Last stop in Poznan

Hello from Poznan. I have been here for over a week and am quite tired of living out of suitcases. We are scheduled to leave Friday, but I think I will leave Thursday. I want to get home and get settled for the family and school next week.

We have been in language class every morning. Polish is very hard, particularly the pronunciation. All "sh" and "ch" sounds. Unfortunately, many of the letters in Polish are the same as in English- but are pronounced differently. So, it is impossible to sound something out. The "W" makes a "V" sound, the "J" makes a "Ye" sound. To give another example, the number "99" is spelled and pronounced "dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć". Few things are pronounced as they look. My goal is to be able to read (which I think I can do)- but not sure I will ever be more than a tourist speaker. 

That said, the Poles greatly respect you trying to learn their language, as they know it is hard. They are very patient with you and will help with words as you try to pronounce them. 

We are at one of the largest Universities in Poland: Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU). It has 54,000 students. If you are like me, and had no idea who Adam Mickiewicz is- he is a famous 19th century writer from Poland. In all, Poznan has 130,000 students living in the city. 

As I mentioned in a past blog, we do language training in the morning and some other lectures in the afternoons. The lectures are hit and miss- all interesting topics; just not interesting speakers. They are on Polish history, literature, cinema, politics, etc.

Other things of note, the Poles have a different eating cycle. Breakfast is completely different than the U.S. We usually have meat slices, cheeses and vegetables. The big meal is lunch. It is almost always accompanied with a soup (most Polish meals have a soup), a meat dish, potatoes and a salad. However the salad is not the leafy green thing we are used to. It is more like a coleslaw or a pickled cabbage or beet dish. Dinner, is pretty similar to breakfast- meat slices, cheeses, maybe a pierogie. It would be very hard to be a vegetarian in this country.

Went out tonight with some of my colleagues for my birthday. We went to a French restaurant (I could not handle anymore meat slices and potatoes).

So, I return to Gdansk on Thursday after a long 10 days away from my new home. I need to get some things for the house before the family arrives and start to get ready for the school year. It has been nice meeting my colleagues and spending several days with them. I will see them again in December in Warsaw. 

Poor Lisa spent most of the morning in KC trying to get our internet services (and email addresses turned back on). When AT&T shut off our landlines- they deactivated our email addresses too, which they were not supposed to do.