Galicja's Eastern Capitol?

Before WW2, Lviv was the eastern capitol of the Polish region of Galicia, and at that time Galicia had the second largest Jewish population in the world. Yet, of course, those Jews are gone now. After the war, the Polish border shifted westward (Germany lost land, including Katowice and Wroclaw, as a reparation), and Lviv was left on the outskirts. Ukraine swept up the eastern Galician region and Lviv has been Ukrainian ever since.
We assumed that since Lviv was such a center for Jewish learning and culture before the war, there would be some remnants or even recreations of this in places throughout the city. Krakow has restored its Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, with numerous museums, bookstores, synagogues, cemeteries, concerts, restaurants, gift shops, and tours. And it’s bustling. But Lviv had nothing of the sort. I mean nothing. We were shocked.
We walked by one of the two synagogues in the city the first day we arrived. It was tucked away in a neighborhood close to the train station and guarded by an 8’ tall metal fence. The façade was freshly painted yellow, but dotted with bright blue paint splotches, clearly vandalized. We reached the gate and gave it a push. It was locked, so we turned to keep on back to the city. I glanced across the street, and a small elderly lady was peeking out from behind her lace curtain gesturing “Back! Back!” Confused, we looked back towards the synagogue to see an old man opening the metal gate. He peered at us and said something in Ukrainian and we rushed back towards him. “Can we see inside?” we asked in broken Polish. He smiled and responded that the synagogue was being remodeled so it was closed. After thanking him and wishing him a happy holiday, as well as mouthing thanks to the lady behind the curtain, we walked on.
A couple of days later, we found the second synagogue. We knew where it was on our map, but we couldn’t seem to find it in reality. The neighborhood was very neglected (pictured), the buildings and pavement crumbly, but it didn’t feel unsafe. Bhad plucked up the courage to ask a passer-by where the synagogue was, and he pointed us left on the next block. No wonder we missed it! The building was slung in the same disheveled tone as its neighbors, windows foggy with dust, and no clear indication that it was an important site. We approached the door and rung the doorbell (pictured along with metal plate over the place were the mezuzah used to be). No answer. So we knocked and we rang again. Of course, still no answer. A small woman with a blue hat was making her way down the sloped street towards us, calling out something in Ukrainian. She helped us understand her with gestures to her eyes and indications at the door. We exclaimed “Tak!” as she searched under her layers for the keys hanging on a long string.
She let us in, laughing and muttering things in her language, as if two tourists wanting to see her synagogue were of the oddest things that could’ve happened on a Friday morning. Waving her hands towards the main sanctuary entrance, she motioned for us to go on in while she settled her things on the table in the hall. The sanctuary was large and filled with movie-theater-style chairs, posters and pictures hung to the walls, and the ceiling seemed to climb higher as we stood there. One wall was dedicated to the Holocaust victims, and showed enlarged photos of crying children and old men with circular glasses being tormented by Nazi officers. There was also text to accompany. Our friend joined us in the sanctuary and pointed to that wall, saying “Niemcy…,” briefly commenting that it concerned Germany. We couldn’t read the Cyrillic, but we clearly understood what it meant. Another wall was covered in pictures of school kids performing plays during holidays, Hebrew classes, and other members of the community. There were old posters dedicated to the Shoah (the Holocaust), theater performances, and one that read: Mazel Tov, painted with a dancing couple (all pictured). The back wall was empty except for a few marble plaques dedicating the remodeling of the synagogue to certain members of the community and officially naming it Shalom Alechem. It was all written in Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew.
After talking, or more aptly trying to pick out keywords in Polish, with our friend, we thanked her and left. We were so lucky to have arrived at that door seconds before she appeared coming down the hill, and so appreciative to have such a caring and intimate tour.

