First Day of the International School

We had a great day here in Gdansk! First of all, the sun was shining for the first time in a long time. It was about 50 degrees today so it was warm and sunny!

The kids had to get up and get going early this morning because they went to school today. School starts at 8:30. So everyone got up, showered, dressed, ate and we walked out the door at 8:00. It is a 10 minute walk to the tram stop. Then the tram ride is about five minutes and then it's another 10 minute walk to the school.

We got to school in plenty of time and went to the office. We met the secretary, Paulina there. She introduced Trey to his teacher Ms. Marta, who was standing there in the office. Ms. Marta is Polish and speaks English beautifully. Then Paulina took everyone to where they need to be. Trey's classroom is a small room and you have to pass through the older kids' classroom to get there. Trey has two classmates: Emily (who was not there today because she was sick--we can't wait to meet her next Monday) and Maria Camilla. Maria Camilla is from Italy and is seven. She and Trey became fast friends.

The girls' classroom is the room that you pass through to get to Trey's. There are four kids in that group (including my girls). Nicholas is Maria Camilla's brother so he is from Italy. And Jacob (pronounced Yackob) is from Denmark. There is a new girl starting soon from Thailand. Natalie will likely be moving to the older group because it seems that she is quite a bit ahead of the curriculum in math and English for the group she is in now. I am not concerned about this at all. We are doing our own schoolwork, so either group is fine with me. Their teacher is Mr. Reilly and he is from London.

Ben's group has five kids (including him). His teacher is the director, Mr. D'Arcy, and he is from Australia. His classmates are Inga (not sure yet where she is from), Marina (Japanese), Nick (Dutch), and Mads is Jacob's brother so he is Danish. Ben is already Facebook friends with several (if not all) of them.

The kids were so excited and talking a mile a minute when I picked them up this afternoon. They had a great day. While I was waiting for them, I met two moms who were waiting for their kids. I met the mom of the kids from Italy and a mom from India who has a four year old at the school. We exchanged phone numbers and I am thrilled to meet some people who are in similar situations as ours. We are looking forward to meeting more of the parents and getting together.

The kids had art and PE/fitness this afternoon. Trey learned a few Polish food words in class. The little kids have PE and art by themselves, but Ben, Natalie and Abbie all had those classes together. All of the kids ate lunch together. They had chicken, mashed potatoes and tomato soup. I did not know that the kids were supposed to bring their own drinks for lunch so I did not send anything. We'll send bottled water next week. I think I just blew my Mother of the Year award for 09--so close!

We got student identification cards for them. So we should be just fine on the trains now! Now that we have them, no one will probably ever question us about it again. We got home at about 4:15 and it was already getting dark. It is going to be so nice to have some contacts during the upcoming dark winter months.

Solidarity and Old Town

Our field trip to the Solidarity Museum was a great success!

We left our house at about noon. First we went to the train station downtown. Myles, Ben and Natalie are planning on going to a Gdansk soccer (oops, I mean futbol) game on Sunday. Myles had seen a place down at the train station that looked like a place to buy tickets. We start there to get the tickets ahead of time. That turned out to be a little funny since what Myles had seen was a place to BET on the games, not a place to buy tickets. We learned that tickets are bought at the stadium. They will just buy their tickets when they go to the game on Sunday. If there are no tickets they will try again next time.

From there we went to the Solidarity Museum.

Myles does a great job on his blog www.mylesgartland.blogspot.com explaining what we saw today, so I won't elaborate on that part. After the moving Solidarity exhibit we walked around and explored Old Town some more. It is a very charming area with lots of little shops and restaurants. We walked to one of the largest churches in Europe, St. Mary's. The construction of the church was started in 1343 and was completed in 1447. The church was severely damaged when the Red Army invaded Gdansk in March 1945. Reconstruction began in 1946. The church was the site of the 1,000 year anniversary of the City of Gdansk in 1997. They are currently doing some more renovations.

On the way into the church we are stopped by a guy who had watched us take a picture of Trey. He said to Myles, "Hey, I noticed your KU shirt. Are you American?" He is from California traveling around to different parts of the world. It was fun to chat with him for a bit. It is funny because whenever we hear someone speaking English, it is like music to our ears. We just hear so little of it here! But I do find it interesting that when we are in a mall or restaurant, there is American music playing all the time. We hear Taylor Swift, Jordin Sparks, Black Eyed Peas, Mylie Cyrus, Pink, etc.

