Saturday in Sopot

Over the weekend, my co-worker invited me to meet up with her in Sopot, one of the Tricities, to meet some other Americans she knew who were living in Poland. The weather was great on Saturday, so I hopped on a train and met up with everyone an hour and a half later in a small cafe on Sopot's main street, Monte Cassino. Sopot's known for its nice beaches along the Baltic Sea. It's a vacation destination for Poles in the north when the weather's nice. There are two beautiful hotels right along the coast, as well as Europe's longest wooden pier which stretches into the Baltic.

The longest wooden pier

A ritzy hotel

A melting house

I was ecstatic to meet more people who spoke English, particularly more Americans who knew what it was like to make the transition from the US to Poland. Most of the women were in their thirties, and a few had children. They were all extremely friendly. A few have been living in Poland for upwards of six years, so they were also amazing resources in terms of giving me good advice and telling me what to expect throughout the year.

In the evening, we took the train partway back to Gdansk, where we got off and wandered the city for a little while at night. We also got Polish donuts and the richest hot chocolate I've ever tasted! It was a fun little excursion, and it was really nice to be welcomed into a network of such helpful and experienced ladies. I've been invited to join them for a 10k run in November, and I'm considering participating (if I can get in shape)! We'll see!

Gdansk at night

How to Learn Polish

Today I decided to make pierogis for dinner. Not homemade, but the kind you can buy at the store and boil in a pot for instant culinary success. I unwrapped the package, pulled up Google Translate, and proceeded to type in the cooking directions into the translator.
'Step 1: Fill pot with 2 liters of water.' Okay.
'Step 2: Boil water.' Check.
'Step 3. Endure approx. 2 minutes after departure until appropriate.' Um...
It's always amusing to me when you have to translate the translation. Luckily, China prepared me for that, and the pierogis turned out fine.

My experience learning the Polish language has been quite interesting so far. I don't have a formal tutor yet, since my schedule has been changing around a lot with the classes I teach, so the majority of my language learning has been through what I've managed to pick up here and there for practical use. So mostly my Polish is limited to an eclectic collection of words and phrases that allow me to do things such as ask for a key to the laundry room, buy a train ticket, and use a Polish copy machine.

Amusingly, my best Polish teachers are my six-year-old students. I use flashcards and pictures frequently when I'm teaching the students new words, and their first reaction is always to shout out the name of the item in Polish before I give them the English word. When I have fifteen students shouting out "pomidor!" "pomidor!" repeatedly while I'm teaching them the word for 'tomato,' it's easy for me to learn that the Polish word for tomato is pomidor. The little ones are teaching me without even meaning to! Consequently, I happen to know the names of colors, shapes, family members, and pets in Polish.

My third grade students are especially concerned with my language acquisition. Whenever they get to class early, they keep themselves occupied by writing a dictionary of Polish words for me on the board. Then, before class starts, they like for me to try and read all of the words out loud. The students get endless amusement from this, and I think it's a sneaky way to have them practice the English translations of Polish words. Some of the students write very practical things, like 'telephone,' and 'book,' while others continuously teach me the word for 'teddy bear.' They're tough teachers though. Today, after I read my weekly 'dictionary,' one of the little girls said, "It's good. But keep practicing, it's not that good." Looks like I'd better practice saying the word for teddy bear a few more times.

Today's 'dictionary'

In case you thought Polish was easy

Tourists in Town

Last weekend, my coworker and next-door-neighbor went with me to Old Town on a little field trip to 'educate' me on the town's history and sights. It was a fun time, and thanks to the fact that my co-worker is also a teacher, I can safely say that I feel sufficiently educated.

We started at the Archaeological and Historical Museum at the edge of Old Town. The museum houses a lot of medieval objects excavated from Old Town as well as old crafted items from the 17th and 18th centuries when Elblag was a rich port city. The museum itself is pretty small, and when we arrived in the early afternoon, we were pretty much the only visitors, so of course I joked that we were like VIPs getting the museum all to ourselves. The museum employee followed us around to unlock doors for us and show us where to go. According to my friend, every Polish museum worth its salt will have an amber museum as a feature, and sure enough, the Elblag museum had one in the basement. They also happened to put some creepy realistic(ish) looking wax-figures in the basement with the display, and I managed to keep running into them, thinking they were real, and freaking out. This happened three times (at least, that's all I'm going to admit to)!

When we were done with our private tour of the museum, we decided to get a snack. And by snack, I mean fancy gourmet-style cheesecake from the famous Elblag Hotel. Now, I promise that I'm not usually one of those tourists that take pictures of every single thing they eat, but in this case I couldn't resist.

It's just so pretty!

Next, we explored some of the nooks and crannies of Old Town. Off to the side of one street, sheltered within the buildings, is the Church Path, a narrow passage which used to lead from the very center of Old Town to the gate of the Dominican Church. Now it's shorter and just connects two streets, but it's still kind of cool.

The Art Museum, 'Gallery El,' was our next destination, and the one I was most looking forward to visiting. The gallery is located in the former Dominican Church of Mary. On the walls and floors inside there are sepulchral stones with epitaphs dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries etched with names of nobles and merchant families. Inside and outside there are some interesting art displays, some more enigmatic than others.

For example, this 2-story shopping cart

The outside of Gallery El

Ruins surrounding the gallery

We followed up our tour of the town by heading to a bar located right on the canal, where I was encouraged to try the 'EB beer,' made locally from Elblag's very own Elbrewery. I actually liked it a lot, especially considering I'm typically not big on beer. But I think they should call it Elbeer instead of EB, because anything that sounds okay with the pre-fix 'El,' in this town should definitely take advantage of that.