Our Ukrainian Home

We had been warned that hotels in Lviv were pricey and, well, bad. Bhadri researched mid-range hotels and found the general price to be around 500 hrivny (100 dollars), which is outrageous for Eastern Europe. With that price you’d expect luxury coming out your ears. But the reality was that despite the high price these hotels were still dirty, uncomfortable, and not necessarily close to the city center. Also, Lviv has problems with it’s water system—hot water is delegated to different parts of the city at different times, so most of the day you will be without.
Thankfully, we had a very pleasant stay in Lviv. Bhad found a website advertising apartments for short-term rent and followed up. In case you’re ever going to Lviv and need accommodation, check their website out: http://www.inlviv.info/. They were really nice and have loads of apartments. For a one-bedroom apartment in the city center, it was 250 hrivny, and it included a king sized bed, a bathtub, satellite tv, and a full kitchen! Plus, it had it’s own water system which meant there was hot water all day. It was incredible.
The day we arrived, exhausted from an all-night train journey and culture-shocked, we had quite a time finding the place. After about 3 hours of texting the company, not texting back because our phone wouldn’t work, hunting down their signless office, and finally trekking back to the apartment to friendly Oksana and her baby girl warmly inviting us inside. The owner, Oksana, was the nicest woman and keen to chat with us a bit in English before heading out for the day. I made buddies with her 2-yr old girl, Sulamika, before she handed us the keys and took leave.
We crashed on the massive plushness of the bed and sighed. What a day. Really, what a two days. We’d been awake now for about 48 hours, with a few winks on the train between customs officials and conductors visits. It was good to feel settled.
After a luxurious bath and a few Reeses Easter eggs (provided by my dear Mom) we’d rationed, we set out into town to buy foodstuffs for dinner. This was possibly the second hardest thing we’d done all day, next to finding our apartment. There were no food stores. How is this possible? Poland has a food store, stand, or shop every 25 meters. We searched for about 45 minutes in the city center before finding an inside market, where we bought eggs, vodka, coffee, and creamer—the essentials. We took our goods home and, after a cup of coffee (100% instant, as it boasted on it’s label), whipped up a tasty dinner. Note: the eggs in the photo are real. They were florescent yellow, I kid you not.
Our stay in this apartment was delightful. We made some delicious home-cooked meals, took some soothing baths, slept more soundly than we have in months, and got to watch hours of BBC news and international soccer.

Around Lviv, Ukraine

We covered quite a bit of ground during the three days we were in Lviv. And, although we got more and more comfortable with the city, we were constantly shocked and impressed by it. Lviv was both run-down and beautiful, impoverished and enchanting, exotic and familiar.

Statues and monuments were sprinkled across the city. Most were of old, stoic men, but others were of Greek gods and goddesses, angels, the Virgin Mary, or Communist-style abstract sculptures. A 35’ Soviet-esque statue of a man whose name we have no idea (engraved at the base in Cyrillic) stood opposite the university at the entrance of a large, planned park. He was a bit intimidating, although the bright and sunny day did add an element of playfulness to his rigid features (pictured). We set up our camera on his marble base and put the timer on. That’s us in front of the university building, standing next to the other couple taking photos (pictured). St. Ed’s has nothing on Univ of Lviv—it’s like a palace…of learning. A castle for culture. An estate of knowledge. Anyways, it was pretty.

We found some very interesting gems in Lviv that seemed to be dropped straight out of the 1950’s. The market we visited, where we found good instant coffee (no, that wasn’t a typo—it was actually delicious) and florescent yellow eggs, weighed all of their bulk goods on a white scale (pictured) that was as old as the hills. And instead of typing your total up on a cash register, they used a wooden abacus (shown in the bottom left-hand corner of the market picture). They shuffled the wooden balls quicker than anyone could type—it was wonderful. The cars were another thing. Most of the cars in the city were oldies with a strong Soviet flavor. Probably from the 60’s, these cars were consistently in tiptop shape and chugged around town with attitude. We found an old Red Cross van one day, deep olive green with perfectly round headlights, parked right outside a church. We goggled for a moment and continued our walk. Quite a few of the trams seemed to be from the same period. By far the most quirky thing we found was the drink machine (pictured). We’re still not sure how it works, but there is a glass glass already loaded and you can choose between two options: one costing 25¢ and the other 10¢. We wondered: does everyone share the same glass?

The small, cobbled streets on the Rynok (the main square) were little packages of the past. Cellar coffee shops deep under the streets, soaring Orthodox churches topped with silver domes, tiny shops with Catholic bishops’ and priests’ gold embroidered silk robes displayed in the windows, the healthy-looking stray dogs laying belly-up to the sun on the green grass, the merchants selling their boxes of turnips and beets on the sidewalk, the cars zooming past pedestrians and missing a collision by inches, couples walking hand in hand, licking their ice cream cones on even the chilliest day.

