Scavenger/Ice Cream Hunt

Not a huge update here -- last night for dinner we had chicken salad made with rice and raisins, along with some cheese and bread. Probably the least Polish meal so far, but it was really good.

After dinner, we had a scavenger hunt that the whole camp participated in. Not only did campers have to find items around the camp, they also had to answer questions about American holidays, celebrities, and idioms. Here's the groups trying to answer the questions:

And here's my group, the Red Rhinos. We tied for 3rd place.

Each teacher had to judge the answers of another group. You can see Traci is looking over my group's answers. One of the items each group had to find was a picture of a camper's mother. My group was really creative and took a picture of Traci because her daughter is one of the American high school students at the camp, but she said that it didn't count because her daughter wasn't one of the Polish campers. I think they should have gotten points just for creativity! In the group I was judging, I took a point off because they said that the American flag had 48 stars on it. After that a kid from the group ran up to me all upset and was like "Look at this patch from a WWII bomber jacket that I have! There's only 48 stars!" and I had to explain to him that in World War II Alaska and Hawaii weren't states yet. He seemed not too happy about that.

After the scavenger hunt was over, me and some of the other teachers walked into town to try to find some gelato. I had noticed a couple places selling it before, but most of them were closed by then. While we were looking around, I saw this little statue:


It's cute, but I can't read Polish so I wasn't sure what the significance of it is. Tomorrow afternoon the whole camp is going on a tour of Torun so I'll ask one of the Polish students to explain it to me.

Finally we found a little place selling gelato for only 2 zlotys! (That's about 60 cents!) I had an Irish Cream flavored one and it was delicious.

Last day before class

So yesterday was the last day before we start teaching classes. The Polish kids spent most of the day moving into the dorms, and the teachers (us) spent the morning in meetings, planning our classes and our afternoon and evening activities. Lunch was AMAZING. We had crepe type things stuffed with cream cheese and raisins with chocolate and strawberries on top:

We also moved from having our meals in the dining room that was in some of the previous pictures I posted to being in the large cafeteria. The students all eat cafeteria style, taking up their trays, and all the teachers get our food brought to us. Fan-cy!

Later in the afternoon I decided to go for a walk down by the river. I can't believe I hadn't gone down there yet! It was so pleasant, with lots of people walking around and sitting by the river. There were a bunch of couples making out too -- I guess PDA is more acceptable here.


They had a lot of these boat thingies that were actually floating bars. I didn't go to one, but I bet it's really pleasant to just sit out on the river and have a drink in the afternoon.


Here's the view facing away from the river. You can see the walls of the town and some of the older buildings inside. I guess Torun is a big tourist destination for Polish people because it is historical (kind of like a Williamsburg, I guess).


I don't know what this little wooden building is, but underneath it was a wall that had some sort of weird trippy mural on it.


...which somebody graffitied

Oh Ludvig...


Anyway, today I had my first morning of classes. It went really well -- much more smoothly than I was hoping for. I did a little "lesson" about American universities, and then I had them read articles from the Marquette Journal and explain them to the class in English. There's a real variation in their skill levels. I had three classes, and in each class there was at least one person who was really really good at English-- raising their hands, talking about how they wanted to travel to California, or asking me questions after class. There was also at least one kid in each class who seemed to not have learned much English at all and who were really uncomfortable speaking in front of the class. Hopefully these 3 weeks of class will be helpful to them.

Well that's all for now! Tonight we're doing a scavenger hunt, pitting the homerooms against each other. My homeroom's color is red, and we voted on the name "Red Rhinos." Go Rhinos!

Nights in Torun

After yesterday's post, we had a pretty awesome dinner. In Poland, lunch is the biggest meal of the day and dinner is more like lunch, so we had croissant wrapped hot dogs, tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, bread and jam, and pickles.


And after dinner, we decided to go out on the town! First we sat outside at an outdoor cafe for drinks. It was very pleasant and the people watching was fun.


After most of the teachers went back to the dorms, I went with two of the other college aged teachers to one of the trendier bars in town.


On the way back, I had to take a picture of this storefront window because it was so weird and confusing! I guess it's fashionable to keep a baby in a glass sphere?


Today will be a pretty low-key day. Most of the shops are closed on Sundays and I'm spending a lot of time getting my first lesson ready!

Days 2-3. Arrival in Torun!

Well, I'm finally grounded. (Whew!)

