Środa Śląska and a lot of rambling

On tuesday I faced the enivetable, the first snow did arrive to Kłodzko after all. How convenient it should happen exactly on the morning of my departure to Środa Śląska, to go visit a school in
Szczepanów. I was surprised to see the train arriving to the station no more than 10 minutes late. Anyway it did stand in the station for more than hour. I was so annoyed, but at the same time I felt like home back in Finland with our very winter adaptable italian plastic trains. I was going there with Enno, and we missed our train in Wrocław. We did get another one later, but I really feel the railways have something against me.

We arrived to Środa Śląska train station from where Iwona, the lovely teacher organizing this and hosting us at her house picked us up. We got to meet her amazing children, 2-year-old daughter and son 4 years old. So full of light and happiness. And most of all so cute and friendly. On that evening we went to the swimming pool with the group of children who atteded Euroweek last september. We got to know each other a little bit and after that we went to a pizzeria. I'm really warming up to polish type of pizza. We had a nice evening in the house and next morning went to the school.

Getting ready for the presentation of Indonesia. I had not seen it before so it was very interesting for me also. This first group of children were primary, so at first they were a little bit shy about communicating in english. Later they were actually raising their hands to get a chance to speak during the last game.The fact is that most of the children can talk in english, but are just too afraid of messing up or making mistakes. This is the point we are always trying to make: we don't care! I mess up when speaking english all the time but as long as I can communicate internationally, perfect grammar is secondary.

Can you show us where is Indonesia? 

After primary school we moved on to gymnasium and my Finland presentation! I have actually only done it a few times and just in my own school to children I already know. So this experience was something new and instructive for me. The older children should have more knowledge on the english language, but they are actually just in the point where they are deciding whether to study it or not. It's very easy to pass school without knowing any english and I know when you're 14 and have no use for it, it might feel just like extra homework. It makes me really happy to see the change and isnpiration in children at Euroweek and in school and I can just hope I could affect this also in situations like these. I always tell the children that in my opinion, and what I have seen and learned during my years of living; speaking english language is the most important talent you can acquire from school.

I was really surprised to see that a student could read the longest finnish word much better than I ever could. Polish people are actually really good at pronouncing finnish in general. People are often very curious about the finnish language, because they've heard it's hard or something. I have to say that my finnish is actually really awful. I don't know my grammar, but in finnish you can get far just by the simplified language. My approach is the same to my own mother tongue than english actually.

I really enjoyed our visit at the school. I really want to go back and visit them and my awesome host family again. This was again a thing to remind me why I'm here. Making me remember the things in life that are really important. How beautiful life can be - each and every one of them, of every child, every adult, every unique person on this earth. How full of opportunities the world is. How simple and dull your life can seem and be and still it affects so many things and is just as important as any other. And the fact that from that you can make anything is just mindblowing and full of hope.
The work I do here might not seem like much to someone watching or even to the children. At my own-arrival training one of the volunteers told me that I'm an egoist for telling about my work to people, for admitting that what I do makes me happy. Well, yes my motivation is also that it makes me feel good about myself. But it makes me just as happy to see someone else do the same. Still, I have to admit that I am proud of myself. I think it's just a positive thing, pushing me forward. I don't see myself as a better person for being a volunteer. This was just for me the way to find out what I really want to do. Something to investigate my own competences and strenghts. I won't even say that I'm particularly, or especially good at what I do, but I'm learning everyday and I'm loving it.

So once again I'm back home and back at my own school. The weather is freezing, and I'm happy that the heating is fixed now, even though our washing machine did break and I feel like all the light bulbs are burning out one after another, and right now my food supply is consisting of noodle soup and finnish hard rye bread (näkkäri) because I'm too lazy to go to the shop.

My fauvorite polish family. These kids absolutely stole my heart. So sweet. Next time I will just pack them in my backpack.

Life is good.

First snow in Poland?

