Save the Red Shoes!

I've got a small bit of bad news. I don't think my red Danskos are going to make it through the winter. Over the last few days, with this crappy fall rain, I have been finding myself consistently unable to walk from the tram stop to my school without ending up with two puddles of water instead of feet. I thought Danskos were supposed to be indestructible!

Please feel free to offer any suggestions (aside from the obvious "Duh, buy some new shoes") here.

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Snow. Snow is better than rain for the simple fact that is is less wet. (Maybe I can live with my imperfect red shoes a little bit longer.)



I mention this because today was the first day where we had snow in Kraków that actually stuck to the ground. However, the morning broke with a lot of sunshine. I stepped out into our refrigerator –in reality, a corner of our balcony– for some orange juice for my breakfast, and it was a gorgeous day! I decided in that moment that I would go down for a jog in a nearby park.

Every experience I have had jogging in this part of town has been wonderful. It's like a sight-seeing tour on warp speed. I have stumbled upon a beautiful garden within a park or just spun around the same path a few time to soak in the intense yellow of the trees in their fall brilliance. I can orientate myself a bit better AND I have to do something to counteract all the spoonfuls of Nutella that I eat directly out of the jar...

So this morning, I put on my sweatpants and my super space-age fabric hoodie with thumbholes cut out of the sleeves, and I was ready to go. I got outside and thought, "this isn't so bad." I got as far as the stoplight on my corner when it started to flurry. Still, I thought, "this isn't so bad." The weather still felt warm-ish, and the sun was still shining. There was a little competition for little kids and their toy airplanes on the big green. I made it down the first straightaway of the 3 or 4 K ring around the park, with the Kopiec Kosciuszko at my back, and I no sooner turned the corner than the wind decided to blow completely parallel to the ground and into my face. The snow flurries were now small collections of ice balls. I finally thought, "this is pretty bad. I must be crazy." Still, there was something thrilling about facing those elements and having giant snowflakes land on my tongue as if I were a child trying to excitedly catch them there.

But when all was said and done, I made it back home almost completely dry. I showered, fixed myself a big bowl of tomato soup, and of course now I'm back to eating more Nutella straight out of the jar.

Pics and such

Some scenes from the b-day holiday to London:




















Some are self-explanatory.














The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum: thousands of years of orthographic history at my fingertips!














To prove that Charles Dickens was human, after all.























Tom's sister, Audrey. Thanks for all the food!











After a staying up all night to catch an early bird flight back to Krakow. Somehow, physical exhaustion makes it easier to deal with the announcement of the pilot when he comes on to say that the plane is having engine trouble...

Happy 23 to Me!

Who knew that when I began this blog as a way to record the things I experience in Poland that I would be entering a post about spending my birthday in London? (You don't have to answer; that was a rhetorical question.)

To begin at the beginning, I have a crazy Hungarian friend. The word "crazy" needs to be enphasized many times, but Tamas -as is his name- is turning into one of my dearest friends in Poland. One thing I can always count on Tomi for is for giving into the impulses of Ryan Air. It was maybe three weeks ago that Tomi had the idea to go to London this weekend. Of course I said I would go with him. (Some of you reading this might be able to understand my real motivation.) The day before our departure, the two of us booked another flight to Madrid in February... The point is, I am here in England with him, meeting his sister and staying with his friends.

On the one hand, our weekend has been filled with the traditional "must-sees" of London's top sights. On the other hand, In conversations with all of Tomi's friends, it has been a really interesting look at contemporary immigrant life. I am learning a little bit of Hungarian as an added bonus. :)

As soon as I get back to Krakow I will upload some pictures of the highlights of this mini vacation. The list to include: a nighttime view from the London Eye, uncharacteristically gorgeous November weather, Tom being crazy, AND (my all-time favorite) Charles Dickens' commode.

Wybory 2007! Making our mark on the Polish democratic republic

My French roommate, Isabelle, recently acquired her Polish citizenship. So here we are right before she went in to vote on Sunday, October 21.

I plan to write my next Winona Daily News article about Polish democracy, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out one my sources, (this BBC article) which I think made a pretty audacious statement on the eve of the election. Would the New York Times ever do something like this? I don't think so.

Polish Healthcare, shaken not stirred

One of the many beautifully frustrating thing about living in Poland is the governmental bureaucracy. Any official state business –such as registering myself as a temporary resident of Kraków– takes almost an entire day. Let's not even bring up the hope that I can get decent local health care coverage; as a foreigner, and as a foreigner who doesn't belong to the European Union, it's as if I don't even exist to the government.

