It's Freezing Outside, But I'm Warm This Christmas

It was a beautiful weekend.

I had a really nice lesson with my Saturday class this week, and they reminded me of exactly why I love doing what I do.  Then we had the Bell Christmas party last night.  Karolina, Zenon, and Zuzia brought their adorable children, and it was wonderful to have them running around, playing and laughing.  I even got a bit of a cuddle with Karolina's daughter, which was great.  It reminded me of how much I'm looking forward to giving Natalie and Hudson big hugs next week.  The Polish teachers taught us some nice Polish Christmas carols, too, which we all tried to sing together, with more success than I would have imagined.  Then we went out dancing.  It was one of those nights you really don't want to end, so you just keep going.  It was well worth the headache this morning.  Which didn't last, because of Aija's magical pancakes.  They're the world's best hangover cure.  I need to get the recipe before she goes.

Anyway, today was well below freezing, but Aija and I walked to Turzyn (and stopped to feed the church ducks some leftover pancakes on the way!) and spent the afternoon at the mall and the outdoor market, trying to get some Christmas shopping done.  I don't know if I was just really happy today, or if Szczecin was especially beautiful with all the perfect white frost-coated trees and people bundled up and carrying Christmas trees home, but today felt like all the reasons I used to love Christmas so much.  And it had nothing to do with buying or getting presents, nothing to do with cookies or extravagant meals.  It's just the people everywhere, getting ready to celebrate with the ones they love.  Humming Christmas carols and smiling and not thinking about how cold it is or what they have to do at work tomorrow.  Maybe I'm Pollyanna-ing a bit here, because it's been such a wonderful few months, and I'm really happy these days, but, if so, who cares?  I'm excited to go home for Christmas, and just as excited to come back in the new year and resume my life here, with these people, in this place.  What more could I ask?

But in the usual way of things, just when you're able to ask that question and not have an answer, you find one.  I came home and talked to my mom, and she told me that my grandfather is in the hospital again.  His kidneys are failing and he's going to start dialysis tomorrow.  I'm upset.  And I'm worried.  About him, about Grandma, about Mom.  But it makes going home for Christmas seem even more important.  I'm not sure if the Christmas celebrations are going to carry on as they usually do, and I won't know how long he's going to be in the hospital until tomorrow, at the earliest.  But I'll see my grandfather this Christmas either way.  I'll spend time with my family, and I'll be in exactly the right frame of mind to appreciate it.  I don't know where I stand on prayer, but I do believe in positive thinking and I believe in community.  So if anyone who reads this could keep my grandpa in your thoughts over the next few days, I would be grateful.

Even with the bad news, though - and maybe even a little bit because of it - right now all I keep thinking is what an incredible thing life is.  Even an ordinary one.  My grandfather spent his working years mostly at a brewery.  He saw the ocean for the first time in his life in the late 1990s, after he was already retired. He's stayed pretty close to home for most of his life.  He's sick now, and life isn't easy.  But he has loved my grandmother for nearly 60 years.  He has six children, dozens of grandchildren, and even quite a few great-grandchildren.  He created something real.  I'm choosing to live my life a bit differently, pretty far from where I started out.  But I think I'm doing something equally valid and real, and I hope he's proud of me, like I am of him.

Finally, as a Christmas present to you, the beautiful song that's been in my head all day:

Growing Pains (and a rant)

When I was about 21, I read a book of poetry by Galway Kinnell for a class (A New Selected Poems, left).  I remember really liking it at the time, which was surprising, because I wasn’t particularly interested in much poetry back then.  But as is often the case with books you read for school, I eventually kind of forgot about it. Then, out of nowhere, about three years ago or so, while I was in law school, a line from one of the poems came into my head while I was studying, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, trying to remember exactly what it was.  There was nothing for it but to go look it up.  Here it is:

“ …Carriages we were babies in,

Springs that used to resist love, that gave in

And were thrown out like whores – the black

Irreducible heap, mausoleum of what we were –

It is cold suddenly, we feel chilled,

Nobody knows for sure what is left of him.”

Anyway, at the time, this line haunted me.  I remember thinking, “Yeah.  That’s it.  This is what growing up is.”  You give in to other people, to yourself, to your “future” and you become this vacant, tossed-out, wasteland that you can practically hear the wind whistling through, cold and numb and just plain finished with the world. 

Cut to today.  I woke up this morning and I was excited to start the day.  I went for a rambling run in the snow.  I had coffee with a friend, and we talked about how change happens in society.  (I’ll get to that in a minute – it ties into all of this.)  We also talked about how long I plan to stay in Szczecin, Poland, or Europe.  I went to school and talked to Zenon about arrangements for my visa.  He gave me a work permission form to take to the consulate that is valid for up to two years, should I choose to stay.  And I’m not 100% sure of much about my life right now, but I’m pretty sure of this: I’m not going back to living in the States anytime soon. 

Why?  On my walk home, the snow was driving into my face, and I was thinking about how annoyed I would have been about the weather last winter, but how beautiful I find it now.  I even took the long way home so I could walk around a bit more and take a few snow photos.  And I realized that this is how change happens in a person.  You do things that are hard.  You make friends who open your world up.  You figure out what’s important to you, and you do something about it.  I’m actually going back to being the person I was before I began wondering ‘what was left of me.’  I’ve been thinking about all the ways I can try to do some good in the world again, focusing in like a laser on all the things that are truly important and trying to let the rest of it go.  Caring about other people is important (that includes family, friends, students, co-workers, random people on the street, whoever).  How I spend the minutes and hours of my life is important.  What I look like, how much money I make, or my “career path” are not important.  

Actually, I’ve been anxious lately. My roommate is moving to Gdańsk at the end of the month.  I have a trip back to the US ahead of me, and when I come back from the States, life is going to be different than it is now.  Honestly, I’ve kind of been dreading Christmas coming.  (Sorry, everyone back home.  I really love you and I am absolutely looking forward to seeing you all again, I promise.)  And I’ve been a little worried about what’s going on with some people I care about, both here and at home.  It's been sort of painful to see how when you really care about things again, when you really love your life, you have more to lose when things change.  But today I realized this is all the way it's supposed to be.  If your life does change, and they aren't the changes you wanted, or if you get hurt, or if you have to find your bearings again, that doesn’t mean that you’ve made the wrong decisions, or that you shouldn’t have let people in, or that you failed.  It just means you have to be strong and make some new decisions.  And all  these things I care about are the things that have made me stronger.  The ability to really care about my life again has made me stronger.