It has been snowing in Poland since last night; or at least everybody's saying so on Facebook. I haven't seen any. Even my friends from few kilometres away tell me it's snowing at the moment, but I just can't find snow even how hard I try. This morning I did see a car drive by with a little bit snow on top. But okay, some volunteers here have never even seen snow, and I come from the north so we might have somewhat different kind of perspective on this.

Last saturday i went to Wrocław to visit One Love festival. On sunday I went to the zoo, and I have never seen so many animals in one place. I loved it! And of course I didn't bring my camera there with me. Anyway, I strongly recommend visiting. I also have to go back there because I didn't have enough time to see everything, even I spent there almost 4 hours. And they have a huge christmas market (and gingerbread!) in the city, which I had a beautiful view over from my hostel room window.

Tomorrow I will return to that direction as I will be visiting another school for a couple of days. I'm really looking forward to this. I will be going with my lovely indonesian colleague and we will stay at the teacher's house.

I've been busy with work and learning to play Ieva's polka (click), for next saturday's Woluntariusz In Wonderland day at our museum. One of our volunteer's working there and organized this kind of a international event for the local people to come and ecxperience our cultures, for example dancing, music and food. More about that later anyway. 
All the pictures in this post are not recent, they're some pieces of the last three months; time is flying by ridicilously fast, and I have to get my christmas calendar soon.

And this post was very not worth much. I'll be updating again after I come back from my visit to Środa Śląska.

Along the way; Kraków part 2 and we made something awesome

Sunday morning in Kraków. We had a long walk along the river. The sign made me giggle. No giant humans and tiny submarines allowed.

I really don't like swans here. They are not like our finnish beautiful pure creatures of nature. They're all city adapted, people reliable pidgeons. I noticed again I have a lot of pictures of birds in my blog.

Okay so I promised something awesome. We did this today with Birgit and I know it's november but this is a long-term project. Anyway it makes me feel warm and cousy. And you have to admit it is quite beautiful (and yes also that is one of my dear dreadlocks hanging from the tree).

Along the way; Kraków part 1 and just a Monday

On Saturday morning we bravely got up early in the morning, still the shadow of recent sickness floating above us to catch the 6:30 train, which I'm already familiar with from my earlier travels. I don't mind, because it's the best napping place I know, so early on a weekend it's empty and with the soothing sounds of the railway and perfectly balanced unbalance of the movement, I'd sleep there all the time if I could. And I'm not even kidding. We got off at Wrocław to change for a dirty cheap bus, 39 złoty straight to Kraków (about 3 hours). I continued napping (though it wasn't as comfortable as the train). So, we arrived around twelve.

 First things first; we found a city map at the bus station and started making our way towards the city centre, after we got out from the handicraft shop and Birgit had hoarded enough knotting strings (just kidding honey (it's true though)). So we got to the market square and grabbed some very expensive but very moderately good food. I just can't resist market food. And yes we got some cake too; my first gingerbread experience this winter, yay.

 The day was really windy and cold and grey. I think the city is so beautiful, but this time of year makes every place a little bit hard to enjoy. I had big expectations about Kraków, because it has been praised from every polish person I've talked about it with. It's the former capital of Poland and I think it's the best advance for it compared to Warsaw, which I haven't heard much good about. Even this time of year Kraków was full of tourists, especially in the old town.

We went to check out the Wawel Castle, one of the main attractions of the city. It was really cool, 
although it's up on a hill so it got really cold. The viewover the river was very beautiful, and maybe all the greyness and foggyness brought some kind of melancholic autumn spirit into the moment. Anyway we decided to go warm up over some hot wine afterwards, which I had been craving for all day, especially after I ate some gingerbread cake, I have got my christmas spirit on. Waiting for first snow! And now I'm also craving for gingerbread, which I couldn't find in our supermarket, people from Kłodzko area, I'd be happy to receive any hints around this subject (and no I can not bake).

The day was slowly turning into night and the darkness was crawling around us and making all the buildings around the square even more beautiful with the lights on them and I swear the temperature got warmer just because of that. Or the heatlamps in the terraces. Or the hot wine. 