The architecture on the square was amazingly well maintained and charming, similar to Krakow. But it felt very different from it’s Polish equivalent. We rarely, rarely heard English spoken and it seemed like we were the only foreigners in the city. No one gawked or got angry with us because we were tourists, it was like Lviv hadn’t had the international exposure yet to make the locals hate us. In every archway there was a courtyard, filled with laundry draped over long lines, wooden balconies sloping at a dangerous angle, and other archways, windows and doors that kaleidoscoped your view. The signs and advertisements where all in Ukrainian/Cyrillic so we couldn’t figure out where we were or what we were looking at until we peeked in a window or popped in a door. Every city block held a new mystery.

Spring is Gone, Harmonicas, and Language Barriers

Spring was here for 3 days. Now it's gone. Yesterday it started snowing, then it melted during the day. Last night, the snow fell again, and it's starting to melt again today. Who knows how long this could go on for! Poland is crazy. I just hope all the birds, bees, and flowers that were fluttering the in breeze last week have found some warm shelter.

Bhadri has taken up the harmonica. He's getting pretty good at it, and it's only been a week or two. He figured out how to play "Amazing Grace" all by himself, and has pretty much mastered a train noise (it's really cool!). He downloaded a few song guides from the internet, including "Oh Susanna," "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and "How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down."

I've been thinking a lot about the role of language. This so-called language barrier. It's something we encounter a lot here. We teach our language, first of all, but also we struggle with not knowing the local language everyday. When we go to the store to buy food, when we walk Booster and an old lady with her own dog stops us to chat, when we want to know the weather on tv, when we want to know what party won the last election, when we want to know where we're going while on the train...it's always a challenge. I always thought that language is a communication tool--that we'd be better off knowing the language of the country where we lived. But I'm not so sure now.

Because we don't know the words, we can only observe people's expressions, movements, and intonation. When we go to the store and say "dzien dobre" (good day), the shop workers smile and give us a hearty welcome back. It's a game now to order cheese or coffee from behind the counter, and it's smiles all around. When we meet another dog walker on the sidewalk, we end up giggling at all of our inability to speak, and leave each other in broad smiles. Is this not communication? I'm starting to think it's a much more pure form of communication than using the correct grammar and essentially using each other as a means to an end. It's always an experience in itself everytime we encounter someone that doesn't speak English. We are all aware and conscious in these encounters, and it feels authentic.

My Little Sister

My sister Molly got her dress for the wedding the other day. She's my maid of honor. So she took a picture in her dorm room and emailed it to me to see what I thought. First of all, the dress is great. But when I looked at that picture I realized, maybe for the first time, that my sister is grown-up and she is gorgeous! She's always been a cutie (especially in her eye-patch and magnifying glass glasses days, but also in her high-waisted/highwater jeans pre-teen days, too--sorry Moll, had to say it). But I didn't see the same curly headed, silicon snorting, confetti printed glasses wearing baby sister of my childhood.

Molly has a spark about her. She glows when she smiles. When she laughs, you can't avoid laughing with her. Every move, every face she makes, is so expressive. She is, at the same time, brilliantly funny and truly insightful. She uses her time to help create a better world in small ways. And she doesn't know she's beautiful, which of course lends her charms that much more power.

That's my little sister. All growed up.

Blame The Boss

Once a month at International House Katowice we have Conversation Club – a get together where teachers and students hang out, drink beer and talk. Grant, one of the 25 or so IH teachers, planned a successful pub quiz and sing song of Molly Malone and Wild Rover (complete with pounding on the table) in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. And once the quiz winners were announced and they had received their IH pocket calendars, the pub pretty much cleared out. Only a few of us from the school and a guy at the counter in a Guinness Top Hat made of foam remained.

Ready for my second pint, I headed to the bar and introduced myself to Mark, the guy in the Guinness hat. Clearly well beyond his second pint, Mark was a 45-year-old businessman from London. He was short and round in the middle. Sweaty gray hair peered from beneath his hat and stuck to his neck. Mark had relocated to Poland five years ago, he told me, to teach English and start a chain selling leather-cleaning products at local malls. Short on specifics, Mark had a quick mouth and a love of music from before I was born.

