My birthday went really well. After Amanda and I returned to Warsaw, we went out to dinner at Jeff's American Diner. That's right. It was awesome. There were cheesy tin signs over the entire restaurant, the kind that you know some company replicates and sells to restaurant chains that want to seem extra American. There was a giant bottle of ketchup! Not any ketchup... Heinz! The best ketchup!
Friday night, I had lekcja. I was so excited about getting into Polish classes, but one thing led to another. First the teacher was sick. Then I was out of town. So, I got back to class as soon as possible. They didn't have a book for me still. And the class was doing things that made sense to me grammatically, but my vocabulary was just not up to the right standards. So, it was my turn to participate, and I didn't know the phrase for washing dishes. Because I don't ask anyone to wash dishes in Polish. I just do it. If I needed to order tea, I'd be good. But washing dishes? So, the teacher gives me about three seconds - maybe not even that - before she starts telling me the way to conjugate the word "robic" - which is a super basic verb in Polish. This really frustrated me, because I couldn't even get a word in edge wise to explain to her that I did in fact know the word - and it's conjugations. I couldn't explain that I need to know how to say "washing dishes." Then she proceeded to say "You don't know that?" Before looking through her cards to give an embarrassed me an "easier" one. Which... wasn't that easy. But I stumbled through it.
Saturday and Sunday I was required to go into class to sign indeks. The other teachers told me I was very dedicated and that they wouldn't do that much work. So... I guess that's good. The indeks are the stupid replacements for an electronic transcript because Poland can occasionally be very impractical.
Sunday night, Lola, Amanda, and I went to get some Thai food before seeing a Polish play, Nasza Klasa. Nasza Klasa is based on a pogrom that happened against the Jews in the small Polish town. I won tickets to see it because I knew the name of the town because I had to read Jan Gross's "Neighbors" for my 21st century Polish history class at ND. Anyway... The basic point of it is that Poles were complicit in the killing of Jews. This isn't to say that Poles are bad. When Jewish people first moved to Poland, it was because Poland was one of the most tolerant states. But, after being partitioned for hundreds of years, then suffering through the ravages of two world wars and decades of communist rule, well... things change. Anyway, the play was very interesting. It was about a group of classmates and who were the killers, who were the killed, their entanglements and lives. Luckily, it had English supertitles. So, I understood all of it. Otherwise things would've been a bit confusing. I could've followed the general concepts, but not the particulars. And there were a lot of particulars with a play that depressing and intricate.
On Tuesday, my classes were cancelled because the third years don't have class during the first week of school. Why? I have no real idea. But that's the way it was. So, Amanda and I went out for a Valentine's dinner with Rachel and one of her friends who was a Prague researcher a year or two ago. Dinner was at an Italian restaurant that's known for its pizza. Unfortunately, I didn't know it was known for its pizza until after I'd ordered something else! I'll have to go back now! Dinner was fun, and it was nice to get out of the apartment on Vday, which is a holiday I actually enjoy unlike many unattached females.
The next day, Amanda peaced out shortly after I returned from teaching my first class to my first years. I actually made a real life syllabus! And then we played idiom pictionary. Which seemed like a great idea at the time. However, it became increasingly less great as I played it with EVERY class I teach... Lesson learned. Mix it up in the future.
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