First Reflections

Well, I'm here now. Poland. The land my Papa was born in.  The land where I have so many photos from, but no names to go with.  Nana's family photos were much more labeled than Papa's ones.  The land of so many unknowns...so many questions and so much to learn.

One of many unlabeled rustic photos from my grandparent's album.
Label your photos, people!  And ask questions about everyone in them.
Nothing, to me, is sadder than lost stories with beautiful faces and places.
I wish I could have known these people.

I was here once before. Dorothee and I visited Poland in 2006. I had been visiting her in Berlin, right after the World Cup. There had been a terrorist threat on a plane heading into London's Heathrow Airport and that gave me more time in Germany than I had planned. A friend of hers, Rika, spoke Polish, and suggested that we take a train ride to nearby Szczecin, a border city in Poland. (Try to pronounce that one! Have fun!)

Never mind that I got "Lech Walesa's Revenge" (my term for Polish Montezuma's revenge...think long toilet visits...). The city was beautiful, but the trip was traumatic. Why? Because I'm a linguistic power freak. I learn languages quickly and hate being out of control when I don't understand what's going on around me.

And here I was, in the childhood home of a living relative of mine, my Papa who I love and cherish, and I could not understand a word.

That's not true. I understood one word. Robotnik-- a worker, a laborer. The word "Robot" comes from a science fiction work, R.U.R., by Czech playwright Karel Capek. Both Czech and Polish are Slavic languages and have a great deal in common.

So, I understood the construction signs. (Big whoop!) I promised myself that I would someday return to Poland and I would understand more.

So, for the past few weeks, I have been using several apps and websites to study Polish. I wish that more books were available for this project, but here's something you should know: textbooks are published based on what is being taught. Very few schools teach or require Polish, so most of the more advanced textbook companies don't publish Polish textbooks.

That said, the apps are great. And I love how my public library has access to Mango Languages, a useful and engaging tool. (Hunterdon County has PowerSpeak, but not for Polish. Duolingo is great fun for other languages, too...as is Mind Snacks.) The main apps I used were Fabulo and Lingo, but I also watched a lot of cartoons with subtitles! Long live the internet!

Well, I'm here. I don't need to use Polish. But I understand the signs! And I understand when people speak with me! You can see I'm excited by my use of exclamation points and by the abundance of sentences beginning with "and". It's okay, you can tease me for that when I get back. I deserve it. But at least I'm not saying "like, um, uh, and stuff, and then there was that thingy...." Oh wait, I just did! 

Here's a hint for those of you who like to learn languages: you have to not only look at the word but also hear it in your head, and preferably SAY it, too. For example, I passed this store: (note, I couldn't get a good photograph because the bus window had raindrops all over it...)

I bet that from the pictures and the words you can understand the sign. But LISTENING to the word "muzyczne" is very different from READING it.

It's also exciting how other languages help me with this one. For example, if you know French, you that "bijouterie" means jewelry shop. I didn't learn the word "Bizuteria" but I knew what it meant from my life as a francophone. This is part of what I love about learning!

Okay, so some of you want to hear more about what I experienced, beyond my language excitement. (Notice: I didn't say I can SPEAK well...I'll save that for another trip!) 

The flights were great. Apparently, very few people travel to Eastern Europe on weekdays in the winter. Its reputation for being cold scares many people away. Luckily, so far I am not very cold, and I was able to have a seat with NOBODY next to me on BOTH flights! This made sleeping a lot easier. Of course, my brain was going so fast that I needed to write a lot. Two blogs in one night!

Sigh... In Munich airport, I remembered that I was back in Europe. They don't have all the anti-smoking laws that we do, and smoking areas were abundant. Poland has even more signs of smoking; it took me a moment to adjust to the smell in the hotel downstairs. Luckily, upstairs I don't have to worry about that disgusting "fragrance". (ODOR.) The times have changed a lot in the US since my childhood, and people are a lot healthier now in that respect. I'm grateful for this progress back home!

Anyway, at Munich Airport, I met my first colleague from the trip. Christa is a wise, gentle-spirited teacher from upstate New York. She has studied abroad in Spain and gone to Ghana to explore human rights issues from that country's past. We had a deep conversation, immediately. I realized at an even deeper level than before about what an amazing group of teachers I'm going to be with!