“You like Springsteen?” he asked. “Na. A little too much denim for me,” I replied. “If you ever get the chance, go to his concert -- when he sings it looks like his neck is going to explode,” Mark admired as he finished his beer and switched to Long Island Iced Tea.

Not halfway through his Long Island, Mark had already professed his love for David Bowie, Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust, The Beatles, Phil Collins, and Elvis. And before I knew it he was once again talking about The Boss.

“It’s amazing.” Mark continued. “I said to myself as soon as he started Born in the USA -- by the way he always starts with that song, which I don’t particularly care for -- I said that’s it. He’s fucking done. No way he can sing another note. He’s done. But he did. And he sang for four hours. The entire time his neck was …” Mark trailed off gesturing to his neck, his hands on either side, miming swelling. He was clearly impressed.

“Man, sounds like you really like Springsteen,” I said.
“I tell ya, he sang this great version of American.”

And before the ten of us left in the pub knew what was happening, Mark was five bars into a 6-minute performance. And to his credit, as drunk as he was, he knew every word of that song. Feeling partially responsible and a little embarrassed about the impromptu performance, I stayed perched on my stool with an uncomfortable grin. Mark was strutting and stroking the bar. He had clearly done this before.

I invited Mark over to the table, where the rest of the group was sitting, in an effort to avoid another outburst. After a brief discussion over the relative little value of music being produced today as opposed to 30 years ago (at least that was Mark’s position), we all grabbed a taxi, minus Mark, and headed up town. I’m convinced he hung around until closing time or he fell asleep.

Either way, I’m just glad he wasn’t a Madonna fan. I don’t know what would have happened if he had chosen to sing Like a Virgin.

A day trip to Pszczyna

This past Saturday we visited Pszczyna (pronounced pish-chin-a), a small market town, its origins dating back to the 11th century. In 1847 after centuries of changing ownership, it became the property of the powerful Hochberg family of Prussia. According to our guidebook, Pszczyna is home to “a perfectly restored palace that could have jumped straight out of Germany.” Sounded good to us. So we checked it out.

We strolled the town and popped into the palace for a self-guided tour. Beth told them we were teachers at the ticket window and got us a 50% discount. This teaching thing has its perks. The palace was awesome. Loads of antiques, hand-carved interiors and furniture, high ceilings with huge crystal chandeliers, 30-foot tall mirrors, probably 500 pairs of antlers to show off the great hunts that had taken place here, muralled ceilings, and a real feeling that we were getting a peek into the recent past. Here are some photos I was able to smuggle out. Sorry about the occasional blurring. There were no photos aloud inside the palace so I was forced to shoot quickly and hide the evidence.

Spring is in the Air

The other day, I cracked our kitchen window open to let in a bit more sun in for Booster. And to my shock, a bee flittered around the opening for a moment and buzzed off into the distance, as if to say "hello, I'm here and I've brought Spring!"

The sun has been shining every morning for at least a few hours. And Booster's gotten comfortable with sitting on his blanket in the window and soaking up the rays. Bhads and I are loving it, too! We didn't have much of a winter, but when the sun returns it sure is noticeable. It's like people on the streets are walking around with Zippity Do-Dah playing in the background.

On Tuesday, the three of us went to a coffee shop around the corner from our apartment called Amader. We're not sure what "Amader" means, but it sounds like how the British say "Armada," so that's what I think of everytime I hear it. We had the place to ourselves. So we picked a table by the window, the one with the most sunlight shining through, and plopped down on the leather sofa. Booster arranged himself on my sweater that was laid out on the wide window sill and watched the passers-by as he showed off his pretty belly. Bhads and I had coffees and talked about life, while children on their way to a field trip skipped past, pointing at the pup and laughing. It was a beautiful day.