This is the St. Mary's Church, where from the highest tower, the Hejnał Mariacki, also called the Kraków anthem, is played by trumpet every day, four times on the hour. It is played from four windows facing different directions, to where the four main gates of the city used to be. This photo was taken on the exact moment we witnessed this happening. 

Of course we had to check out the souvenir stuff and it was pretty much what I expected of Kraków souvenir stuff to see. The fact is that it is the same as anywhere in Poland, but what I hear, this is the origin of all the cultural peculiarity of the country. I can't know for sure. But I like the colours and wooden stuff. And the traditional clothing, which you can check from one of my earlier posts (click)

I love being an EVS -volunteer. We had the opportunity to sleep at a volunteer flat of two of the volunteers we met on our on-arrival training in Warsaw. It was really interesting to see how other volunteers live in other cities and this was also a great opportunity to get to know the night life with locals. As currently a small town girl I was fascinated about the fact that they lived only a 20 min walk from the centre and used trams to get around. There were actually six people living in their flat (sometimes I feel so blessed about our flat, even though when we arrived home yesterday and the heating was broken once again and I couldn't even take a shower. Well, it was fixed today and I still have my own room and a living room, and seperate toilet and shower rooms... today I'm getting a lot off subject..), and we went out together. We headed to their usual hangout part of town Kazimierz, the jewish district,which was absolutely beautiful and great atmosphere. Also the history of the area is very interesting, We had a great night and it felt so nice to get to experience city life once again and meet people.

So now I'm back home. This has been a monday of function, the heating was fixed and we bought some stuff for the block in the sink after two weeks from noticing it's not working (no, we didn't put it in yet, but we did buy it). Also I realized today that this month has been a very bad month of budgeting. I'm blaming Warsaw for being too expensive, and the fact that I had to get my month's pocket money one week early. Time to collect my bus tickets and glue them on a paper (oh the burocracy) so I can get some cash from the office tomorrow before I go to polish lesson. Finally back to lessons! I'm happy to be healthy. Life is treating me well.

P.s. äiti älä huoli mulla on kuitenkin jääkaappi täynnä ruokaa.

Getting better

I feel like I'm going crazy staying at home and feeling sick; I'm pretty sure I slept like 12 hours last night and I still feel tired. I had to stay home again today so I decided to do something different to occupy myself for awhile. So....

The most common question is; Do you really use this?

This is something I really really had to learn to drink in Poland, because in general coffee here is awful, and rarely you can find a real filter coffee maker anywhere. But I'm used to this now, and couldn't live without this (still I can't wait to go to Finland and get my hands on some real Tumma Presidentti, or even Juhla Mokka would do).

I love this book, not only because it's a good book but also because I bought it used from Prague, and it has some hard english words and psychological terms; fortunately the previous owner has made his own sidenotes on the pages, in english, to explain the meaning of most of these words. Thank you, whoever you are!

 I got this from my grandmother and it's made in Finland. I love it.

Well... what can I say? I love dinosaurs.

This was a hard one to choose. This picture just makes me happy every time I see it. It's from one of my students and she is so sweet. But I also wanted to add another photo because I also collect postcards from places I visit and put them on my wall. They also make me so happy, such good memories and all the time I'm wondering what kind of card will I be putting there next.

Again, what can I say? If there's one person in this world that I can trust forever and ever, who is always there for me and will never leave my side. My best travel buddy, sleeping buddy, you name it. He's a multitalent.

Warsaw

 

Berlin

 

Prague

I don't actually have any CD's with me and I don't have a favorite but these two have been playing on my Ipod a lot lately.

 

I don't really use my closet that much, because a) I don't have so much stuff and b) I keep it on the floor. So I only put all the important stuff there (candy).

 

Ummhh...yes. I might not be the most organized person, and even though I have a big wallet I don't have so much money in there. I have a teabag and some moustache and a handful of useless coins of 5 different currencies. Old train tickets and receipts, a lot of recent tickets and receipts (because I have to collect them every time for my organization).  

  -

So this was fun. Time for some more tea and sitting on the couch for tonight, because tomorrow I will be healthy because I decide so, because I'm heading to Kraków in the morning! Excited.