So back to the church...we decided to climb the steps of the church to go into the tower to see the view of the city from on high. We climbed the small spiral stairs and went up, up, up. We went up over 300 stairs and the top was not in sight. There is scaffolding and wind was blowing in. It was a really creepy experience. At one point we decided that we were not going to go up any higher...it was cold, windy and we simply chickened out, deciding that the "view" was not worth the obstacle course to get there. So we went down, down, down the small spiral stairs for a long time. We certainly did get our aerobic workout so all was not lost.

From there we stopped at a little bistro for dinner and headed home. It was a great field trip day!

The Long Way to the British School

So the kids and I have been here for nearly a month now and things are going along fine. I did have some sort of nasty Polish flu bug last week but I am on the mend now. I do still have a residual cough that is annoying (Myles thinks I might have a hairball). But I am feeling much better. Abbie has a cough and a little cold but hopefully that's the extent of it.

School is going very well and we have settled into a nice routine. That said, Myles and I realize that the kids are very isolated here. Our yard is tiny and it is cold here much of the time. Also, it has started getting dark just after 5:00 and by December it will be dark by 3:15 p.m. Myles researched and learned that there is a British International School here. He thought that it was near the university where he works. We had an appointment today at 2:00. I looked up the address and we mapped it. Well we get there with fifteen minutes to spare and there is no British School there. Myles had thought it was closer to his work, so he calls the director. We learn that we were both way off. The school is located a short tram ride from our house.

So we finally get there and meet the director, who is from Australia. The students were not there because they are having a mid term break this week. After a very informative meeting we agreed that the kids will all go to school all day on Mondays only. I will stay on our home school schedule the rest of the week. So on Mondays they will have a little bit of English and math at school in the mornings. I didn't even ask what kind of math they would be doing because we are doing our own thing at home to keep them current with their classes at home in Olathe. Then (and here is what we really like) they will have Polish class, PE and art. They start this coming Monday.

We learned that there are only 14 other kids in this school and our kids are the only Americans. There are kids from Denmark, Japan, Italy, Poland and it is an English speaking school. They serve lunch at the school and I asked about that. The director told us that they serve traditional Polish food. We'll see how that goes. Ben usually likes to eat anything, but the other three have serious reservations about trying new things!

The kids are excited about giving this school a try and meeting English speaking kids their ages, but they cannot wrap their heads around what this tiny little school might be like. They are used to their large schools. We are hoping to meet other families that we can all socialize with, and for the kids to make friends with kids from all over the world. We'll see how it all goes on Monday!

Tomorrow we are going to the Solidarity Museum in the afternoon. So much to learn here!

Wind in Gdansk

Holy cow it was windy today! It was also rainy and all around miserable. Natalie and I walked to the store early in the afternoon and it was not too bad then. The temperature was about 45 but it was crazy windy! There were trees down all over the place. We got home and decided to stay there until an outing we had this evening.

At about 4:45, right as we were getting ready to walk out the door to meet Myles at the university, our power went out. I thought that since our landlord lives right behind us that they would have the same problem and would know what to do. But I look out our back window and there are their lights on. So I think a minute about what to do. I do not speak Polish (except to say please, excuse me and thank you). They do not speak English except for a few words here and there. So I have a bright idea...my internet is still on. I go to google translate and type in "The electricity is not working in our house." That translates to: "Energii elektrycznej nie dziala w naszym domu."

I send Ben over to knock on their door, with my laptop. Mrs. Landlord answers the door, reads the computer and a moment later Mr. Landlord is down in the basement of this house working away at getting it fixed for us. The basement is unfinished and the door is locked. We have never been down there and there is no reason for us to go down there. A few minutes go by and everything is back up and working and all is good.

We then left and headed down to the university to meet Myles only a little bit late. We had called him to let him know what was going on. From there we took a tram to the downtown (Old Town area) and had a nice dinner. I had some kind of stuffed chicken atop a fried egg that was delicious. Natalie ordered spaghetti, Trey and Abbie shared a pizza with very spicy peppers on it, Ben had some kind of noodle thing and Myles had chicken with bleu cheese sauce.

From there we went to a bowling alley in Old Town. The faculty of the school of management was having a bowling get together. Now bowling must not be as mainstream in Poland as it is in the US. They did not know how to bowl at all. We saw some very interesting and downright comical bowling moves from these Polish economists! This is how bad it was--Myles came in first place, I came in second and Ben came in third. They were all so impressed, but the fact of the matter is that we stunk! It was a very good time and the people he works with are very friendly and nice. There are a few who do not speak English well. They actually probably speak better than they think, but they are not confident enough to speak to us. We enjoyed our evening out very much. It was good for the kids to do something familiar and fun.

