Wesolych swiat i szczesliwego nowego roku!

NO WORK FOR TWO WEEKS! NO WORK FOR TWO WEEKS!

Made it to the end of the term. I think that was the most tiring/stressful three months of my life! More difficult than university finals, even. Still, my happiness levels have remained reasonably high and they shot right up on Thursday evening at 9 o'clock when I finished my last lesson of the year.

I enjoyed my last week; one student gave me a beautiful Christmas tree decoration hand-made by her mum, and another student brought some gingerbread biscuits into class to share with everyone during the lesson. Lesson planning was easier and less time-consuming, too: in fact, I planned one Christmas-themed lesson, wordsearches, games, pictures, crosswords and all, and repeated it 14 times. The students reacted well to it, though by Thursday evening as I embarked on explanations of "bauble", "sledging", "manger" for the fifteenth time, I felt glad that it'll be another year until I have to teach those words again.

Pronouncing the word "bauble" was interesting and made for some amusing moments. There were all sorts of suggestions, including "bobble", "bubble", "babble", "Babel" and even "bibble".

Playing hangman with "Boxing Day" was interesting, too. At this stage of the game -
B_ _ ing Day -
several students came up with "Boring Day", which I liked and said that even though it was incorrect, it was actually quite appropriate.

I also got a round of applause from one group for saying "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" in Polish, having learnt it from my previous group:

Wesolych swiat i szczesliwego nowego roku!

Buskers

There are an incredible number of street entertainers on the pavements and squares of Krakow. Musicians, dancers, mime artists, magicians, a bloke who wanders around all day dressed up as a giant pint of beer, and a jumbled assortment of other bizarre individuals.

Here's one of them:

Chilling out

So this weekend I went to an open air swimming pool and sunbathed a bit, then in the evening I went with my flatmates to see some amazing fireworks in a big meadow near the centre of Krakow where the pope once made a speech:

And here are some of the people from the CELTA course, who I'd now call my friends. This is from last weekend when we went to visit the castle in Krakow:

From the left: Gosia, Halina (flatmates) then Marta, her husband Mike (both Polish) and Conor (Norn Ironish)

Lastly, here's a (fairly crap) photo of an open-air concert of gypsy music that we went to see in the town square, but you get the idea. We danced a lot:

I am stupid foreign person

Despite forgetting to bring a guide book or a phrase book (I grabbed one at the last minute in WH Smith's at Newcastle Airport yesterday..) I do have with me a little book called "Culture Smart - Poland" which is a sort of rough guide to Polish customs, dos and don'ts, culture, traditions etc.

On page three it says that Polish people usually wear sombre-coloured clothes. On page four it says that smiling at strangers is seen as a sign of stupidity.

I wish I'd read that before I ventured out of the flat for the first time - I'm wearing a jumper with alternating rainbow/black stripes, and I've been grinning at locals all morning.

Yes, I think I really am stupid foreign person.