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