All Trey Wants for Christmas...

Actually, Trey doesn't care if he has his two front teeth or not, but the timing of his missing teeth is perfect for Christmas!

It feels like Christmas now. We went downtown this afternoon and saw all the Christmas decorations and booths set up. The booths here are set up in a large, tent like indoor area. The ones in Warsaw were outdoors and the poor people who were running the booths were freezing. There were many, many people walking around today. Abbie checked out all the offerings of purses and earrings. Ben and Natalie enjoyed looking at all the items for sale with the hometown soccer team name (Lechia Gdansk). The sign in this picture means Christmas in Gdansk.

We saw Santa (here he's called Swiety Mikolaj) today. We were able to get a picture of Trey with him. This Santa had a microphone and had a very loud and hearty ho-ho-ho. He talked to Trey but did not expect any responses so he never knew that Trey did not understand Polish. I loved his fun hat!

We wandered around the square for a while. It was cold and the kids enjoyed some hot chocolate as we walked around. There is a gigantic tree in the middle of the square decorated for Christmas. The kids look tiny next to this tree!

There was a guy in the square who was standing like a statue. If people put coins in his tin, he would "come alive" and tip his hat and shake their hand. Trey gave a couple of coins and thought this guy was hilarious. It is not how I would like to earn a living, but I guess it works for him!

When we headed home it was snowing. Here is Ben at our tram stop waiting for our ride in the snow!

Tomorrow is Monday so the kids will be going to the International School. Trey's theatrical performance as the Gingerbread Man will be Friday. The kids have a school outing on Tuesday with their classmates to a bowling alley. It was nice of them to include my part time kids in this event. They have school tomorrow and next Monday and I am glad for that! I will be getting ready for our Christmas here and for our big trip starting on Christmas day. We have a tiny Christmas tree in our house. We got a one footer this year! That is my kind of Christmas decorating!

We are still waiting on word regarding our Temporary Residence Status. The office that handles this has 45 days to make a decision regarding residence. December 20th will be 45 days. We are really hoping to have this obligation taken care of this week and not have to think about it anymore. I believe since we submitted our information within the required time frame to be considered, we should be allowed an extension on our tourists visas if they do not complete their investigation within the 45 days. We are looking into this tomorrow. I find the whole process fascinating (not in a good way!). The residency is for the kids and I. Myles has a work visa through June. He was invited here, but I guess the rest of us were not! But our situation is very straightforward. We have only been married to each other, and are still married. None of our children were adopted or have any other complicating factors. I am a very boring housewife from Olathe, KS (and I mean that in a very good way!). What more could they ask? All we want is to stay here six more months, and spend our money in their economy. Then we will happily take our loot and head on home! We shall see what this week brings.

Everyone's Much Better

I think we had a case of food poisoning. After Abbie got sick at about 1:00 a.m., Ben brought his sick self down the stairs at about 3:00 a.m. So all three big kids were awake and sick all night long. Then at about 6:00 a.m. I was sick as well! December 10th was NOT a good day in our household. Toward the evening, people started feeling better. We had an uneventful (read blissfully calm) night and everyone slept well. Today we are all feeling much better, though not quite 100%. Looks like we will be back in business tomorrow. As of this writing, Myles has dodged this bullet which is why I believe the food poisoning theory to be true (though it's too early to say that he is out of the woods yet). He ran himself ragged yesterday taking care of everything and everyone yesterday!

We are all sitting here watching Rudolph together tonight. I think we will try to venture out somewhere tomorrow since we have not been out of the house in days. We may head to Old Town to see the Christmas booths that are set up. And we are definitely on the look out for a new Mashed Potato Bowl!

I am really looking forward to the days getting longer! It gets dark so early here. It is very hard for us to get used to. I used to grumble about winters in KC when it gets dark at 5:00. I'm pretty sure I will not ever grumble about that again! But the solstice is very close, and once we are past it the days will quickly get longer. In January the sunset is four to seven minutes later each day. So it will be noticeable every week. On Christmas day we are taking a train to Warszawa for the night. Then the next day we are taking a train to Bratislava, Slovakia for a few days. Then we are headed to Budapest, Hungary. We will spend New Year's with some other Fulbrighters and their families there. Then when we get back on January 3rd, we should already be able to notice the longer days. We know that when we are enjoying the fabulous spring and very long summer days in June, these short days will be a distant memory.

The Mashed Potato Bowl

When we first arrived in Poland we needed quite a few items for the kitchen. One of the things we bought was a plastic bowl that we called the Mashed Potato Bowl because we used it for yep, you guessed it, mashed potatoes! We still have it, only now we call it the Barf Bucket.