We got back to our house at 10:00 and our power was out again. Myles rang the bell for our landlord and he came right over. His daughter Anita, came over to help translate. But what her father was wanting to tell us (about cables), she did not know the words for. So we ended up sitting at our kitchen table with the computers with Google Translate. But that didn't work because we do not have all the Polish letters on our keyboards. So Mrs. Landlord runs over to their house and gets their laptop and comes right back. We sit at the table and talk back and forth via the computers. It was really a funny situation.

They told us that the wind and the rain are causing the problem. They are going to get it fixed tomorrow with whatever is going on with the cables. The power is on at the moment--we'll see if it stays on overnight.

Everyone keeps telling us that this weather is very unusual and not to worry that this is normal. It is supposed to be like this tomorrow so we have vowed not to leave the house! Then it is supposed to be better for the weekend.

Ben's Birthday

It is so hard to believe that Benjamin, our firstborn, the one who changed everything, is 15 years old today!

Our train arrived in Gdansk at about 9:00 last night. We left Krakow at noon. It was a long train ride! Poland is working on their infrastructure and things are not quite as smooth as they would like quite yet. Their plan is to have all express trains (ones that are actually fast) by 2018. I wish them the best with that, but unfortunately that does not really help us here in 2009! There are many, many stops where we sat for 10 or 15 minutes. I really think with the express trains in 2018, one should be able to get from the northern border to the southern border in about five or six hours. We were in a compartment with six chairs (three facing each way) so it was nice for our family to have that private area together. Myles mentions our ticket argument with the train employees in his blog: http:\\www.mylesgartland.blogspot.com. So I will not elaborate except to say that I really did think we were going to get booted off that train! Luckily we did not, but after about four hours the kids had done all the stuff we brought with us for them to do. And they were starting to turn on each other! Finally Myles had the bright idea to send Natalie and Trey on a hunt to see if there was a dining car on the train. Two cars behind ours there was one. What great news!

We did not want to leave our compartment unattended with all of our computers and luggage there. So the girls, Trey and I went back to see what they had for dinner. There was nothing that was recognizable except for a ham & cheese sandwich. So I ordered one for each of us and when we sat down they only had cheese on them! Oh, well, it was food AND a distraction. We went back to our compartment and Myles and Ben went to the dining car. They had the same problem that we did except that they got ham and no cheese! Guess that's what happens when we don't speak the language. After they came back I suggested the kids play charades. What at first sounded like a really corny idea turned out to be some of the funniest moments of the trip. The kids really got into it and soon everybody was laughing. Natalie was very creative when trying to get us to guess "Polar Express," and Trey wanted to do "Flubber" every time. That helped kill some time until we made it back to Gdansk. We took a bus from the train station to our neighborhood and got home at about 9:30.

This morning we had our best day of school yet! Natalie finished a writing project about our trip to Krakow. Abbie is still working on hers. She has so much to say about our trip that it keeps getting longer and longer. Ben took a Biology test online through his home school program and got 96% on it. I had thought we were doing fine with school, but that really gave me a confidence boost. We made it through lots of material which is great. I was a little worried that we were behind because we did not do any school at all on Thursday or Friday (because of our little field trip!). But we are caught up now.

So for Ben's birthday today, the first thing I did was give him a test and then several assignments! We had an afternoon distraction because our four boxes from home arrived! We sent them on September 8th so it took five weeks. And our poor boxes looked as though they had been through a war zone. I guess life on the cargo ship is not so easy! We opened them all and got most of it put away. I was so glad to see our hats, scarves, mittens etc. We froze in Krakow this weekend when it was raining. Trey and Ben have winter coats here but the rest of us are going shopping tomorrow at a store called E.Leclerc. I have not been yet, but I hear it is very similar to our Walmart. An ad for them came in the mail today and it looks like they have winter coats at very reasonable prices.

Ben wanted to go to McDonald's for his birthday dinner. I have seen three of them here so far. I'm sure there are more. So we met Myles at the mall and went to McDonald's. It was nice and familiar. I do not have baking pans (and I really don't want to buy any of that stuff since I have plenty of that at home). So we set out to look for a birthday cake. We found a bakery and there were some pretty cakes. There was nothing that looked like a traditional US birthday cake, but Ben found one that looked good and we got that one. It looked like a chocolate cake with fancy frosting. We then take the tram (like a streetcar) to our stop, which is six blocks from our house.

It was cold waiting for the tram to arrive. Then when we were on the tram it started to rain. By the time we get off the tram it is raining hard (and it's cold!). We are living in a city so there is lots of traffic. As we are hurrying down the busy street to our side street, Abbie and I get splashed by the tires of a passing car. Nothing to do but press on, so we kept on going. We finally made it home with our cake, ready for dessert.

