Gdansk

On Saturday, the whole school here loaded into buses to drive up to Gdansk, which is a port city on a river right off the Baltic Sea. I found it really beautiful and full of cool history. I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted to because it was raining for part of the time and my camera was running out of batteries but I did take some:

Here you can see some buildings that are remnants of the city being destroyed in WWII. It was weird to think about how all the beautiful old-looking buildings around me had to be rebuilt because Gdansk was basically leveled by the Russian army.

When we first heard we were going to Gdansk, they described it as a coast town, but you actually have to travel a little bit to get to the sea. I didn't get to do that -- we just saw the river.

This gate/palace type thing was built for the King of Poland. Gdansk used to be a Teutonic city, but apparently the Teutonic knights were not very nice to the citizens and after the city was taken over by the King of Poland, the citizens wanted to thank him by building him a palace (and I think this was one of the conditions of the King as well). So they built him this building, but he was not pleased with it and never stayed in it.

Here you can see the ship SS Soldek, which was the first ocean liner to be built in Poland. Now they leave it anchored in the river and it has a museum inside. In front of the Soldek is a piratey-looking ship that I saw cruising around the river.

Cool buildings. Pizza.

Me standing in front of the Soldek.

This was above the door on a house in the old part of town. I guess the story behind the three boar's heads on the top there is that the richest family in town used to live in that house, and once when the city was being attacked (I forget by whom) the people were starving and the family slaughtered three boars to feed the hungry people, but the head of the family told the people to leave the heads and not to eat them. He then put the heads on stakes or something and when the attacking people saw that they had pigs' heads on stakes they decided that the town must be really well-stocked and prepared if the people could afford to leave the heads, so they didn't attack.

Some cool Renaissance architecture.

The lion on the left made me laugh, so I took a picture of it.

And here's me again! I was told that there should be more pictures with me in them, but it's hard because my camera is really weird and turns off unexpectedly unless you handle it in the exact right way, which I know how to do but it's hard to explain to other people.

Here was a really cool fountain with a statue of Neptune who represents the city and its seafaring ways.

Some more cool architecture.


And finally at the end of our tour we could sit down and have some coffee and cake.

Halloween

Friday was our camp Halloween celebration (yes, we're doing some American holiday celebrations here on random days that are not the actual holidays). The kids came up with some amazingly creative costumes, especially considering that most of them did not pack costume materials and most of them had to get creative with the clothes they already had or go to fabric stores and make things on their own. Should we see some pictures?

First we have Jim and Ken, two of the American teachers here. These two were hilarious and stayed in character as funny old ladies named Anna and Marge.


Mike (the zombie on the left) is a high school theater teacher and stayed in zombie character all night.



Mateusz from my group went as a leprechaun, but I think he looks more like one of the Weasleys at the Quidditch World Cup.

Some of the other teachers have nicknamed this kid "Giggles" because he laughs in class all the time.

Sometimes you can't go wrong with a classic ghost costume.

Nicole Lipsy as Amy Winehouse.

Hmm....yeah.


You knew there was going to be a Joker, right?

Hey! It's me and my class! (And my toga!)

This is a student named Katarzyna (who goes by Kate) that I've become pretty good friends with. We hung out a lot in Gdansk.

I thought Monika was going as a goth, but she assures me that she was a witch.


The kids that went as the HSM kids won the award for best group costume.

The girl in the jumpsuit was supposed to be Meghan Fox from Transformers.

And that's it! Some very cool, creative costumes.

Sunday: Golub Dobrzyn and Chopin's House

Hey everybody! Sorry it's been so long since I last posted, but I've been pretty busy this week with classes and activities that it's been hard to find time to sit down and blog. So I'm only finally getting to my pictures from Sunday, when I went to the town of Golub-Dobrzyn and visited the Teutonic castle there. I apologize if I can't quite fill in all of the historical details -- once again we had a Polish tour and had the kids translating for us, so it was kind of hard to fully understand the history. I know it was the residence of a princess of Finland for a while, and the outside and inside walls are from different eras, but that's about it. Now they do tours of the castle and the area around it is kind of like a Renaissance fair.





When we first got there we watched the guys practicing for the joust. I thought the attitude here was pretty funny because I know that at the Renaissance Festival in Minnesota all the staff there tries to stay in character as much as possible, but here I saw the jouster guys out smoking, talking to their (modern dressed) girlfriends, and getting stuff out of their cars in the parking lot.




The castle was really pretty and was perched in an area with a really nice view of the town below.

Here's Bartek, who was my translator for the tour of the castle. Standing next to him is Kelsey, one of the American high school students.

They had stocks there, and a guy acting as a blacksmith.

The inside of the castle was mostly white walls, but they had some cool historical artifacts.

Here's me! I bet I could fit in that armor.

They also had an archaeological exhibit there too, and they had this creepy display set up.

Here's some cool windows from the area that used to be the chapel.

After the castle, we went to a house that Frederick Chopin lived in for a while.

The tour wasn't very long, but I guess he wrote some music here and now it's used for concerts and art exhibitions and stuff.

They had a room full of different busts of Chopin and I took a picture of this one because I thought it looked like Professor Snape.

After the tour, we had some extra time to explore the grounds of the house. They had some very beautiful gardens.

And a beautiful pond with some lily pads! Yeah, I'm kinda like Monet, except with a digital camera instead of, you know, talent.

Monday night the two dormitories played against each other in basketball.


And on Tuesday night there was a sing-along where the kids got to sing rousing songs such as "Old MacDonald" and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain." You know there's nothing that a large group of 15-18 year olds love more than that!

Yesterday the Polish kids challenged the Americans to a game of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" where we had to answer questions about Poland. I did pretty well, but got out on a question about which political party held a majority in the Polish parliament.

Our audience.

And here's some of my fellow teachers answering questions.

And then for dinner, to get away from the cafeteria food for a while, we had dinner at a crepe place. I had a crepe with chicken shoarma and cheese inside, with garlic sauce on top. See? Only one food picture!

And that's all for now! Tomorrow I go to Gdansk so hopefully I will be posting some pictures of that soon!