We're thinking about taking a day-trip to Pszczyna this weekend. Maybe on Saturday. It's a small town, outfitted with a palace and royal gardens...and we love exploring the area as much as we can. And, I'm just excited to have a cup of coffee outside in the sun--the street cafes will be opening soon! On Sunday, I think we'll try to go back to Auschwitz for the day. We went last October, before our CELTA's started, but we feel a need to go back. This time, we won't take a tour, we want to just walk around and feel the silence. And it IS something you can feel. There's a new Jewish history museum in Oswiecim (Osh-vee-on-cheem: the Polish name for the town) and we'd like to see that too. We're going to start taking weekend trips more often. We still need to go to Warsaw, Poznan, Gdansk, and the Bielowiza National Forest near Belarus. We're starting to plan a trip to Lvov, Ukraine, during the Easter/Passover week. And, of course, we will keep you posted!

Sending you sun and smiles from Katowice!

Let's Talk Fashion (Bhad)

Let’s talk fashion. As I’ve come to realize learning English is something of a status symbol over here. In that same vein, so is wearing English – shirts that have English words on them are sold and worn everywhere. And what I find hilarious, especially since I’m teaching English, is that it doesn’t matter whether the shirts make any sense grammatically, conceptually or often artistically. These images are of a few of my favorites. I have done my best to recreate the original designs that I’ve seen.

In case you can’t read the fine print of the shirts, here’s what they say:
1) Wildness
2) City Warriors; Los Angeles Washington New York; Watching the streets and keeping surveillance by
3) New York; 1998; Motorcycle Brotherhood
4) 22 Mystical; 46-LYG Department; General Air Force; M-2 Operations
5) D/7 135-92; Silver Sounds; Summer Wonderland

Chiquita Banana!

I am about to head home after a good, long day at school. I've been sick for the past 5 days, and today's my first day back. It was nice to laze around the apartment with Booster, read some good books, and eat my fair share of homemade apple crumble. But, it's back to business now. And two day work weeks are mighty fine by me!

I wanted to blog about my class that just got out an hour ago. It's a group of ten little 9 yr olds at a satellite school about 30 minutes outside of Katowice. They are the jewels of my Thursday! Each one is bursting with personality and enthusiasm. Some have no social awareness, and others I'm convinced are old sages. They can be so serious and focused one minute, poring over every detail of their work, and the next they'll be slung over their chairs backwards with their tongues hanging down their chins tapping their heels together and clicking their pens. It's great!

So at the end of my lesson we played pictionary with new vocab they'd learned today. There were two teams, pretty much evenly split. The first of each team had a marker (with which to draw on the white board), and the other team members would guess what are the drawing. First team to guess gets the point. Okay, you also get the point. I always ask them: what's your team name. It's more fun than Team A and Team B, and they come up with all kinds of wonderful names: Dog (not dogs), Gorilla, Mouse, Skittles. This week, my star student Mieszko (pron: Mee-ish-ko) wanted Chiquita Banana! Soon after, the whole class is muttering: Chiquita Banana, Chiquita Banana. I couldn't help but giggle. It was Chiquita Banana versus Skittles for the pictionary championship.

We played pictionary for about 5 or 10 minutes (Chiquita Banana won), when I had a revelation. Why not teach them the famous Chiquita Banana song that I sang for hours on end as a child? We had 5 minutes left in class, and that was plenty of time to teach them the lyrics and movements. So we all stood in a circle, they repeated after me:

Chiquita Banana.
Chiquita Banana.
You peel it to the left,
You peel it to the right,
You open up the center and--
UMPH!--You take a bite!

At the "UMPH!" we all jumped up and landed with a big thud (opting for a less grotesque body movement of the original). Needless to say, they ate it up! Pun intended. We did the song and movements 5 times until it was time to go. They were all singing it on the way out the door. Now that's an English lesson! Haha, more like an American lesson.

Morning Coffee

My Bros, Josh, emailed me a short story he wrote about a month ago. It told the story of the events of an unusual day – really a few hours out of that day – as they unfolded, with vivid detail. It inspired me. So, Bro, here is my story. It is set in Wroclaw. Bethanie and I visited the beautiful city over our winter break a few weeks ago. As I type this it is 1:35 on a Sunday afternoon and I am listening to Wolf Parade on ITunes. The sky is grey and the roof drips with what’s left of the rain that has come and gone.