And I’m not saying I have to be in Poland to feel this way, but I don’t think I can be in the US.  And here’s why: when I was talking to my friend about how change happens in society, I told him how pissed off I am at the culture of apathy back home.  We didn’t get the health-care bill we wanted?  Oh, let’s just bitch about it over a beer and then vote for basically the same people again in four years.  Hmm, or maybe we could sue someone about it… Our food has disgusting amounts of chemicals and pesticides in it, but I’ll feed it to my kid anyway, because it’s cheaper, and we’ve gotta pay for our two cars, the home we can’t afford, and all of this shit we think we need.  The only group of people raising any kind of fuss right now in the States is the goddamned Tea Party.  The people who actually have the fewest problems to bitch about.  I hate almost everything they stand for, but I can admit to grudging respect for them right now, because at least they actually care about something.  Enough to do something – anything – about it.  People in the UK have been pouring into the streets by the thousands because the government is cutting funding for education.  They don’t think it’s a privilege that only the rich should be able to take advantage of.  When I first heard about it, I thought ‘Oh, please.  You should see how bad it is in my country.’  But that’s bullshit.  It’s that bad back home because nobody bothered to stand up and fight about it.  Nobody cared if poor people went to school.  They didn't think it would be their kids.  The American Dream, and all.

Basically, the American Dream killed America (and it made me feel pretty much dead inside, too).  It’s all about the idea that if you keep your head down and work your ass off for your entire life at a ‘good’ job, maybe you can ‘own’ property (as if you can ever really own anything), maybe you’ll be one of the elite that has enough money to send your kids to school and look down your nose at the people who “didn’t work hard enough.”  No thought to things like community, compassion, passion or (heaven forbid) finding some meaning in life. No thought to anything other than material success.  And even those people who don't believe in it don't want to get off of their comfy sofas and fight back. Well, if America can’t dream any better than that, I don’t ever want to go back. I don't belong there anymore.  I care too much.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Or as they say here in Poland: czwartek* (Thursday)
This year, I am thankful for:
- my family.  I miss you and love you.
- old friends that feel like family: Evie and John, Margo, Angie and Justin (even Clint, Jess and Shannon, though it's been a while).  I miss you and I love you too.
- new friends here in Europe: Mark Clarke, Aija Rusina, Reed Fagan, Dan Collis, Kasia Kozioł, Elaine Millar, and more and more.  You make making my dreams come true even better.
- knowing I'm not alone, and I'm not crazy for changing my value system to reflect the things that really matter to me.
- my list.  You got me started.  I'm feeling like myself again, thanks to you.

Goodnight.  I have an early morning, I think.

*This is an edit, because, as my Saturday students were only too keen to point out, and Mark was only too keen to back up, I spelled czwartek wrong before.  Sorry.  My bad.  The point of the post, however, remains the same.

The Everything Day (In which many new friends are made, and one of them is even human)

Poland's been good to me again today.  I'm...well, a bit tired, really.  But I can’t go to sleep until I write a bit about today.  I’ve climbed hills, trees, and very tall lighthouses.  We saw lakes, rivers, and a sea.  Forests, bunkers, and even a Viking village.  We made friends with both goats and swans.  Aija and I peed in a WWI latrine (pretty sure we weren’t supposed to, but we couldn’t wait, and there was no one watching the place).  It was kind of a perfect day.

Viking bitches

Kate, Aija and I all got into Michał’s car this morning with no real idea what to expect.  We didn’t really know him, besides that he seemed nice, and he wanted to take us to Świnoujście.  We knew that he told us to wear comfortable shoes, and clothes that we wouldn’t mind getting dirty.  But it took no more than an hour for us to feel like old friends, singing, laughing, poking fun at each other.  I think  our friendship was probably cemented at our first stop: Wolin.  We got out of the car in a muddy lot, and were greeted by the sound of a rooster crowing.  Dozens of men were all fishing in the same small stretch of river near a bridge.  I already wanted to live there.  Then Michał led us down the road to the Viking village.  Because it’s just about winter here, we didn’t have to buy tickets to get in, the actors in period costumes weren’t there, and we got to touch and play with a whole bunch of stuff!  Helmets, swords, a bow and arrow… maybe we didn’t see the whole song and dance, but it was a very hands-on experience, which turned out to kind of be the theme of the day. 

Bunker party

 Next came the war history: Missile test sites dug into steep hills, which we climbed to inspect; German WWII bunkers hidden away in the forest, which we explored thoroughly, finding trees to climb, very dark gas chambers (ok, probably not really), and secret party rooms; a beautifully preserved WWI bunker complete with equipment that we were able (again, by virtue of avoiding the high-season) to climb on (or into), turn cranks to move the massive gun barrels, and spin the machines themselves around in circles.  We even got to pet a herd of friendly goats.  Until the rams turned up and scared us off, that is.   

And finally, all the water.  We climbed an extremely tall lighthouse for outstanding views of the river.  We crossed to the other side of Świnoujście the only way it is possible to do so: on a ferry.  Would you believe they never built a bridge to span the river that divides their city?  I wouldn’t have, but it’s true.  We were starving from all the climbing and jumping around, so we stopped to eat, and by the time we left the restaurant, it was 5:00pm and pitch dark (Poland is pretty far North).  But did that stop us?  No.  

We went to the Baltic Sea.  We chased the waves, I turned cartwheels in the sand, and we met a pack of swans.  They’re used to being fed by visitors, so they came right up to us and swarmed around us.  Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never met a pack of swans before in my life.  I have been sitting here (for way too long) trying to come up with words to describe it that will do it any justice at all, but I can’t.  The moon was full tonight, the beach was dark as midnight, vast, and nearly empty - except for a small handful of people and a lot of swans.  The soft sound of waves rolling in was everywhere, and the occasional blare of a foghorn.  And we were surrounded by these big, beautiful white birds.*  Maybe it happens all the time here, but I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ll never forget it.