Myles looked for candles but could not find any. I don't know if they do candles on birthday cakes or not but he could not find any. It's just as well, we don't have a way to light it anyway. I'm sure we could find a lighter to buy (seems like everybody smokes here), but it seemed like a lot of trouble when we didn't have any candles to begin with. So the five of us other than Ben each held up three fingers and sang happy birthday to Ben.

I cut the cake and served it to everyone. Trey took a huge bite (poor thing forgot he was in Poland). His face looked as though he had just been poisoned. He jumped up from the table and I thought he was going to throw up. He managed to get control of himself and explained that there was something very bad in the cake. I took a bite to see what the problem was. Turns out there are cherries and some sort of liquor baked into the cake. That little unexpected taste did not agree with Trey. But Ben enjoyed his Polish birthday experience so that makes it all worthwhile!

It is now sleeting outside...just had to bring all my drying laundry inside. I know I can't really complain about the weather here...we knew what we were getting into. All our Kansas City friends are the ones getting ripped off! We appreciate the show of solidarity with the cold weather in KC, but it really wasn't necessary!

Auschwitz

Friday morning we left our apartment and caught a street car to the train station. We were taking an 8:45 a.m. train to Auschwitz, in the Polish town of Oswiecim.

The distance is only about 31 miles but the train takes 90 minutes. The train is slow and there are many stops along the way. It was nice to see areas outside the cities...farmland (we could have been in Anywhere, KS), nice little communities, small houses, large houses, etc. We arrived in Auschwitz at about 10:15. From the train station we took a cab about a mile to where the concentration camp is located. We paid extra for our own tour guide. We ended up with a lovely young Polish woman named Daria as our guide. She is a university student, probably around 22 years old, studying history. She is passionate about history and sharing the story of Auschwitz. Her English was excellent, though she often asked us, "Did I say that right?"

We went as a family even though it is recommended that children under 14 not attend. I know Trey well enough to know that I could distract him easily and the vast majority of what we saw went right over his head. This was pretty heavy stuff for the girls (and for Ben) but we did not want to pass up this chance to experience this and discuss it as a family. We started at the Auschwitz camp. We saw the famous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign as soon as we walked in.

It means "work makes you free." We saw the barracks where the Germans housed Polish civilians starting in 1940. The Jews came later and were taken to the camp at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) about two miles away.

One of the things they did when people arrived was shave their heads. They would send all that hair to Bavaria for use in different textile products. When Auschwitz was finally liberated, there were hundreds of bags found that contained human hair getting ready for shipment out of the camp.

We saw many displays, and I cannot even venture a guess at the numbers of all of these things. It was so overwhelming. There were eyeglasses that people had worn in. There were lots and lots of pottery, cookware, rolling pins, dishes, and other kitchen utensils. The fact that these things were brought by the people leads us to believe that they really thought they were going to start a new life. They had no idea what their fate was. There were mounds of personal hygiene items like combs, brushes, shaving brushes etc. There is a display with childrens' clothing and toys. There was a huge display of suitcases. Each one had someone's name on it. But for us, the most moving and disturbing display was that of all the shoes. So many shoes. Huge mounds of shoes. It's easy to imagine human people in shoes, and to see the monumental pile is hard to comprehend. Further, it is completely overwhelming to realize that the shoes we saw are only a fraction of the people who lost their lives in Auschwitz.

We saw starvation cells. We saw the one in which Maximillian Kolbe died. He volunteered to take the place of another prisoner who had been sentenced to the starvation cell. After three weeks he still had not died and they finally killed him outright. He is now considered a saint and a martyr of the church.

We saw a cell where they would put as many as 39 people. There was not enough oxygen for all of them and some would die overnight. We saw so many different kinds of torture. It is easy to see how so many people died within weeks or even days of arriving at Auschwitz. It is amazing to me that people were able to survive for as long as they did.

We took a bus and went to Birkenau. This is where the Jews arrived starting in 1942. The train would pull in and a few people were selected to work. But most were sent directly to the gas chamber. They were told that they were going to take a shower. After days on a cattle car that sure sounded good to people, so they willingly walked themselves and their children right to the gas chamber. Sometimes they were even handed soap and a towel as they entered. The gas chamber at Birkenau could gas 1500 people to death at a time and it took a mere 20 minutes to murder that many people. Then prisoners would have to haul the corpses to the crematorium and burn the bodies. The ashes were dumped into one of three ponds on the grounds. The efficiency of this operation is chilling.

A few adults and a few children were selected for medical experimentation. The experiments were horrific and those who were selected for these suffered tremendously.