What I Did on Sunday

After a day of almost non-stop walking, I opted to take it easy and spend Sunday doing not much of anything. Another teacher and I took a trip to Kaufland, the nearest shopping mall and picked up mostly junk food. While I was there, I also bought a cheap pack of 24 crayons and a permanent marker. Art ensued.

Tah-dah!

Cheap wall art!

In conclusion, there is no such thing as being too old for crayons.

The First Tricity

Elbląg is situated very close to the Tricity of Poland - a large metropolitan area of Poland made up of three cities: Gdansk, Gydinia, and Sopot. I was told each of these cities are worth visiting, and considering how close and easy they are to get to, I plan on doing so! In fact, last Saturday, I crossed off one on city off the list when I visited Gdansk for the day.

Gdansk, the riverside city

Gdansk is situated right on the river, which makes it a big industrial center and a historic seaport. Like Elbląg, a lot of Gdansk was destroyed in the WWII. However, unlike in Elbląg, when rebuilding took place in the 1950s, the Poles' aim was to get rid of German influences in the city rather than restore what had been there before. As a result, most of the new architecture is Italian or French or Dutch, and not the original German style.

I hopped on a bus in the morning and spent the day wandering around the city. I visited the old churches, including St. Mary's Church, which happens to be the largest brick church in the world. I also walked up and down the Long Lane (Ulica Długa in Polish) which stretches between Gdansk's two historic gates - the Golden Gate and the Green Gate (neither of which is golden or green, oddly enough). The Long Lane is filled with restaurants and vendors which extend beyond the Golden Gate and wrap around along the riverside. The rest of the lane is framed by rows beautiful buildings with elaborate pastel facades. According to an English tour guide that I eavesdropped on, the buildings along the Long Lane used to house the headquarters of the city's various guilds, and they all tried to out-do one another by making their headquarters the most grand and spectacular looking.

 

St. Mary's Church

The largest brick building that won't fit into one entire picture

Some Dutch-style architecture

Neptune's Fountain

The Golden Gate (okay it's a little golden)

I also made a visit to the Solidarity Museum in Gdansk. The museum is pretty new and extremely nice. It's full of artifacts and videos from the Solidarity Movement which began in Gdansk in 1980. I got a free audio guide and toured my way around the museum in the afternoon.

The Solidarity Museum

The cross and anchor symbol of the Solidarity Movement

Before I left to return to Elbląg, I grabbed a coffee for the road. I am a pro at ordering coffee in Polish. Although the three or four words I use to do so make up about 25% of my Polish vocabulary at this point, so perhaps I shouldn't brag just yet.

All in all I really enjoyed my Gdansk visit. Seeing as the city's so easy and cheap to get to, I definitely think I will be back to visit again in the future!

Jenny's Guide to Teaching

or 'What to Do When a Kindergartner Hugs You in the Middle of Class and Won't Let Go'

I have finished (and survived) my first week of teaching! I have a pretty varied group of classes - three groups of 3rd graders at various levels of English comprehension, two groups of 6 year olds and one group of 5 year olds who know almost no English, and two classes of advanced adults. Next week I will also begin teaching at a public elementary school here in the morning, and I may also have an opportunity to do some 1:1 tutoring, so overall, they are keeping me plenty busy! This first week was a series of ups and downs as I've been trying to plan lessons for my new classes. It's been difficult to judge what level the students will be at before meeting them and to prepare accordingly.

For my very first class, a group of 3rd graders, I had taken hours to carefully plan every detail of the lesson, only to find that they understood surprisingly less than I had been lead to believe, or so I gathered from their blank stares as I tried to speak to them in English. I did what I could to simplify the lesson on the spot, but by the end of it, I was flustered and convinced I had just confused the kids more. It wasn't until one of my students, a little blonde girl, came up to me as she was leaving, gave me a hug, and said, "That was great, thank you Mister Jenny!" that I felt a little better.

The five and six-year-olds are the cutest little peanuts you have ever seen, but keeping them amused for 90 minutes at a time, in another language, is particularly challenging. My strategy has mostly been to be about ten times more animated and expressive in front of them than I am normally (which requires a lot of coffee). By only using a minimal amount of words ('stand up,' 'look,' 'what's this?' etc.) I've found that they can understand me and start to pick up some new vocabulary in English. I've already gathered a few fans, which is encouraging, but also a little troublesome when a little kid latches onto you while you're trying to teach and refuses to let go!

The school itself is very nice, and has a homey feel to it. It's relatively small, so all the teachers know each other and both the director and the owner of the school are always around to talk to and help with any problems. My third day of teaching, the owner found me in the teacher's lounge and brought me downstairs to the cafe where she helped me to order lunch (delicious homemade pierogis)! "You have to eat well when you are teaching so many kids!" she said. So now I apparently get a homemade, two-course meal for lunch every day. Works for me considering my own cooking skills have generally never risen above the instant mac and cheese and microwavable Lean Cuisine level.

Next week I start teaching more classes in the public school, so we'll see how that goes!

The school

I get to use a fancy Smartboard!

The teacher's lounge

A Bus to Stegna

Saturday and Sunday were my two days to get settled in before classes started on Monday.
On Saturday one of the other English teachers suggested we go to the Stegna, which is a smallish town on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It gave me an opportunity to learn how the buses work and just to enjoy the beautiful weather (which I am constantly being told will not last much longer)! The beach was super nice and not crowded at all, making for a relaxing day. We also ate some delicious fresh fish (reccommended to us by a native) and what apparently was 'the best gofry in all of Poland!' (Gofrey is waffles with dessert toppings on it).

The Baltic Sea

 

Gofry!