We got back in the car, enjoyed some hot chocolate on the ferry, and then Michał managed to get us all safely through the deep fog back to our street in Szczecin, where I’m now happily tucked into my warm bed.  Though a bit sorry to see the day come to an end. 

There are a lot of photos here.

*I know what some of you are thinking about the swan story.  Birds, me?  Beautiful?  I never thought I’d ever say it either. I guess I’m letting go of a few things.  

Życie Codzienne (daily life): Shopping for Food

When Margaret asked me about the differences in day-to-day life, I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me to write about it before.  I guess because I didn’t think anyone would care.  But the more I think about it, that’s one of the most interesting things about living in another country, isn’t it?  The touristy stuff is for tourists.  So, thanks, Margo.  Day to day life is different for me, personally, in a million ways.  Of course, some of those changes are down to my change in career rather than my change in country: if I worked at a bank or a law firm here, I’d probably be just as dissatisfied with my life as I was at home.   But some of the simplest things are different to the core. 

So I sat down to write a quick summary of all the things that were different.  But that idea went out the window as soon as I saw how much I had to write just about food.  So instead, I’m going to try to check in at least once a week with another blog entry about one thing that is different here.

Shopping for food: There are a couple of big Super Walmart or Target-style stores here (They call them hypermarkets,  and they’re mostly imports from Western Europe, like Carrefour and Tesco).  They’re usually busy, well-stocked, and offer the widest selection of food, so if you want to buy a lot at once (usually on the weekend), or get ingredients for stir-fry or Mexican food or something, they’re the only place to go. 

However,  it is commonly known that the best places to buy fruits and vegetables are not the hypermarkets.  There is nearly always, within a 5 minute walk of wherever you are, a fruit and vegetable stand.  The selection is smaller, but the quality is higher.  They are not shipping fruits and vegetables over to Poland from Southern Chile (not to say none of it is shipped over, but not at such obscene distances). Sometimes the stands are part of an indoor market, like the one pictured in this blog entry, and sometimes they are no more than tiny little boutiques or street stalls.  Everything is laid out in bins or baskets with handwritten price tags.  

Usually (though of course not always – each one is different), in my experience, the arrangement of the display seems to have been determined with an eye for color and has the aim of creating visual interest rather than trying to group like items together, which I find endlessly charming.   In my mind, it shows a kind of appreciation for food, and a pride in the work the owners are doing.  Food is not just a generic product to be moved on and off of shelves – it’s important and beautiful and meant to be appreciated – of course, try to remember that we are still in Poland, not France or Italy, so eating isn’t a near-sexual experience, either.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh.  At the greengrocer’s, you don’t put each different item into a sterile plastic bag to be weighed, stickered and scanned.  You load up your arms with the items you want and take them to the owner.  They are weighed, added up, and dropped into a single bag (which they will give you, but it’s always better to have one with you).  And off you go.

Another difference has to do with frequency.  Since the food here doesn’t have all the preservatives that food has in the States (and thank God - apples shouldn’t refuse to go brown after being cut in half four or five hours ago!), most people don’t just do all their shopping for the whole week all at once.  They have the staples at home, and every couple of days, they stop and pick up fresh ingredients to add to them.  For this kind of shopping,  many people go to the fruit and vegetable stands, to the bakeries, butcher shops, or to the Sklepy spożywczy: the small corner grocers.  In some of them, you pick up a few items from the shelves and take them to the counter.  In others, you stand at the counter and tell them what you want, and they go to the shelves and collect it all for you.  Of course (just so you don’t get too idyllic an image of Poland), with the onward march of capitalism, many of the corner stores are drab, fluorescent-lit places like Netto and Biedronka, where the arrangement has nothing to do with visual appeal, the selection is limited, and the employees are tired and often kind of rude, but the prices are rock-bottom (think Aldi).  And every major street (and many minor ones) has a żabka, too.  Think 7-11.  Not open 24 hours, but relatively late, and every day of the year, holiday or not.

So, yeah.  It's pretty different.  It doesn't really have to be, I guess.  If I wanted to pretend I still lived in the States, I could go to the hypermarket once a week and load up on pre-packaged preservative-laden food.  But I don't.  I like the Sklepy Spożywczy, and I like the greengrocer.   I hope they don't go away as Poland marches ahead into the Western world.  If they do, I might have to marry a Frenchie just to live in a land where they still value food.  For now, I'm happy here.

OK, enough.  I actually have to go do some grocery shopping.  I need some fresh bread, some tomatoes, some chicken, and spinach, if I can find it.  It’s Italian tonight.

L'esperienza de questa dolce vita

The question on the table is this: what do I miss about America?  And friends and family don’t count.

Well, I think the answer is that if friends and family don’t count, then I’ve got nothing.  What was great about my life there had nothing to do with geography.  It had to do with my family.  With the talented, passionate people I surrounded myself with.  

To be honest, I have been feeling nostalgic lately, but not for my country, per se.  Rather for jumping around in packed basements, so close to the band that I could smell the beer on the singer’s breath, staying up ‘til 5am singing Replacements songs while Nate played the guitar, for the old reservoir (when you still had to squeeze through the crack in the padlocked gate) and jugs of wine on deep humid summer nights.  For dance parties at Endless Nameless, touring bands in my kitchen eating bagels from Trish the next morning, for long road-trips, and waking up on the floor someplace like the Kosher House in Missouri to the sound of Eric shouting  at the Modern Machines: “wake up, motherfuckers!  It’s time to go to Rock City!” For late nights at greasy diners with my friends, everyone writing songs or stories or drawing cartoons on the back of their placemats and believing anything was possible. 

But well before I left Milwaukee I’d backed away from this scene.  And why?  I’m not going to lie.  It was partially all the drinking.  I wasn’t 21 anymore, and I couldn’t keep going that way forever.  But also, it was because I was realizing it wasn’t really my world.  I wasn’t contributing anything to it – I was just living in it.  I watched all of my friends go on tour, put out records, produce videos or set up art shows.  I supported them.  I was happy to.  But I wasn’t adding anything.  I loved living in that world, but it wasn’t enough anymore to just live in someone else’s world, however loud and passionate.  Maybe I wasn’t brave enough then.  Maybe if I went back now it’d be different.  But I’m not there now.  I’m here.  And I feel like I’m doing something here.  Or starting to, anyway.  I’m writing again.  And not just in this blog.  I’m actually writing again.  I’m inspired by things I’m doing and seeing.  I’m going to volunteer with a really cool community organization here.  I’ve swung around in the trees on ropes like Tarzan, stayed up ‘til 4:30 having real conversations, made friends with people from a dozen different countries, and I’m (ever-so-slowly) learning another language.  This life is not perfect, but it’s actually mine.  And when I go back to visit my old pals, it’ll be like no time ever passed.  We’ll slip right back into these places in each other’s lives that we’ve been keeping warm for each other.  Because that’s how friends work.