BUT...

I recently found this article by the BBC. It turns out that even sans documentation, I should be alright after all. This country will take care of me.

"Na zdrowie!" --> a Polish toast literally meaning "To Health"

Alma Mater Polonia

Jagiellonian University is the most prestigious higher education in Poland. (It is among oldest in Europe, founded in the fourteenth century, second only to the university in Prague.) I should come home at the end of the year with a diploma that certifies my work in Polish as a foreign language. I mean, I am kind of cheating when I say I go to Jagiellio´nski because I am only taking language classes at the Center for Polish Language & Culture, but hey, it technically counts. And I won't complain; the Polish government is paying me to be here all the same...

If you are interested in what my program of studies looks like, you can click here. I am definitely doing the A1 "Breakthrough" program. :)

l'Auberge Polonnaise

So I've been here for a week, and these are just some of the first impressions that I have collected in that time. I will make a more comprehensive post very soon (now that I have internet in my room). First of all, Krakow is absolutely stunning in the fall. The parks and avenues are gorgeous with the warm October sun and all of the yellow leaves falling around you and the sculptures.

The curious thing about living in Poland, the one thing that has been my saving grace, is how much I use me Spanish. Seriously. For example, my roommate, Isabel, is from France, and she only speaks English at a very basic level. However, she did an Erasmus program in Spain, and now she is at a near fluent level of Spanish. This is how an American girl can speak with her French roommate in Krakow... Who would have guessed? If you've seen the movie "l'Auberge espagnole" it resembles that storyline quite a bit.

There is no one here who is mono-lingual. Neither is English anywhere near being a "universal language." Explain it however you want –the proximity of European countries, inter-European study, immigration– but the fact remains that the majority of Americans are at such a disadvantage. The other foreign kids I am meeting, if we talk in English, it is certainly not their first language, and now they are learning Polish with me. What's up with our being able to graduate students and call them "educated" with maybe two years of half-hearted Spanish or German classes in high school?

Even so, the world is not perfect. Isabel and I are in need of a fridge for our dorm room, and as kids were moving into the dorms, there were a few fridges lying about the hallways. Isabel stopped a Polish student on the stairs to ask whether or not the unit in front of us was taken. The conversation went something like this:
(enter Isabel, Sarah and Dude)
Isabel: (in English) Excuse me, do you speak English?
Dude: No, very little.
Isabel: Ok, ummm... español? Italiano? Francais? Deutsch?
Dude: Ah, deutsch.
Isabel and Dude: (a conversation in broken German involving a lot of pointing, gestures, and "um" with Dude offering the correct word for "fridge" in Polish, which I promptly forgot.)
Dude: (Fed up) Okay, no, no, no. (Counts on fingers) Polski, Ukranski, Slovaki, Ruski, Ceska?...
Isabel and Sarah: Dziekuje (and exit)

Even with ten –count 'em, ten– languages available between us, we couldn't hold a simple conversation about a refrigerator! That little encounter made me wonder just what the hell am I getting myself in to.

Luckily I found a named Loretta, a British girl with a Polish mother, who grew up speaking Polish. What would I be doing without her help?? I really don't like NOT being able to understand what is going on around me or not being understood myself. I mean, come on - I was more or less a communications major. I live for being able to get my ideas across, and I always prided myself on how well I could get around Argentina with my Spanish. I honestly feel like a little child. I can really only look and observe. Pronunciation and reading is very difficult right now. The few words I do know are not enough to string into conversations, and when I do recognize things on billboards or that I overhear when other people speak, I get really excited.


I know I probably have enough literary references for this early in my blog, but here is one passage that struck me from the book that I was reading on my transatlantic flight. It's from Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage:
When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak. So you are just like a child in the womb. You begin to attach more importance to the things around you because your survival depends on them. You begin to be more accessible to others because they may be able to help you in difficult situations. And you accept any small favor from the gods with great delight, as if it were an episode that you would remember for the rest of your life.
At the same time, since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them, and you feel happy to be alive... The word pecadillo, which means a "small sin," comes from pecus, which means "defective foot," a foot that is incapable of walking a road. The way to correct the pecadillo is always to walk forward, adapting oneself to new situations and receiving in return all of the thousands of blessings that life generously offers to those who seek them.

True words when they refer to the simple state of a traveler and of how important it is just to keep walking, to keep persevering...