do away with the American “invention” that hangs at the end of my signature and go back to my roots or to leave it and embrace the inevitability that both time and people change. Preparing for such a long period of time away from the United States, I anticipated having one big, life-changing experience. I didn’t expect, however, that my stay would have an effect on how I might introduce myself to other people.

The way the world sees you is an important factor on how you view yourself. As anyone who works with kids will know, if children grow up hearing enough comments about how they are “bad”, “stupid”, or “untalented”, then they will eventually begin to believe them regardless of their unlimited potential. We can think of ourselves as being a certain person, but, thinking exclusively of names, we are only what the world calls us.

In this quest for authenticity and who I have become after visiting the so-called motherland, I frequently think about the name of my forefathers as it relates to my identity.

There is one aspect to a name change back to the way it was that could bring an undesired association: the altercation in English pronunciation would render me as Sarah Merchlewitch, and that, I think, might actually drive me crazy.

Give Me A 'T'

My right forearm is so sore. I am nearly two full days into my fourth summer as a tennis instructor at Gustavus Adolphus College's Tennis and Life Camps. (Some of my muscles are having a rude awakening to that reality...) Based on the fact that I missed over half of one summer from being in Argentina and part of this summer from being in Poland, I don't feel like a full-fledged veteran. Don't get me wrong - I love being here, and I especially love seeing all of the people who make it worth coming back for, but there is the definite disadvantage of not feeling as close with the staff as I could be. And as much as I always forward to coming back to St. Peter, I feel different this time around. I am a different person, I can tell, even if I can't concretely put my finger on it.

There is the most comfort in the familiar faces of my friends and colleagues, but one thing that surprised me was how comforted I feel when I recognize a camper from previous years. I have also felt surprised at both how natural and how spotty at the same time my teaching is. Of course that comes from not going through the beginning-of-the-summer training camp here or from not playing much tennis in Kraków. One of my friends here put it, "Don't worry - it's just like falling off a bike." Hmmm... Thanks, I think, for the encouragement.

Why do I like to come back, even if it's not the most comfortable of options for my current interests or schedule? This is an emotional place. This is a highly social and energetic place. Yes, those reasons are both true. But something that seals the deal is how beautiful the sky can be at sunset and twilight. The plains of Western Minnesota give way to an expansive sunset with its wide display of colors and light. The air smells good and clean. I think this is a healthy place in terms of my physicality and for my spirit. Except now I've got to get back outside to teach and catch up on my fabulous tennis tan...