Poor Trey went to bed Monday evening and woke up around midnight sick to his stomach. He was sick several times in the night and did not get a decent amount of sleep at all. All day Tuesday he laid around and did nothing. By Tuesday evening, Natalie was not feeling well. This morning Trey was feeling back to normal and Natalie felt pretty good until dinnertime. Then she claimed the Barf Bucket as her own for the night. It is 1:00 a.m. Poland time and Abbie is now ill, too! And one of our problems is that we only have one Mashed Potato Bowl/Barf Bucket. It's ok, she's run to the bathroom and we have a trash can as a back up!

We hope this is the end of this sickness. Ben is quite concerned that he will be the next victim. If he is, I hope it is sooner rather than later. I'd like everyone better by the weekend so we can do some Christmas shopping. And we need to pick up a new Mashed Potato Bowl!

Our Last Full Day in Warszawa

We had a busy day! We went to the Warszawa Uprising Museum this morning. This museum is only a few years old. It is very interactive which was great for the kids. The amount of information is immense. I have no recollection of ever learning about the Warsaw Uprising in school. If it was mentioned at all, it was only on the surface. I have learned much here in Warszawa. I thought this quote that was displayed at the museum was very powerful.

When the resistance fighters in Warszawa organized and decided to fight, they knew that the Russian soldiers were on the east side of the Vistula River. We can see this river from the apartment that we are staying in. This apartment is part of a larger house where resistance fighters hid and planned during the uprising. The thought was that when the Warszawa fighters began to take on the Germans, the Russians would cross the river and help them. They never did. They camped on the east side of the river and watched the whole thing.

The museum has parts where it looks like you are walking in an underground sewer as the fighters did. They even have manholes up above to make it look like it would have looked to the fighters. There is a statue there called "The Little Insurgent." The statue is a little guy with an adult sized helmet on and he is carrying a gun. Children were part of the Warszawa Uprising. Hard to imagine little kids in this kind of role!

Young children delivered messages. Older children distributed news and even fought. I cannot imagine how desperate the Polish people felt to go to the extremes that they did to gain freedom. During WWII, 85% of Warszawa was destroyed. Most of this city is new, though has been rebuilt to look like it did before the war. At one point the Germans drove a tank into a church where people were hiding. Today the church has been rebuilt and part of the track of the tank is incorporated in the bricks.

We went to the Chocolate Factory this afternoon and enjoyed some fun time with some other Fulbrighters. We have done a lot of serious stuff so it was time for some fun and really good chocolate!

Then the Gartlands called it an evening. We did venture back out to the square for some kebabs for dinner. Tomorrow we head home to Gdansk.

Warszawa Day 2

Myles had a meeting at the Fulbright office here in Warszawa from 11:30 until 1:30. He met up with some other Fulbrighters who had also traveled here from different parts of Poland at 10:15 at a coffee shop. The rest of us stayed in the apartment and leisurely got ready for the day. We left the apartment right at noon and walked around the square in Old Town. We found some neat little things to bring home. We then took a taxi to the restaurant where the Fulbright office was hosting lunch. That taxi ride was frightening to say the least. The driver flew down the streets of Warsaw as if we were in a high speed chase! He did drive us by the Presidential Palace where Lech Kaczynski lives and pointed it out. We had to look quickly because he was going so fast, but we did see it. Fortunately we survived the apparent race and made it to our destination.

We had lunch at a little German restaurant. There were probably 15 Fulbrighters there and some of their families. The people who run the Poland Fulbright office were also there. We met lots of people and swapped stories of our experiences. The lunch was delicious. We could choose from four German dishes and lunch included soup and dessert. We left there feeling very full! This is Natalie outside of the restaurant.

We then went to the Palace of Culture. It is a building that was given to Warszawa as a “gift” from Stalin. There is much controversy over the building here. I thought it was a very pretty building, and the Poles call it “The Wedding Cake”

because that is what they think it looks like. The controversy is that it is very much a statement of the Russian power over Poland. We learned tonight that most of the European capital cities that were under the control of Russia have a similar building. I can understand the desire to not have that as a reminder of what used to be. But on the other hand the question is what to do with it. The inside is decorated for Christmas and is beautiful. There are cafes and theaters, along with offices in the building. The kids saw this photo op outside one of the theaters.

We took the elevator up the 34 floors and took in a bird's eye view of the city.

We met some of the other Fulbrighters for a late dinner. Seems like we have eaten all day today! Tomorrow we are off to see the Warszawa Uprising Museum. We have been told that it is very interactive and a must see. We are then going to the chocolate factory here. The kids (ok, all of us) are really looking forward to that!

