I went to visit my relatives near Tarnow the next weekend. They were incredibly nice and welcoming. I enjoyed my time, even though I received 14 mosquito bites over the short weekend. My favorite part was when my kind-of cousin showed me a sunflower and told me that one can eat the seeds. I'd love to show him around America. They seemed to think we all lived in huge houses in big cities without any sense of rural living. I would love to show them the buffalo in my backyard. I saw informal language use in my cousins' casual use of "mam" and "masz" and in the way they use the imperative. It was a real life experience of Polish culture, which I really appreciated.
I returned to my last, very busy, week of class. I was running around, trying to cross things off my bucket list. While in Poland, I managed to visit Warsaw twice, spend a weekend in Krakow, visit family near Tarnów, go to the cute artist colony of Kazimierz Dolny, stop at Sandomierz, and spend a day in Zamość. I met some wonderful people from all over the world, including my favorites, the Bolivians. But all good things must come to an end, and I was more than ready to return to good old America.
Landing in Chicago, I nearly kissed the tarmac. Everyone in Chicago was overly friendly, and I was able to communicate well enough to joke with them. It was amazing. I slowly made it through my hours of traveling and returned home on a plane with a group of annoying girls who had just returned from Vegas where one of them got a misspelled tattoo that she doesn't remember and the others were most likely generally obnoxious.
After a very few days at home, I returned to school. I slogged through the semester. I got a grant to go to San Antonio for the ASA conference. I went home for breaks. I worked on my thesis... sometimes. I went out a lot. I worked on applications to grad school, which was the most time consuming thing.
Christmas rolled around and suddenly I was in the last semester of school. I had a rough start, but I regained my footing. I finished a 71 page thesis that needs more work. I applied to back up jobs. I heard back from grad schools and was comforted that I'd been accepted. Realizing I was on the edge of Latin honors, I couldn't give into the laziness of senior year. For spring break, I visited my awesome cousin in San Francisco and really explored a beautiful city on my own terms - which was wonderful.
That brings us up to the current date. My Polish language study really fell by the wayside this semester. My brother says he got me the Rosetta Stone, so that will be a fun toy for learning the language. Especially since I'll need to figure out how to communicate better before I leave for Poland this October. Where I'll be teaching in a University. In English. I'm excited in the most terrifying way. I didn't have to overcome cultural barriers last time I was in Poland because I was with a bunch of Americans and knew I had an end date. I imagine it will be much more difficult when I'm spending a whole year in a foreign country.
I'm up to graduation, then I get to focus on studying Polish!