So do I miss America?  Of course, because it contains the people I love: my niece and nephew, my parents, brothers, and sister-in-law.  My amazingly talented, strong, stubborn friends, many of whom never say die.  Even when others might say that they should.  Might I go back someday?  I guess I might.  But if I learned anything from the happiest people I know, it’s not to worry too much about what I’ll do next.  One step at a time, and it’ll come to me.  

It says "I love Szczecin."

All Souls

All Soul’s Day in Poland is quite a big deal.  Offices and shops close, and families get together and go to the cemetery to pay their respects to those they have lost.  This includes not only friends and family, but also those that were killed in Katyn, in uprisings against the Nazis, in Gulags, in the armed services in general, etc.  They buy flowers and candles by the thousands – millions – and light up the cemeteries.  Trams heading to that part of town overflow with people, roads close, police direct foot traffic, and firefighters stand at the ready (which seemed like a bit much to me, until I saw the vast sea of candles glowing in every direction).  Some people think it’s a morbid holiday, demonstrating the Polish ability to suffer like no other nation,  but I think it’s pretty wonderful.  You never stop being loved here, even long after you die.  The cemetery in Szczecin is massive (supposedly the only one bigger in Europe is Pére Lachaise in Paris), and every time I turned another corner and stared down rows and rows of graves, I searched in vain for even one grave marker that lacked a candle.  I thought I’d decorate a lonely grave marker with one of my candles, but it wasn’t necessary.

I’m not going to back off of my position that it is absolutely not a depressing holiday -the atmosphere was more reverent than mournful - but it was a bit sad for me.  Mostly because of the timing.  Jamie Ewing died almost exactly two years ago.  November 4, 2008.  Those who were around me at the time remember how hard I took it.  And walking around looking at all of these candles, I was touched by the beauty, but I also felt myself emptying out, feeling lost and lonely and confused about life, the way I did when I first heard about Jamie.  After all this time, waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me I’d just been dreaming.  When someone dies young, sometimes it’s hard to look back on even the good memories without feeling a little mournful.  But he certainly didn’t lead a mournful life.  And I’m not here to spend my time looking back on all the things that have gone wrong along the way.  I’m here to live.  Because you can lose all your money, all your possessions, even your home, and you can re-build.  Make more money, buy new possessions, find somewhere else to live.  But you can’t get your time back.  So I lit a candle for Jamie, I cried a bit, and then I took a deep breath and remembered to pay attention to just how beautiful the scene around me was.  To be grateful for being alive.

More photos here (although many didn't turn out, because my camera doesn't like the dark).

Sto Lat

What a difference a year makes!  Last year on my birthday, I may have had a little bit of a hissy fit.  I couldn’t face up to the fact that time was skipping by so quickly.  And to be honest, right now I’m finding it pretty difficult to believe that yet another year has gone by.  But today I’m not too fussed, because it’s been a year well spent.  That’s made all the difference in the world.  I guess I realize now that it wasn’t the fact that I was getting older that was bothering me last year, it was the fear of waking up one morning and being 80, and having no idea what happened to all of that time.  It was the dread of feeling like one or two bad decisions I’d already made could have somehow fucked up the whole rest of my life and that I might never feel the same enthusiasm about tomorrow again, much less about today.  Obviously, it all seems a bit silly and melodramatic now, but when you’re nose-deep in shit, it’s hard to see anything else.

I get what I was doing wrong before, too.  Besides, obviously, taking myself way too seriously.  I was trying on everyone else’s life for size, and then failing to understand why it didn’t fit.  I got the sweetest birthday card in the mail from my mom the other day.  In it, she told me how brave she thinks I am because I “just jump into things that intimidate most of us.”  Well, thanks Mom, but I’m not sure I deserve that kind of credit.  I don’t know if I’m really brave, or if I’m just afraid of totally different things than other people I know.  For instance, a lot of people I know dream of someday buying a home.  I’m not sure I ever want to do that.  Taking out 30-40 years worth of loans for the dubious privilege of always having the same place to go back to is not a comforting ideal to me.  It’s a bit terrifying, honestly.  I’m not sure I ever want to get married, either.  Yeah, sometimes I get a bit lonely, and maybe, if I’m with the right person at the right time, I’ll make that decision.  But the right person and the right time have not come together yet, so why should I ever use that as a measuring stick for how my life has turned out so far?  As a general concept, “marriage” has nothing to do with any particular person, place, or lifestyle.  It’s a decision that yields totally different results for everyone who has ever made it.  How can I know if I want that?

So, no.  I’m not afraid of not getting married.  I’m not afraid of living in foreign countries, or of starting over dozens of times.  I’m afraid of taking my whole life so seriously that I spend all of my time worried about what I could have done differently, of being so afraid of making the “wrong” decision that I never really make any.  I’m afraid of forgetting to look around, forgetting to laugh.  Above all, I’m afraid of living a life that is guided by someone else’s values instead of my own.  This year has not been easy.  I’ve worked really hard to get where I am now.  Hell, today I worked pretty hard – I went to work at 11 and didn’t get home until after 9.  I didn’t take a lunch or a break.  I worked.  But even though I didn’t love every single second of today, or this year, God, have I loved it as a whole!  And if I can periodically check in and say the same thing about each year of my life, I don’t think I’ll ever let another birthday bother me again.  Not even my 80^th.

A new home, yet again.