(Benny Boy, I also thought of you in Munich Airport, but am still confused by why you were there and not at Schiphol in Amsterdam. Enlighten me, dear one!)

Note to travelers: don't get so caught up chatting that you don't notice when your plane is called.

Further note to travelers: in some airports, you don't board the plane from the gate. Instead, you board a bus, which takes you to the plane. Sometimes that bus ride is longer than you think. In fact, I felt like we were being driven to Warsaw.

Final note to travelers: the US is very handicapped accessible. This is not the case all over the world. I am not handicapped, thank goodness, except maybe in my ability to keep my mouth shut. But I AM short. (Bowie, I thought about your discussion of being a "Little Person"-- which you are not. Someday, you'll be tall enough to see my bald spot.) Climbing up onto that bus was NOT easy. I can be a bumbling fool sometimes. It's good to keep me humble. But again, I appreciate the tools we are given in our society to help all kinds of abilities of people!

Ah, then it was time to arrive in Poland. I smiled when I saw the name of the airport. My two favorite composers are Beethoven and Chopin. They have nourished me on lonely days and nurtured me on happy ones. I didn't fidget with object in class; instead, my fingers were always playing etudes and nocturnes... This airport is the Frederic Chopin Airport. That made me smile. I hope I'll be able to get a photograph of the sign on my way out, but for now, this will have to do:

By the way, if you aren't familiar with Chopin, you should listen to these three songs:

Nocturne in E flat Major This is my ringtone...
Funeral March Ashley-- this one is for you...drama queen!
Raindrop Prelude Joey F! You should play this one. The repeated G flat represents the rain.

About ten teachers met up here and we gathered our suitcases and walked a distance to the bus. There was no issue with customs, but I did think like a middle school "loopholes" gifted student when looking at the signs. There is a clearly marked sign saying that NO ANIMAL PRODUCTS may be taken into the country. Does that mean that everyone wearing leather needs to take off their shoes and put them in the waste receptacles? Really!

I'm going to end this with a few of my visual insights just from the drive to the hotel. The really exciting stuff starts in about an hour, but first insights about a country count for something too.

Buildings are almost all rectangular with flat roofs. They seem to have been built in the Communist regime with most of the buildings looking the same, except in the very modern center of town. Recent paint jobs are in interesting pastel colors. I'm impressed at how clean the buildings and the landscape are. That aspect reminded me of Holland. Also, I was intrigued at how the parking areas at the side of the street are not made of the typical tar/macadam the that streets are made of. Instead, they are either brick or cement areas. Just a little difference.

I'm a little confused about how all the buildings can have flat roofs. I mean, it snows a lot in Poland, doesn't it? Any engineering folks with ideas to help me clear up this conundrum?

I really enjoyed watching some of the crows from the window of the bus. They are bigger than our crows and with different grey markings. Again, I couldn't get many pictures, but this is what I'm talking about:

My final note about Warsaw as seen from the window of my bus involves the most modern windowed buildings. You know the kind of building I'm talking about, right? The ones which have almost all windows, all the time. Sometimes they are tinted a bit? I've always loved those buildings; when I was a little girl I claimed to own them all. We would drive pass them and I would cheer out "There's my building!"

On a funny side note, Wesley, my precious toddler niece, argued with me this summer that I had too many buildings. I told her that I had called those buildings back when I was her age, but she could claim HER buildings too. I asked her what kind of buildings she wanted to name as her own, so that she could shout out that it was her building each time she passed it. Wesley is a VERY smart young lady, but her three year old answer was not very self-serving. She decided to claim all pink buildings. Poor child. (But she would have been happy here.)

Anyway, in the center of Warsaw are plenty of buildings which are wall-to-wall windowed ones. But they aren't tinted windows. Instead, there are window shades on all of them. I remembered our (incomplete and now-no-longer-necessary) attempt to decorate temporary paper shades for the principal's office last month, while she was waiting for new ones to come in to accompany the new windows. Good memories. :)

So, in about an hour I will go down to the opening ceremonies. Time for a power nap and a shower!

Note-- no pressure, but if you make a comment below ("anonymous" is fine, or give me a hint who you are), I'll respond...