The flight from Amsterdam to Warsaw was delayed of course, but a 25 minute delay felt pretty minor compared to the 4 hours in Minneapolis plus a 10 hour layover in Amsterdam. By the time the plane landed, it was around 10 o'clock Warsaw time and the airport was pretty dead. The Warsaw Airport seemed kind of weird and Orwellian compared to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, there are signs and pictures everywhere trying to get you to buy stuff. In Warsaw, everything was white and silver and orange, with harsh light and signs that were mostly just pictures. Actually, it might have just seemed that way because it was nighttime and I was just getting in from about 30 hours of traveling because now that I look at pictures and illustrations of the airport online it looks pretty nice:


Anyway, we then piled into a big bus/van thingy and headed off for the 3 1/2 hour drive from Warsaw to Torun. I wish I could have taken some pictures, but it was pretty dark out. From what I could see, Warsaw looked pretty cool. We drove past an enormous soccer stadium and a lot of car dealerships. Most of the rest of the ride outside of Warsaw was through dark woods and small towns, and the driver was driving really fast and the roads were bumpy. Every hour or so he pulled into a gas station for a cigarette so we could get out to buy mineral water or go to the bathroom. I was exhausted at this point and I had been wearing the same clothes for about 30-35 hours and had been sleeping only for a couple hours at a time.

Finally we pulled into the courtyard of the school. There was some confusion about the rooms but finally I settled into one. I get a room all to myself and I'm pretty sure it was made to be shared by three people so I have three beds and three desks. The room has nice big windows.

Here's the entryway to the dorm building. How welcoming!


Here's one side of my room:

And the other side with the extra beds and desks. Any ideas what I should do with the extra space?

This morning we ate breakfast, although I was still feeling weird from the trip so I just had tea and cornflakes. They also put out these rolls with cream on the inside that looked really good and some eggs and other stuff. I'll be looking forward to a breakfast when I'm really hungry! After breakfast we got a tour of the school's campus. Here's the view of a church you can see from the campus:

Here's what my dorm looks like from the outside:

Here's the building that has the classrooms:

And here's the building that has the gymnasium and the cafeteria:

Then we went to the classroom building and we got to pick out our rooms! The room I got seems like it will work really well. My grandma will be happy to know that during the school year it's the German room so it's full of Germany posters and maps.



After that I went into town to poke around and buy some things I needed (a soap holder, an ethernet cable, and some flip flops). Wanna see some pictures of the town? I thought so!

Another view of the church.

Mary statue outside of the church.

The town is very charming and European.

There was some sort of performance going on for children in one of the squares and I wanted to take a picture but then this guy got in my shot.

I think the town's central road is closed to cars. I don't have any independent verification of this, but there were no cars driving around and people were walking in the middle of the street.

I'm not quite sure what this building is yet but it has the statue of Copernicus out front.

Copernicus: the man, the myth, the legend.

Hey it's me! Proof that I am alive and not just some imposter blogger. Can you tell that I still hadn't showered yet in this picture? (Don't worry, I'm all clean now!)


I think the ad is for some kind of music festival that's going on in Torun.


Fiddler in the fountain.


I don't know why these frogs are spitting on a fiddler, but they are.

I'm not sure if this is a house or some other type of building. I'll try to get more information on Torun and post it when I get more time.


I saw this in a drugstore. I guess in Poland they can call a hair gel "Taft" without making people think of the jolliest of US presidents.

Can you believe I got time to take all these pictures before lunchtime? For lunch we had barszcz (which is how you say borscht in Polish) with dumplings in it, mashed potatoes, cucumber salad with a creamy sauce, and what I think was schnitzel. It was delish and I was pretty hungry by this point.

And here's the group!


Well that's it for now! Tomorrow the students arrive and Monday we start classes so I've got a lot to prepare for! Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Day 1 -- Grounded in Amsterdam

Well I set off today for my trip -- 2 hours early just like they say you should be, and even went so far as to get on the plane and everything until they announced that they were having mechanical troubles and everyone needed to get off the plane. They gave us some meal ticket thingies so I got a very aiporty looking Japanese chicken and noodle dish with it and waited around by my gate.


It wasn't all boring though because HOLY CRAP MICHAEL JACKSON DIED! Sitting around watching all the CNN coverage was pretty entertaining, although I was hoping for more clips of the "Thriller" video.


They kept pushing back the estimated departure time, and I'm pretty sure that they eventually just brought a new plane around for us. We ended up leaving about 3 1/2 hours later than we were supposed to. The plane ride was fine -- I watched Frost/Nixon and then got a good 4 hours of sleep or so.

When we finally arrived in Amsterdam we found out that we did indeed miss our connecting flight to Warsaw and so once again we got meal ticket thingies. I did that thing you're not supposed to do when you are in a foreign country and got a smoothie from Starbucks. I know, I know! It was the only place doing smoothies and with my time zones all screwy I was hungry but also feeling so tired that the thought of eating anything was grossing me out. So a mango passionfruit smoothie in my belly allowed me to sleep in these comfy reclining type chairs that they have at the airport here.

This picture is mostly for my friends at home -- especially the ones that work at Starbucks. I like how Dutch is a different language but it's close enough to just sound like funny sounding English if you read it in your head. "Maak Je Favoriete Drank." I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but the flavor "hazelnoot" made me laugh on the inside.

The Amsterdam airport also makes you go through security/passport checks randomly in the middle of the airport, even though I never left the gate area.

And here's my last picture -- my view from my comfy reclining chair which I've been sleeping upon:



So I get to sit back, nap a little, and watch planes take off. Life is pretty good. I'll update you guys again after I (finally) get to Warsaw.