This time... from Poland

Well here I sit looking out over the wooded lands of southwest Poland, writing from our deck, waiting for the students to come to "camp".  Yes, I'm at a Polish boy scout camp, in the woods.  I signed up for this opportunity when I thought I had nothing else to do this summer... little did I know that it would be sandwiched in as trip number three of four.  I was in the San Francisco area for the graduation of two of my favorite students from Stanford University.  After flying home, I returned two days later to California, this time San Diego, for the ISTE (International Society for Technology Education) convention.  Running on fumes, I left for Poland last Thursday and have been running ever since.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting into- this Arts Enriched English Camp, but I thought it couldn't be that bad, teaching conversational English for three weeks- in Poland.  After all, not returning to Poland was one of my only regrets from my time in Hungary as I had loved it so much as a student in 1994.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to right that wrong and take another trip at the same time.

I arrived in Chicago to meet with 15 of the group members and fly together to Poland mid-day.  It was a bit of an episode getting there, as we had to arrange our transportation through a Polish travel agency and I had no control over anything... which I guess is sometimes good for me.  Later I found out that it would work in my favor as Urszula (the Polish travel agent) would help me change my ticket to return home earlier than expected.

At any rate, it was a delightful group - where I pretty much fit right in the middle again.  Many of the TA's are either in College or just out of college, and the other majority of the group are veteran teachers who have done this summer after summer, honing their one act plays and choral numbers to suit the needs of the camp and its students.  Myself and Melissa, from upstate New York (not to be confused with New York City) are the two in the middle.  She's a youngin' at 30 and me rounding out the mid thirty decade.  We are roommates and kindred spirits as we have shared stories about English Language Learning and travels abroad.  She has lived in Vietnam, Japan, Australia - and traveled many other places.  Her "real job" is as an ESL (ELL) teacher in New York.

We arrived in Poland without a hitch, though I will have to say LOT is not my favorite airline.  It was a fairly old plane, not that it should matter, but I couldn't pick my own videos, and they charged for the wine.  Sad day.  The flight was relatively normal otherwise - same old overseas trip.  Upon arrival in Poland, we met more of our group and headed off to our hostel right in Old Town Warsaw.  It was in a delightful area, and was brightly decorated and clean.  I showered quickly and joined a group to go get coffee.  I don't usually care for coffee, but this was iced coffee with ice cream.  I figured I couldn't really go wrong there.  Emily (my assigned TA - from Michigan) did some walking around and took some pictures. I rested for a bit and then we had dinner and Emily and I went out again.  We stumbled upon a massive number of bikers - like bicyclists.  The weird thing is that they were just standing around with their bicycles.  We couldn't figure out what was going on, so naturally I approached someone and asked, "do you speak English?"  She did and explained that it was the beginning of a protest to illustrate that the people of Warsaw sought more bicycle lanes to use in the city.  So they gathered around and all eventually took off on a bike ride.  In the mean time, Emily and I had climbed up to the top of a tower to see the view of the city and to watch the action.

One of the squares in Warsaw's Old Town

Emily and I

All the bikers!

gorgeous garden in Warsaw