Wesołe Boże narodzenie i Szczęśliwy Nowy Rok!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

and, to some, more importantly: Happy Solstice!

The days will only get longer, in fact this will be the Earth's longest night in our lifetimes-next year the Earth will be tilting a bit more towards the sun, and night will be a few minutes shorter than tonight's. Hooray for our future!

So, Jill and the other ASW teachers are already in Austria. I just wrapped up my last classes and am about to jump on the night train to Vienna. Then I catch a tram to the Westbahnhoff train station, to catch another train to Salzburg...then I catch another train to Lendeck, in Western Austria-in Tirol-Austria's highest peaks! Should be quite the reward to see all those big, beautiful mountains, after all that travelling, and after spending 6 months away from the high places I love so much!

Well, unfortunately, Jill's had better days in the hills. Yesterday, at Obergurgl, near Solden, she took a tumble. The snow coverage is low as this has been a very mild winter. She hit a dry patch and hit some rocks! She cut open her jacket, cut her elbow and smashed her left shoulder pretty hard! It took her some time to get help-the other teachers were ahead of her, and she had language difficulties once back on her feet. She eventually got an X-ray and everything looked OK-but her shoulder is pretty sore and she has limited motion. Everyone send her your best thoughts for recovery! We're hoping that by the time I get there, and after we head to a new resort (Ischgl). She was in much better spirits today...but then Dawn came in all beat up, too!

Yikes-I best be careful-looks like city life is taking its toll on our bodies!

Anyhoo, I need to finish packing. Not much snow is forecasted right now...but the sun is supposed to be shining-so hopefully I'll at least be adding some nice mountain pics soon!

Take care and happy holidays to everyone near and far!

Jeronimo

Our Dom!

Our pad in Sadyba! I realized I hadn't put a shot of our place's exterior on the site! Our place was built in 1933 and survived WWII. Of course it's been remodelled in the last 10 years, I'm not sure if there's war marks underneath the facade or not. We're the first floor unit, with the tiny balcony off our 'office' where I'm typing this now, and the unique spiral staircase is coming out of our bedroom on the right side, kind of Le Corbusier-esque! The owner's daughter, Anna, and her son, Luke, live above us, and more relatives live next to them. We have 6 units total in our building, and 4 single car garages beneath us. I'm hoping to find an earlier photo of the place for you all to compare to. And yes, we have room for more visitors! (wink, wink)

Welcome Sue! Our first guest from the States! Sue stayed with us over the weekend before going to work in Amsterdam. She also handles jet lag very well!

The girls enjoying a beverage in a unique underground restaurant in Old Town

What on Earth? We hoped to take Sue to Sadhu, an Indian restaurant that Jill and I had eaten at before. But, they were closed for a private party. They did, though, let us use their facilities before we searched for another place to eat. Sadhu is famous for being an underground bomb shelter and hideout for the Jews in WWII, and these shafts above the toilets were their air pipes, reaching up over 20 meters!

Yum, enjoying conversation with our imported American guest and the Starbucks coffee she graciously brought with her!

Checkin' out the new photo exhibit along Lazienki Park's perimiter. This show was entitled, 'My Walk' and featured images from Mongolia, China, Kazakstan and a few parts of South America and Africa. Fortunately, this outdoor photo gallery continues year round, and a few other similar ones have popped up around the city. Suprisingly, very few get tagged or vandalized.

A Polish Warsaw Uprising monument, with the round Parliament Debate chamber in the background

The Warsaw Uprising Musuem. We finally made it here, and they weren't charging entry for all of December! It was an onslaught of stories, pictures, videos, sounds and memoriabilia-of the Jewish Ghetto and the Warsaw annihilation. There were definitely some images unlike anything I'd ever seen before, and will never forget. It is still truly amazing that this city picked it self up and rebuilt what they could, especially under the Ruskies control.

Sue and Dawn enjoying an influx of Art Deco at Decokedrens. They had 'normal' wine servings and beautifully patterend beer glasses-of which they would sell us for 100 zloty each!?! They also fed us the largest cheese platter we'd ever seen. Worth returning to, just for the impressive interiors (and very unique bathroom mirrors!)

Morgan's Irish Pub, just east of Nowy Swiat, in the basement of the Chopin Museum. According to Dierdre, my Irish co-worker, it's the most authentic Irish pub in town, but it's not cheap, 15 zloty per Guiness!? (Zywiec is usually 6 to 10 zloty!)

Kilkenny makes Dawn a little goofy...!