So, as of one week and one day ago, I live in a city called Szczecin.  It's pronounced "Sh-ch-eh-chin" or "Sh-ch-eh-cheen," depending who you're talking to. Say it with me.  Again.  Faster.  Just kidding.  I know, it's ridiculous.  But it's home now.  Szczecin, for those who are interested, is in the Northwest corner of Poland, less than 15 kilometers ( that's about 9 miles) from the German border and about 70 kilometers (43 miles) to the Baltic Sea.  Basically, it's really far from the rest of Poland.  So how did I end up here?

Well, after I finished my CELTA, I started looking for work by picking a few really good schools and applying to the different branches, even if it wasn't in one of the cities I'd initially pictured myself in.  Then I wrote to other schools in the cities I'd had in mind.  Well, I got a few calls for interviews, and I talked to a few Directors, and at the end of the day, I chose a school that I could get behind, and a DOS I really wanted to work with.  It was actually an easier decision than I thought it'd be.  Yes, I wanted to move to Kraków or Gdańsk, but I didn't come to Poland just to look at beautiful buildings or to get drunk with people I met on CELTA.  I came here to change the miserable path I was on.  I came to teach, to learn Polish, to start a new life.  And I thought I could do that best with Bell, in Szczecin.

I spent about a week in Kraków before I came here, and it was wonderful.  I kind of fell in love.  It's a bit touristy, but for me, the city had so many beautiful places and, more importantly, such character that I never wanted to leave.  But I had to, so last Tuesday, I woke up early, bid adieu to my friends at the Mosquito Hostel (if you're ever in Kraków, stay there.), and got on a train to Szczecin.  For 10 hours.  Luckily, I had an excellent book with me (you'll find the link for that to your left), so I read for a good long stretch, and I napped for a while.  When the train stopped in Poznań, a lot of people got on.  Including the new love of my life.  A middle-aged man, blind drunk, came into my compartment and decided he wanted to have a seat right next to me, despite the fact that there were three empty seats to my right, and talk about an inch from my face with his 90-proof breath.  When he realized I was not Polish, it got really special.  He spoke to me the whole way to Szczecin, in a mixture of Polish and English, telling me how I was beautiful and should come stay with him and his wife.  He sang "Bad Boys" repeatedly for no apparent reason.  And he kissed my hand several times and even asked to see my breasts.  So romantic.  The younger (and handsomer) man in the compartment, to his credit, tried several tactics to distract Drunky, but in the end our new relationship could only be put to rest by the train reaching his stop.  I've never been so relieved to get to someone else's stop.

When I got of the train, the School Director, Zenon, was waiting to take me to my new flat.  It is right in the middle of what the locals call the "brand new old town," because large parts of it were destroyed in WWII and only very recently restored.  It's a nice flat, but it's big (for Europe), and I feel a bit like I should get a roommate or something, because it doesn't seem like I need all of this to myself.  I have a few photos:

kitchen

living room  

My first full day in town, I stopped by the school to say hello to Craig, the DOS, and to see what was there, I walked around Szczecin a bit, and I met up with a few teachers at this place:

Brama Jazz Cafe

This is a bar/cafe in one of the gates from the old city fortifications.  How they got the licensing to make this place a bar, I'll never know, but I love the idea of it.  There's also a lot of outdoor seating for nice sunny days.  Still, despite the city gate turned watering hole, the city did not immediately appeal to me, I'll admit.  I'm pretty sure it was a Kraków hangover.  That, and after having been in two Polish cities that were anchored by massive, beautiful ryneks (old market squares), I was missing the lack of one here pretty keenly.  However, Ken and Laura, who've been teaching here for 6 and 7 years, respectively, told me I should take a walk out to Park Kasprowicza, which is beyond the City Hall. So on Saturday, that's what I did.  So far it is, without a doubt, my favorite part of the city.  You walk around the City Hall and come out into the Jasne Błonia, a huge open green space lined by paths, trees, statues and fountains: 

Jasne Błonia

Then, if you keep walking, you head straight into a tangle of forest paths leading to a rose garden, a river/canal straddled by dainty pedestrian bridges, and if you keep going, even deeper into the forest.  It was Saturday and the weather was beautiful, so all of Szczecin was in the park with their children and their dogs, but it was still peaceful and there was so much room to roam around.  Here are a couple of my favorite parts:

peeping out onto the city

ducks under the bridge

Autumn reaching out
to meet me again.

After spending the day in the park, I felt refreshed and ready to start treating this city like my home.  On Sunday I was invited to Joasia's house (She is one of the Polish teachers) for a barbecue.  In Poland, pretty similarly to the States, that means you drink beer and cook sausages over an open flame.  There were also some home-baked pastries filled with rose jam made by Joasia's mother.  Yeah.  you heard me.  Rose jam. Made from rose petals. It was different, and delightful.   Pani Joasia was a wonderful hostess, and her animals (all rescued) are adorable.  

 On Monday, we (the three new teachers) got a tour of the city, and I saw even more of what's lovely about Szczecin.  Then we had drinks and listened to an insane pianist/lounge singer who seemed to read our minds (and did a pretty mean Louis Armstrong impression for a Polish guy). As for the rest of this week, it's been about easing into work. I'm training, getting to know my colleagues, taking some Survival Polish lessons, and observing some placement testing.  Next week (or maybe Friday), I'll start teaching.  I'll get my schedule tomorrow.  I'm nervous, but ready to jump in.  

This is getting absurdly long, so I'll just wrap it up by saying this:  I'm happy.  So far, I like my colleagues, my school, and my boss.  Szczecin's beauty is not as in your face as Kraków's, but it creeps up on you in quiet moments when you aren't paying attention.  It's home, and I'm glad.

A Day in Hell

     As some of you know, I went to Auschwitz Monday morning.  A few of you have asked for my impressions about it.  I’m happy to oblige you, because it really is an experience that’s got me thinking about a lot of things.  That said, I’m glad that I’ve had time to let it roll around in my head for a while before writing about it, because I didn’t have the experience there that I expected, and I wasn’t really sure what to say before.