Morning Coffee

I took a 10-minute walk from the Wroclaw Rynek (town square), zigzagging 5 blocks southwest. This was my third time in as many days to stop into this pub. But it had a different feeling this visit. It was 10 in the morning and only a few laptop users had staked out seats near the side row of windows in the back. Two evenings before we were lucky to get a table, but now I had my pick. After a quick consideration of the layout, who was already sitting where, how much light I would need to read my two-day-old copy of the The Guardian, where I could stow my umbrella, and which tables provided the most overall comfort, I opted for a corner spot – a round wooden thing, dinged and scratched, wobbly from years of use, four feet across and just to my liking.

The pub still smelled of lamp oil the staff used to fuel the tens of tea lights that lined the sills and shelves. The floor was hard wood in the front and brick from the bar in the middle of the room back. It seemed as if an old alley had been given a roof and bar. There was still a hand pump that was just taller than me built into the floor. Our first night here the room was filled with silent smiles when someone tripped over its base on the way to the couches at the back. Other than a smacked palm and a small case of embarrassment, he was fine.

I grabbed a kawa biala from the bar and spread out my paper on the table. I skipped from page to page looking for where I had left off. The top two stories of the day couldn’t have been more different. Readers would find that Baghdad had suffered four car bomb blasts during a 15-minute moment of silence for the anniversary of a similar attack one year ago. They might also be surprised to see that the Dixie Chicks took home highest honors at the Grammy Awards, winning for best song, album and record. The two stories fill the majority of the first and second pages, respectively, along with a few other eye catchers like “Cadbury Faces Court Over Food Poisoning” and “Confessions of a Dinosaur,” an in-depth look a the man of the ’70s.

As I read, I work hard to ration my 6 oz. of latte. I realize I’ve only been here 15 minutes tops, and already I’ve enjoyed half of it. At the risk of ending up with a cold cup of coffee, which inevitably happens, I slow my drinking pace to stretch my 5.50 pln into 45 minutes of pleasure. The woman at the table next to me is enjoying her coffee with a piece of apple cake and a Polish women’s magazine. She is clearly far less concerned than me about conserving her purchase. She races from page to page, apparently mostly enjoying the pictures, while opting to wash her cake down with big gulps of coffee rather than the faithful chew and swallow technique that I usually employ. In less time than it has taken me to read three more articles, my favorite being “Police Impound Illegal ‘Mafia Town’ Built on Broccoli Fields,” a little piece hot off the wire from Naples, my neighbor is gone and I have the corner of the pub again all to myself, upping the pleasure of my reading that much more.

Soon, however, a couple sits down at another table within arms length of me. At the bar, she orders a coffee and a cold-cut sandwich and he a pint of Zywiec. In a brief moment of worry I lose track of time, assuming that it must be early afternoon for him to be having a beer, and I’ve probably missed my train. I check my watch. It’s 11 am. Any earlier and I might think a beer was out of bounds. But 11 is within earshot of noon and for some people it’s already lunchtime. I’ve never been one to frown at a midday pint myself, and I’m reminded of Bethanie’s and my trip to Prague in 2002.

Legend has it that it is Czech law that every adult of legal age should be able to afford beer. And based on my experience this could well be true. Beer in Prague can run as little as $.50 for a half liter. That’s cheaper than any other beverage, even water. So it was there in a small Czech point-to-order diner that I found myself taking the budget option at 10 am and having a pint with breakfast. As we ambled about the city that afternoon my gate was clearly effected – a little slower and lazier. Since then I’ve always opted for coffee or juice with my eggs and generally prefer to save the Pilsner Urquell for later in the day.

But now as I finish off the complimentary chocolate that accompanied by coffee, I’ve got a close eye on the door, expecting Beth to rush in fro the downpour at any moment. Soon she does and after a hug and kiss hello we are out the door, on our way to pick up Booster and our bags from Hotel Savoy and then head to the station for the 12:05 to Katowice. Huddled close under the umbrella we hurry off, sharing stories of our mornings and looking forward to home.

Sledding in Bielsko

I think most people agree that sledding is a general good time. But when you add meters of snow, a chair lift, a mountain, and skiers and snowboarders on the same path you get "xtreme sledding." (Sorry, I know that 'x' was inappropriate, but it's so it's the style these days...)