We saw much and learned much. It was an intense experience for all of us and perhaps the girls are a bit young for this. But when they are older and are discussing Auschwitz in high school or college, it will mean so much to them. They've seen it.

There is a memorial to the people (over one million) who were murdered there. There is a quote written in 22 languages so all who come can understand.

Our guide told us that one million people come through there every year to learn about Auschwitz and to see it for themselves. This is a somber field trip, but well worth the time.

We were headed back to Krakow on the train and got a call from one of the other Fulbrighters. We decided to meet at their place for dinner and we were just going to order pizza. They were going to pick up the pizza and we were going to bring drinks over. They have two little kids and so we were sure to tell them that we needed a couple of large pizzas for our family with our ever hungry teenagers. So we pick up the drinks and head over. When we get there we find out that when Barclay ordered the pizzas there was a "language glitch" and we ended up with five of the most gigantic pizzas I have ever seen.

It was way more food than we needed and it was certainly good for a laugh at the end of our very serious day!

Krakow

On Wednesday evening we each packed up a bag and headed to the train station in Gdansk. We got on a train to Krakow at 7:30 p.m. We had a room that was in a sleeper car. The trip to Krakow from Gdansk on that train was 11 hours. They are about 450 miles apart so I think we were on a slower train. Gdansk is in the far north of Poland and Krakow is in the far south. Our "sleeper" was about 6'x6'. There were three bunk beds on each side and not much room for anything else! On one side, Natalie was on top, Ben was in the middle

and I was on the bottom. On the other side Abbie was on the top,

Trey was in the middle and Myles was on the bottom. The trip was surprisingly not bad. We turned off the lights at 10:00 p.m. and hoped to sleep. Everyone slept...not as well as we would have in our beds, but everyone did get a good amount of sleep.

So the train pulls into Krakow at 6:30 a.m. We all lumber off the train and we follow Myles. He is very good at deciphering the transportation system and figuring out where we are and where we need to go. He had checked online for places for us to stay. It is very common in Europe for people to have apartments that they rent out short term. This is not tourist season so he was able to get a very cheap rate for a two bedroom apartment for us. The couch in the living room pulls out into another double bed so everyone has a comfortable place to sleep. But we were not going to be able to get in until 8:00 a.m. So we took a tram (streetcar) to the neighborhood of where we are staying and found a big bakery where we killed some time having breakfast.

We got settled, changed and headed out to the Wawel Castle and the Cathedral of Krakow.

The Wawel Castle is where Polish Royalty lived for centuries and sits right on the Vistula River. As we were walking up the hill, we saw a statue of Tadeusz Kosiuszko on a horse. There is a street near our house in Gdansk named for him as well. Myles asked some people who he was and they were appalled that Americans would not know. Turns out that he was a general in the American Revolution. He worked with George Washington and was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson. He was a war hero for our war and we had never heard of him!

As we researched, we learned that there is a house in Philadelphia that he lived in. His engineering skills were crucial to the fortification of many battle sites and he was instrumental in American success in the Revolution.

There is a legend in Poland that once a dragon lived under the castle in a cave. It was a menace and liked to eat young women. Many knights tried to slay the dragon but failed. A poor shoemaker decided to poison the dragon. It worked and the shoemaker was given the king's daughter's hand in marriage. We went down about a million steps into the cave and saw where the dragon lived according to the legend. Right outside the cave is a statue of the dragon and every two minutes it shoots fire out of it's mouth!

We toured the huge complex and saw the many tapestries, paintings, elaborate ceilings, furniture, etc. We had an English speaking tour guide but she was very hard to understand so the kids lost interest after a while.

Trey's favorite part of that part of the day was chasing the pigeons in the courtyard. That was pretty funny!

Many of the Polish monarchs are buried in the Cathedral which is in the same complex. This Cathedral is the head of the Archdiocese of Krakow and where John Paul II was the Bishop of Krakow and the Cardinal before he was elected Pope.

We did not have a tour guide for the cathedral and just walked through. We also went to the John Paul II Museum that is there on the grounds. We saw vestments that he wore when he was a cardinal as well as many artifacts from bishops before him.

Thursday evening we had dinner with some other American Fulbright recipients who are in different parts of the country. One is a lady from New York who is assigned here in Krakow to teach American Art. She is an artist and was so fun to talk to (in English!). The other one we met is a man from central Illinois who is in a town a couple of hours away from Krakow. He is here with his wife and two children (almost five and 17 months). Trey had a ball playing with their little boy.

We went to Auschwitz yesterday. That was a full day and I will update on that in a bit. We have a laid back day of shopping and wandering ahead today!