     First, a bit of background: There are two camps near one another: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau.  The first is set up more like a museum, and houses most of the famous sights and the disturbing exhibits.  It has the famous sign above the entrance, “arbeit macht frei,” (translation: work makes you free).  There are piles and piles of suitcases, eyeglasses, shoes, a wall of photos, and even a room full of human hair (we weren’t allowed to photograph the hair, but let me assure you that the sheer quantity is enough to make even someone with guts of steel feel queasy).  There is one gas chamber, a “death wall” for executions by shooting, a crematorium, and the building where medical experiments were carried out.  It is pretty small.  Birkenau has largely been left alone, except that most of the wooden barracks on the men’s side were falling down, so they used timber from the broken ones to re-create several examples, and left only the chimneys up from the others.  There is also a memorial in between two of the gas chambers, which are left in ruins, as they were destroyed by the Nazis near the end of the war.  It is enormous.  As far as you can see, there are rows and rows of barracks (built by the prisoners themselves, and each housing hundreds of prisoners).

     The museum was pretty hard to see, but it could have been worse.  Whoever set it up meant for the buildings and objects to speak for themselves, and therefore did not include images of many of the more heart-wrenching, gut-turning things that I have seen in books and movies.  But for me, somehow, Birkenau was harder to see.  It was just buildings and fields, and a railroad platform running down the middle.  But when I thought about the sheer number of people who’d been trapped in there, starving, squeezing together to eat, sleep, shit, and die, when I thought about the fact that some 75% of people who arrived were killed before they ever saw those crowded barracks, and that it was the prisoners (and not the soldiers) who had to clean up and cremate all the dead bodies, including their neighbors and family, sometimes…that was the part that felt most real.  That was when I felt the goose bumps you feel when you’re standing in a place where something momentous has happened.  I was walking the long path to the gas chambers, and I knew it was the same path that so many took to their deaths, and it occurred to me how lucky I’ve been, and how self-indulgent.  How no matter what is in my past, no matter what sad things may be in my future, I have never seen that kind of senseless evil.  I have never met anyone who could kill thousands and thousands of people with the twitch of his thumb in the wrong direction.  It wasn’t just Hitler.  Everybody talks about Hitler, and how he set the whole thing in motion, but there is no way that all of this evil was even planned by just one man.  It was planned by many, and carried out by thousands.  Did you know that a lot of Jewish people actually bought tickets on those horrid cargo trains?  They were told that they were going to be resettled in a better place, and they were sold tickets to their own torture and executions.  I don’t know how I didn’t know that, but I didn’t.  And we separate ourselves from it so easily, blame it on one nutcase, but it wasn’t one man, it could happen again, and most of us don’t show proper respect for those facts, as far as I’m concerned.

     Some of the people I was on the tour with told me that they were “disappointed,” because they’d expected something more.  I didn’t exactly feel that way myself, but I knew what they meant.  I’d actually been worried that the experience might prove to be a little bit too much for me.  It’s been two days now, and I think I’ve figured out why we didn’t get what we expected.  We’ve been inundated with movies, stories, books, photos of the violence, torture and suffering that took place in those camps.  Somewhere in our minds, we filed it all away with all of the other stories we’d been told in our lives.  An awful one, but another story.  My generation has never seen cruelty on that scale, thank God.  The closest we’ve probably come is 9-11, or Abu Graib.  Both awful, but not like the Holocaust.  And even though we know it’s true, we can’t really imagine it.  The camp doesn’t have blood stains on the walls, the grass has continued to grow, the sun still shines there, butterflies swoop around.  The kind of suffering that happened there just doesn’t, and probably can’t feel real to anyone as privileged as we have been.  I’m grateful for that.  And incredibly humbled.

    

If you want to see the rest of my photos, they're here.

Thanks for reading.

I'm dizzy.

This has been a really uncomfortable (but amazing) week.  I thought I was completely prepared to come here and deal with the ambiguity of not really knowing where I’d end up after the CELTA, but you can’t ever completely prepare for that, can you?  Whether I meant for them to or not, images formed in my mind about the places I might want to end up, the schools I might want to work in, the people I’d like to be close to.  But because I placed priority on good schools, on my roots, and on what I really wanted, I let go of all of that and branched out.  I stretched my hands out to people and places I wasn’t thinking about last week.  I decided to decide when the time came that I had to.  I haven’t been able to get the butterflies out of my stomach since (and my pants are already getting quite a bit too big for me.  If I keep this up, I’ll be swimming in them by next week).  Despite the discomfort (or maybe even because of it), I’m really feeling a part of the world again.  I’m not just forming images in my head of what my life should be, or will be, or could be.

So because of all of this, I’ve been thinking about two kinds of people: those who reach out, and those who don’t.  I always used to think of myself as one of those who does reach out, but for the last five years or so,  I’ve mostly been among those who don’t. I placed far too much stock in the necessity of seeming like I was strong, or cool, or any of a million other things that I couldn’t possibly have seemed like, walking around swathed in the emotional equivalent of bubble wrap. (And if any of that was cool, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be cool.)   I’ve known this for quite a while, and I’ve wanted to open myself up, but I’d been stumped about how exactly to go about fixing it.  It just seemed like trying to teach myself to breathe underwater. 

Well, maybe it’s the culture here, maybe it’s got something to do with getting away from home and all the expectations about who I am there, or who I have been,  maybe it’s because I need help from other people here, or maybe it’s just the right time, but now I’ve gone back to reaching, without even really thinking about it.  And because of it, I’m making friends, learning amazing new things from them, and noticing things I never would have seen on my own.  I’m interviewing for jobs in places I never thought I’d live (happily!), having legitimately interesting conversations during these interviews instead of just posing and cringing inside.  I’m opening myself up to the honesty of really, really wanting something. 

I feel like myself again.

*

Stamps and Spadek

     At the post office the other day, the extroverted guy who’d been in line in front of me (who had shamelessly flirted with the cranky-looking woman behind the glass window, by the way) came over and fired a question at me in rapid Polish.  

     I stared dumbly at him for a minute before stammering out,“Przepraszam, nie mówię dobrze po polsku. ” (Excuse me, I don’t speak Polish very well.)  

     He looked at me as though I were some kind of alien for a second and then said, “Nie mówisz po polsku?!?  (You don’t speak Polish?!?)  Where are you from?” (In perfect English, of course.) 

     I smiled sheepishly and said, “America.” 

     For him, that seemed to explain it all.  “Ooooh.  America!  But you’re Polish, right?  Your family is Polish?” 

     “Yes.” 

     “I could tell.  You look Polish.  Why don’t you learn the language, though?  You should learn the language.  It’s your roots, your spadek.”