Alex, our bud from CELTA, is living in Bielsko-Biala teaching at another IH. So he invited us to come to his town for the day to go "sledging." I thought he was chewing something as we spoke, but--no--people from the UK add a g. It works well enough. So we took the train down to B-B and had the most interesting sledding experience of our lives to date.

Alex and his roommate Jared took us to the outskirts of town to the beautiful mountains. B-B is in very South Poland, close to the Slovakian border, and is a mountainy resorty town. So we took the chair-lift up the mountain (it was huge!) and hiked around the top for quite a while looking for the ideal sled run. It really wouldn't have meant much for us to find the best sled run in the country b/c Bhadri had put his knee through his cheapo plastic Tesco sled as we were walking through town (he thought he could sled down the sidewalk), so his sled was outa commission. Alex and Jared had opted for more expensive sleds with brakes, but we soon found out that they were very poorly designed and wouldn't go. At all. So mine was the only sled that worked. And, boy, did it work! It flew down the mountain.

We all took turns using my sled and Bhadri's flat rubber "sled" he got at the bottom of the mountain for 10 zloty. The best part of this was that the sled run we found also doubled as a ski and snowboard run. Jared got hit twice by snowboarders, Alex got hit once by them...we were the lucky ones. So we dodged the skiers/snowboarders, and scooted down the mountain. Ah, and we saw two different skiers flying down the mountain with their dogs running behind them! It was great!

We stopped off at a mountain pub and had hot wine and beer before making the final run down the hill. We were soaked to the bone and my chin was apparently frost bitten to a mild degree (skin started flaking off the next day...what?!??). But how cool was it to sled down a whole mountain!

Eurobusiness

Facts about Eurobusiness that you might not've known before reading this blog:
1. It is Monopoly's long lost twin.
2. It is completely in Polish.
3. The currency used is dollars.

We learned these facts a last week, when our friends Piers and Emilia invited us over to their apt for a friendly game of Eurobusiness. It was a grueling 5 hour event, with lots of bargains, and hotels turned paperclips, and in the end...I won! I have never won Monopoly before (still haven't I guess technically).

In short, we learned a lot and fun was had.

Katowice's Snowy Days

Our blogs are like a bad cell phone connection, always delayed. It's now wet and sunny here in Katowice, but a week or two ago, life was much different.

Here are some photos from 'round town when the flakes were a fallin'...

Howdy folks! Well, I am waiting for my class to start. I have about 20 minutes. Bhadri is behind me, poring over the resource shelf for practice tests for his kiddos. Punishment for being rude teenagers, probably. We make our students do tests when their annoying.

So, I don't have any picts at the mo. But I do have the gift of letter formation (aka words). A big thank you (!) to those who have left comments--you know who you are (and so does everyone else, I guess, too). We love them!

Here's a mission for all ye faithful blog nerdies: You leave these great comments, but individually. We'd like to see some dialogue between commenters (commentators?), a little discussion, ya know. It's your challenge, should you wish (eh hem, care) to fulfill it.

So we're in our last week of classes now before a 2 week Winter Break. Whew! We need it. In case you didn't know, teaching is hard. (That was for you, Mom and Sue.) But it sure is nice to get some actual vacation time (That one's for you, Seiko and Goodwill!). The plan is to go to Wroclaw for a few days next week. Wroclaw is a city a bit smaller than Krakow about 3 hours west of here. It's supposed to be gorgeous, with a huge main square and lots of great cafes and pubs to hang out in. We don't know where we're going to stay yet, but we'll figure that out this weekend. And afterwards, we'll be designing our wedding invites, getting them printed (hopefully!), and sending them out. So if we don't have your address, please-please-please email/comment it to us!!!

Other things: It's warm here. And sunny. It's the strangest thing. It snowed and snowed for about a week, then it thawed and it hasn't snowed again! It was sunny out and probably in the high 40s/50s today! Can you believe it?! Everyone keeps asking us if we're freezing, assuming Poland is cold, but we are toasty bugs. No worries there!

We miss you guys very much! And hope all is fantastic back home. We'll be thinking of you while we're lazily hanging out on the square in Wroclaw, sipping hot chocolate at a fancy pub and watching the people flurry by.

Recap: Inaugural comment challenge has started. We're having fun. Please send us your addresses. We are not cold.