I found a fly in my Guiness! So they gave me a free 'mini pint'

We got to hang out with a Pole, her name was Sabina or Cybyla (in English it translated to Cybil). Earlier she had brought in her 'Spud's McKenzie' dog, which jumped all over me and left dirt on my pants. Fortunately, Spuds went home. Her English was good, and told us that, oddly, Parliament was voting on gay marriage rights this week. That's amazingly progressive in this 98% Catholic country! I'm sure their rights weren't improved in the vote...

Rockin' out to Polish murdered versions of classic American and British songs, mostly from the 60s and 70s. They knew the tunes, but they didn't know English!

The Palace and the Obelisk, unlike many in Europe, this one was not stolen from Egypt

Between Nowy Swiat and the Palace of Culture, this refurbished beauty houses a large language school! Maybe I'll put in my app!?!

Showing their (neighbor's) colors. The Poles have been supporting their Ukranian compadres through the rigged election mayhem-concerts, marches and protests have popped up all over the country

Tik Tak Airforce

Howdy all y'all (something I recently taught my students how to say!)

So, first off, Happy Birthday to Kris, Brian and Jamie. We hope Vegas treated you well on your special days! I'm sure there's others out there with early December bdays...let me know if we missed yours!

Secondly, we just had a great visit from Sue Long, but it wasn't a great finish...
Sue had work w/Starbucks in Amsterdam this week, lucky for us! She was nice enough to lug over a very full suitcase full of all sorts of goodies for us! She brought us some COFFEE!, DVDs!, Tasty Bite!, Annie's pasta!, MP3 cds!, Clif Bars!, some other lil' niceties and best of all: bathrobes!?!

While packing up our stuff for Poland, our piles of stuff were huge, and the bath robes were both bulky and heavy. Mine wasn't my favorite and Jill's was getting pretty beat up, so we gave them to good will...
Well ever since we moved here, and the temps started dropping, Jill wasn't too happy with her lack of a robe. We looked all over the place and nearly every robe we saw was of pretty cheesy quality, more synthetic than cotton, and if it was cotton, it wasn't terry cloth...or it was ridiculously expensive, some were 450 zloty, and if you've been paying attention to the dollar (it's dropping fast), that's a $150 bath robe?! ($112 just 4 months ago!?!) So, Sue and Sears to our rescue, and now I'm typing this in the comfort of my new, stylin' dark blue full 100% terry cloth cotton robe. Thanks, Sue!

So, the poor finish...
We had lots of home time w/Sue, just catching up, but also got out to see Old Town, the former Jewish Ghetto, Lazienki Park and the nice walk along Nowy Swiat. On Sunday, we went to the Ethnographic Museum to check out Polish arts and crafts, some of which were on sale and we were checking 'em out for possible gifts...anyhoo, we got stuck downtown a bit longer than we hoped. We bussed home, called a cab and never heard from Sue until late last night...It turns out she didn't catch her flight, so caught another flight to Dusseldorf, Germany (and her bag didn't join her!) and I think drove over from there. Sorry, Sue-We don't go to the airport ever...now we have a better idea of how much time is needed! (Gulp!) Also, Jill's been sick the last few days, and Sue thinks she caught the bug. (Yuck!)

We promise to treat future guests better!
Really!

OK, other news:
Get this, Poland just had an earthquake! The country had a big one this summer up north, along the Baltic coast and the scientists said they shouldn't have another for 400 to 1,000 years...then we had 2 last week, down south in the Tatra mountains! They're one of the youngest mountains in Europe, and are pretty spiky and sharp. If this keeps up, Europe might have another continental split!?! I hope to research where the tectonic plates are around here and see what Mother Earth might be planning for 'God's Playground'. Boy if it's not the Krauts or the Ruskies pickin' on them from either side...now they gotta be worried what's coming from down below!

Pics from the weekend up soon.

Gotta go learn transitive and intransitive verbs, 0 thru 3rd Conditionals, words which are both verbs and nouns (fall, climb, rise, drop-why are they all climbing related?!), get the Present Perfect Continuous dialed and nail down Cause and Effect. My poor students, they're getting this all dumped on them today and Thursday, and taking their final exam after class then. I'm sure they hate me for botching our schedule. Oh, well, foibles of being a new teacher. Kelly and I commiserate often. She's more experienced than I am, and is still having a hard time w/her students down in Krakow. She's ready to burst, I think she's escaping to Istanbul for xmas break. Should be sweet, but we're going to Ischgl, in the high Alps of Austria-and that's gonna be sweeter! Oh, speaking of Istanbul, Sarah S., who was one of our admin gals at International House in Krakow, who's from Chicago, is moving to Istanbul this week! And she's demanding visitors...so now we have another free place to stay at another prime destination during our time in Europe.
Sweet.

Do jutra!!

JR