     I thought he was trying to have a go at me, there in the post office, for being some stupid American who couldn’t even be bothered to learn the language when I was in the country of my fucking spadek.  I could feel my hackles starting to rise.  Why was the post office always the place where these things happened to me?  I was never going to set foot in a Polish post office again.  
     Then he said, “Uczysz się po polsku?” Are you learning Polish?

     Well, yes, of course.  “Oczywiście, ale…”

     He was smiling now.  “Ah, jest skomplikowany.”

     ‘Skomplikowany’ was a brand new word for me.  I’d never heard it before.  But when he said it, if you try to say it, it seems obvious.  It means what it sounds like: ‘complicated.’  I nodded enthusiastically and tried the new word.  “Tak.  Jest bardzo skomplikowany.”

     We laughed, we smiled and said our goodbyes, he wished me luck, and I went on my way.  But of course the whole experience made me more eager than ever to learn the language.  To get it down, once and for all, and to be able to really talk to people.  Really be a part of society here.  It occurred to me that just being able to order coffee or beer or say good morning to the woman in the store was not enough of an accomplishment for me anymore.  I was dying to really talk to people.  I’d been called out as an imposter, a foreign Pole, and I didn’t like the feeling.  I wanted to be a real Pole.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen just like that, just because you want it to.  I’ve been working hard at it, but it’s still going to take ages.

     I walked away light-hearted, though, because he really hadn’t been meaning to lecture me; he was just interested.  Light-hearted, because there was something about his bluntness that felt real and good, compared to the nice baristas who were always pretending my Polish was so lovely.  And it obviously wasn’t.  But I thought about how far I’d really progressed.  From the flight over, when I was too afraid to say the word for “chicken,” to the flight attendant, even though I knew it, and I resorted to English with her,  to this moment in the post office, when I’d been able to have a conversation about my spadek and my Polish education, about 1/2 of which was actually in Polish.  Probably not very pretty Polish, but Polish nonetheless.  And I can’t really expect more.  After all, it’s skomplikowany.

     I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.  I’d been confronted with my deficiencies, had seen the long road curving ahead of me.  But I could also see how far I’d come.  I’d had a small victory, there in the post office.  And moments like that, they are exactly why I came here.  I am in the right place.

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

Ale brzydka pogoda! It's been cold and rainy all week. There's a forecasted low of 48 today. It feels like late October. I don't think it's typical weather for the end of August (especially since they're talking about it on the news non-stop), but this is supposedly the hottest city in Poland, and I'm this close to buying a new coat, because the one I brought in my suitcase is just not cutting it. If I didn't possibly have to pack all my stuff up and get on a train to move again (and me with too much to carry already!), I'd have done it by now. Ayisha and I somehow got on the subject of Halloween today, and she asked me about hot apple cider (apparently, they don't have it in England). Now, all I can think of are the things I like when Autumn rolls in, like pumpkin spice lattes, chai, knitting and wearing scarves, crunchy leaves underfoot on sunny days, and carving pumpkins with children. Natalie will be three in October, and if my job search is successful, I won't be there. I feel kind of bad about that. But I hope she knows how much I love her.

Despite the weather, Poland in general, and Wrocław in particular, still has a lot of charm for me. I'm always running across odd little buildings or sweet, helpful people who make me smile. That said, I admit that, quite aside from increasing my odds of getting a job, I'm excited to be applying in some other cities because I'm feeling the itch to see more of the country instead of just settling down in the first place I happened to touch down in. Of course, if I get work here, I'd be perfectly happy with that. It's a beautiful place, and the atmosphere is probably going to change again when all the students come back. And once I'm settled in, I might be able to take the odd weekend trip to visit friends in other cities. I'm actually pretty nervous about getting a job. And since I'm done with CELTA, and a lot of my friends have gone home, I have the long days stretching before me again, giving me plenty of time to think about everything I'm worried about. Don't get me wrong - I'm using the time to send out my CV, but all I think about as I write cover letters is "What if this doesn't work?" I guess worrying about it really doesn't do me much good, and I should just try to take it easy on myself, but that's easier said than done, isn't it?

I took a little break and watched about 15 minutes of the Polish version of Family Feud today. I don't watch much TV, but I turn it on once in a while to help me with my Polish. What I learned is that Family Feud is even less exciting when you can't play along. The questions and answers were honestly a bit beyond me. But I did understand most of the contestant-host banter. I think it must be some kind of rule that the host of this style of show has to flirt with all the ladies in each family. Especially the older ones. Did anyone else think it was weird the way Richard Dawson used to kiss everyone? The Polish host doesn't do that, but he does call every woman "bardzo ładna," whether she is or not.

The dogs continue to be lovely, and though I'm usually not keen on the idea of taking them out in the cold the first thing when I wake up, by the time I'm out there walking them I feel better and more energized about the day ahead of me. Having them here to distract me has actually done worlds of good. Waru is nuts about tennis balls, and Hades is nuts about Waru, so he chases them with her, and puts up a teensy tiny fight before giving her the ball - I think more because he knows how much she likes it than because he actually wants the ball. And if I wanted a marriage of convenience, I think all I'd have to do is take those dogs with me everywhere I go. Young men flirt with the dogs constantly. And who can blame them? They are beautiful, aren't they?

Waru

Hades

Anyway, I've got plenty to do, so, that'll be it until next time. Do zobaczenia!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Apologies (to both of my readers) for the lag between entries.  The last couple of weeks of the CELTA were pretty busy, and the day after I finished, I moved to an apartment where I cannot make the internet work.  It’s really lovely, though.  Dorota and her husband have gone on vacation, so Ayisha and I are dog-sitting two of the best-behaved, loveliest dogs I’ve ever met, Waru and Hades.  I’ll be doing that for two weeks, while I send my CV out to language schools all over Poland.  Hopefully by the time I have to leave Dorota’s house, I’ll have some idea where I might be going.  I have friends in Kraków, Gdańsk, Poznań, and Wrocław, though, so wherever I end up, it’s possible I’ll know at least one person living within a reasonable distance.  I am a little concerned about getting a job, because I’ve heard it can be tough for Americans, but I’m persistent and convincing, and I really love teaching, so I’ll find a way.