Sights of Warszawa

We got up Thursday morning and headed out to see some sights. We are staying in a section of Warszawa called Old Town (we have an “Old Town” in Gdansk, too). Since it is Christmastime there are lots of little booths set up in the square in the middle of Old Town. There are so many things to look at. We strolled around there for a while and then headed to see some places of historical relevance in Warsaw.

We first went to the Warszawa Uprising monument. This is a very large monument that honors all of those Poles who organized and fought the Nazis. These were not the Jews--they had been rounded up and taken to the Warszawa Ghetto. This was the rest of the Polish people who banded together to try and fight the Nazis on their own. They did not walk the streets of Warszawa, they navigated the city through the sewer system. One of the pieces of the monument is of a man emerging from a manhole in the street. 

The people of Warszawa fought hard for freedom from the Nazis. There were 40,000 fighters killed along with 180,000 Polish civilians. The uprising occurred from August 1, 1944 until the Polish surrendered on October 2, 1944.

We also saw where the Warszawa Ghetto was. All of the Jews of Warszawa and surrounding areas were forced to move into the ghetto. There were walls erected so they could not get out. There were approximately 370,000 Jews herded into the ghetto. The conditions were very bad. Of those there, 100,000 died of hunger. There was also disease running rampant through the ghetto. Then there were transports of large numbers of Jews daily to Treblinka, which is not far from Warszawa. Treblinka was exclusively an extermination camp. Those who were transported there were killed in the gas chambers. There was no work camp, no hope. People taken to Treblinka perished. The walls are no longer there, though there are some markers showing where they once were. 

As people were systematically taken away day after day, the remaining Jews realized that their fate was grim. They banded together to fight back. They had had enough. They decided that if they were going to die anyway, they would rather die fighting than to sit there and take it. The Jewish residents of the ghetto were poorly armed, but they fought with everything they had. After a month of fighting back, the Nazis regained control. During the Ghetto Uprising, 13,000 Jewish ghetto dwellers were killed. Many of the remaining Jews were shipped off to Treblinka and exterminated. There most certainly are things that are worth fighting for! We went to the monument honoring those who fought in the Ghetto Uprising.

By this time poor Trey was starving. We stopped at a little grocery and bought bread and cheese so they all had a little snack. As we were walking back to our neighborhood, we came upon playground. We NEVER pass up a playground! 

So Trey and Abbie played on the swings for a bit. Then we came back to the square with all the booths, and had some kielbasa. Then we headed home to get ready to go out in the evening to the home of a fellow Fulbright family.

 
We set out at 5:00 to catch a tram to reach this family's home. We walked to the tram stop and waited. The tram did not come when it was supposed to. Two of the other trams came and went (we were waiting for the 35). After it was 10 minutes late we started to get a little concerned. Twice more the other trams each came. Myles finally called David and told him our problem. They were trying to work out an alternate method of getting there when our tram finally showed up 30 minutes late! There must have been some kind of traffic problem or accident or something. Once we got on the tram it was unusually slow moving. At one point we sat in one spot for 10 minutes. We finally made it to our destination and had a lovely dinner and evening with this family.
 

Going home was another story. It was close to 10:00 and David kindly walked us to our tram stop to make sure we knew where we were going and got there on time. Our tram was due to arrive at 9:53. Guess what? No tram! We waited and waited. Finally the 35 shows up at about 10:10. So we all pile on but it does not go to any of the stops that it is scheduled to go to! Frustrating! This tram ends up taking us to the central tram hub. We had no idea where we were, but there was an entrance to the subway. So we now have to buy tickets for the subway through an automated machine and the train going to where we need to go is coming in three minutes! So as quickly as he can, Myles is purchasing tickets. We get them all bought and hurry down the stairs and miss the train by seconds. Oh, well, the next one came six minutes later. So we finally get going the right direction, get off on our stop and walk about ¾ mile back to our apartment. Another exciting Polish experience!

Warszawa

The kids and I left our house at about 12:30 yesterday afternoon and took the bus to the train station. We met Myles at the train station because he was teaching this morning. Our train left at 1:20 for Warsaw and we arrived at about 6:30. It is spelled Warszawa here and pronounced var-shaw-va. That sounds so much prettier than Warsaw! The kids watched Elf and The Year Without A Santa Claus on the computer for the duration of the train ride.

Warszawa is a big, busy city! It is about the same size as Berlin (close to three million people), but to me Berlin had a very calm, orderly feel to it. My first impression of Warszawa is it reminded me of New York (I love NYC!). By the time we found our apartment and had dinner it was time for bed. Tomorrow we are doing some exploring and seeing some sights. We are so excited because we are meeting with other Fulbrighters who are assigned all over Poland. Many of them have come here (some live here) for a Fulbright meeting on Friday.