Now that I’m done with the CELTA, I was hoping to spend a bit more time learning Polish.  And I have been, kind of…but I’ve been focusing a lot on the job search.  Of course, I occasionally have to step out to see friends off before they leave town, and that’s when I try to get as much practice in as possible.  I’m pretty good at ordering all kinds of beverages.  It does make me feel a bit like one of those dumb Americans who can’t be bothered, though.  I’m really trying, I promise, Poland.  Actually, at the celebration for the end of the CELTA and DELTA (those poor saps were at it for 8 weeks), I did get a chance to practice my French with one of the DELTA guys.  It was really fun, and it made me feel a little bit less stupid about my Polish not coming along as quickly as I’d hoped.  It reminded me I’m not hopeless at this, it just takes time.  And my receptive skills are getting much better.  I understand a lot more than I can say.

Anyway, I’ve gotta go for now, or I’ll miss the next express bus and I’ll either have to wait 40 minutes for the next one, or spend 40 minutes on the tram.  Neither sounds like a really wonderful way to spend my evening.

Love from Poland.

Home Stretch

Another week done.  By this time next week, I'll be done with the CELTA.  Between now and then I have two more written assignments - one long, one short; two more assessed lessons - one long, one short; and  fifteen more hours of input.  I can do that.  I'm pretty excited to be done, because I'll actually have free time to see more of Poland, and to focus on learning Polish, and I can stop worrying about how to get a job and start working on getting a job.  But I'm also going to miss the people from the course, many of whom will be scattering to the four corners of...well, Europe, when this is over, and I'm a bit stressed about what's going to happen now and where I'm going to end up.  


The good news: (1) Dorota and her husband are going away for a few weeks right after the course, and they've offered me and Ayisha a place to stay if we walk their dogs for them, so I know where I'm going next Saturday when we have to leave our school flat, and I have a bit of job search time without committing to a lease in a city I may not be living in.  (2) If I want to go to the Gdansk area, Anna may be able to put in a good word for me with the school she works for.   (3) I've made friends with someone who is Director of Studies at a school in Krakow.  He doesn't think there are any spots open at his school at the moment, but he may be someone I can consult with a list of schools to find out whether they're dodgy. (4) For the first time in almost five years, I feel like I'm doing something I can get behind.


The bad news: (1) I'm exhausted.


Well, I think the tilt of the balance is pretty clear at the moment.  Now let's hope it all works out.
Stay tuned.


P.S. I bought a Polish translation of The Little Prince today.  I was thinking it would be cool to have a copy in every language I learn - someday I hope to have at least 5 different editions.  Here, he's called Mały Książę.
-

On Turning a Corner...

It’s been a long week.  Challenging, terrifying, satisfying.  I think that’s the key point here: it’s been satisfying.  I don’t wake up and think how I might just crack if I have to actually do what it is I’m doing day after day: I can’t wait to get up in the morning.  The food is delicious (though this place could well be a vegetarian’s nightmare), the city is beautiful, and the people are warm.  There is also a sense of community, a sense of shared experience and fellowship that is almost unimaginable in the US.  And, as is always the case when life takes you far from home, the mundane tasks I hated at home have become adventures, learning experiences.  I find going to the grocery store here an absolutely fascinating task.  I’m sure it won’t always be that way, but I’m more than happy to enjoy it while it is.  School is hard, and sometimes I’m dying to get home and lie down, but I’m learning so many things that I find both useful and interesting, things that I can imagine being relevant to my life beyond the end of the course.  All in all, I feel generally positive about the challenges and novelties of being here in Poland.  No surprise. 

But, oh, the students. I am surprised by them constantly.  My students are the absolute joy of my days.   I can’t get over how quickly most of them have crawled under my skin, straight to that warm, fuzzy place I always used to hide deep down inside.  In fact, if I didn’t like my students so much, I think this course might be easier.  I could just stick straight to the syllabus and crank out a textbook lesson, I could be firmer with them when I’m giving instructions; I could give them easy work to make myself look good.  But I do like them.  I want them to have fun while they’re learning, I want them to like me, and I want them to know I see their potential and expect them to live up to it.  That makes the lesson planning so much more difficult.  I admit to having a few favorites, because no matter how hard you try to be even-handed, it’s impossible to bypass basic rules of human nature, and some people are just easier to get.  But what’s so cool about teaching is that just when you think you’ve zeroed in on the people you really like, one of your other students steps in and does or says something to make you see a side of them you didn’t suspect, and that you love just as much, or more..  God, maybe teaching is just making me soft, because lately I find myself back in that place where I accept the inherent good in other people.  I see the negatives as quirks, and the positives as their true natures, instead of the other way around.  Maybe I’m just a marshmallow, really, and I was never as tough as I thought I was.

What else is different now that I get to re-create myself in a new place?  Well, for one thing, I’ve been really trying.  Before I left home, I had been noticing among more and more people around me the pervasive idea that as you get older, it’s no longer ok to be so enthusiastic about life, because that’s not cool.  As you become “wiser,” you should know that some things are just never going to happen, so you should accept your lot and move on with the business of growing up.  Well, maybe.  But some things are never going to happen because we stop trying hard enough.  We become so averse to the possibility of failure that we quit really putting all of our heart into them, we do them halfway so that it won't hurt so badly, or so that we have that excuse to fall back on when things don’t work out they way we wanted them to.  It's not really because they can't happen.  Sure, they may never happen exactly the way we thought they would when we were 5 years old, but as far as I'm concerned, dreams really aren’t that fragile.  I don’t think they shatter into a million pieces if we aren’t careful with them.  I think they’re flexible and resilient and can be molded into as many different shapes as we have ideas to apply to them.  I think we can make new dreams out of old dreams, even late in life.  And since most of my friends are only in their upper 20s and lower 30s, the idea that we've got to give up trying is even more absurd.  I think that the most un-cool things I can actually think of are apathy and resignation. And I'm glad that I snapped out of them when I did, because I was getting awfully tired of being so un-cool all the time.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed my little game of “What Rachel thinks.”  If you want more, don’t worry.  We’ll play again after I’ve finished the paper I’m putting off right now.  Suggested topics can be posted in the comments or emailed to rainydaygirl414@gmail.com. Until next time, Do Widzenia!