work

Hey all!
I have work! Woo hoo. Its where I stayed the first week, and a week or so the last month. Its called Nathans Villa Warsaw, do check it out and pop in!

Ryan

Hes Back

Hey everyone, sorry for the long break. Things have been kind of hectic the last moment, so much travel and moving round. The last post I wrote was a quick note from Berlin, but I'm expecting this one to be a bit longer (its been a month! wow).

So first off, Berlin was amazing. The people are so much nicer there, unlike Warszawa, and you don't have to pay for museums, because history lines the street; whether its the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie or the Reichstag, all free to see. Even better are the free walking/cycling tours they have, each guide pouring his knowledge out to us, and all for just a tip at the end. By far the best way to see the city by day (by night, definitely check out the pub crawls, all for the low low price of 12 euro max). The highlights of the trip would have to be realising how ignorant my generation is, especially when it comes to the Berlin Wall (I didn't realise until that trip that it was only months before I was born that it came down), the friends I made, and the things I saw that most people would never dream of seeing. Since my camera was out of batteries, and after a failed attempt at buying batteries in the metro stop's kiosk (ass sold me flat batteries!), I have nicked some photos from some mates that I made on the trip (cheers!).

The part of the wall we saw, with some stranger. Noone has pics on Facebook of us by the wall yet...grrr

Checkpoint Charlie (1euro to take a photo with this guy!)

Where Hitler's bunker was (no memorial because it would become a shrine for neo nazis)

The Holocaust Memorial (pretty emotional/thought provoking walking through it)

Museum Island (actually is an island!)

Looking up from the Sony Centre (Sony's European Headquarters)

and Tiergarten where we went nudist spotting and played on a Flying Fox

Nothing much happened for the 2 weeks after Berlin, but 2 weekends ago I went to the ski village of Zakopane (much like Aspen, Colorado). It was a beautiful place, and some awesome views from up the top of the mountain. I have some photos, but my cams not on me, so those will come later.

The weekend after the Zak, we went to Prague for the long weekend. Prague was beautiful, and not too expensive. We spent three nights there, and had two of the most perfect nights of my life. The first night was just spent in the hostel playing a game known as "waterfall", a legendary drinking game. The day after that we did all the touristy thing such as the big church, waiting for the clock that is not worth waiting for, saw the overcrowded Charles Bridge, and had an authentic Czech meal. That night was spent at the biggest club in Central Europe, five stories high, each with a different style of music. The first floor trance (I think), second house, third disco (light up dance floor included), fourth R&B, and fifth lounge.

The day after the big club was spent doing more touristy things, and just kind of getting lost in the city. That night, everyone else was too poor or too tired to go out, so I went to a club with a US Marine, Canadian Software developer, two girls from Perth and two girls from Ireland. The club is describable as "ghetto" and "smells of weed", so we got out of there promptly and went up some big hill with the worlds biggest metronome and watched the blood red moon rise over the city lights. We then walked over the Charles Bridge at 3am, as recommended, which was picturesque. There was no one else on the bridge except for a stoned busker playing the recorder, a couple having a candlelit dinner, an American girl running across in only her undies announcing it was her 21st, and a random standing by the relief of Joan of Arc. The relief of Joan of Arc is supposed to bring you good luck if you touch it. It is amazing to see that over the 600 years of the bridge's existence, the figure of Joan has been kept a startling bronze while the rest of the scene has been tarnished by centuries of weathering. I thought out loud to myself how cool it was to think that this tradition has been going for 600 years, and that thinking of how many people have touched it is astounding, to which one of the girls in the group said "Ew, think of all the germs!". Haha.

I got back into Warsaw on Monday morning, and that afternoon I was on a train to Krakow for another holiday. Again, a beautiful city, but after two days, there isn't much to do! Sadly, I was out of batteries again for my camera, so I didn't manage to get any photos. But I guess you can
Google it if you're that keen.

Most of my 4 days in Krakow was spent, again, just walking around the old town and going up to Wawel Castel, all toursity things like that. The one thing for me that Krakow has over Warsaw is that the old town is authentic. Unlike Warsaw, Krakow was left, for the main part, intact after WWII, and so the old town is actually old, unlike Warsaw's, whose old town was rebuilt in the late 1900s.

I got back into Warsaw last night and spent the most part in a Latino Dance Bar, to watch Tomek (Zosia's son) play the drums in a band. It was good fun, but the beer was overpriced, twice as much as you should pay!

I spent today visiting the school and having lunch with friends from the hostel, and then caught a train to the lovely city of Poznan, to meet up with some of the GAPpers (haha, the name of the organization has been changed from GAP to Latitude, due to the clothing company GAP suing the programme, so therefore we are now Latituders!). Not sure what this weekend has in store for us yet, but the highlight of the weekend will definitely be the Red Bull Challenge, where participants make flying machines and the winner is whoever manages to fly the furthest.

So thats it for now, and I'll make sure to write sooner.

Ryan

Berlin

Hey everyone!
In Berlin at the moment! And I'm in a bit of a rush to catch the free walkin tour so this wont be long...
The sun is shining and the people are smiling.

I will post something a bit longer in a day or 2

*ry

Oranges

Hey everyone! Gosh I'm getting useless at this writing stuff! Nothing much has happened since the last time I wrote, except that I'm blonde!!!


Woop woop! And I hope to be blue sooner or later...a teacher said that she'd do it for free...well not really...five kisses! So that should be exciting.

Ok, back to life in Poland. My host mum, Iwona the high school teacher, is quite busy at the moment preparing everything for her students that are leaving at the end of this week. She showed me the forms she has to fill out...so much more impressive then the bloody NCEA certificates we get (mum where is mine, I haven't even seen it yet!). And so what finally convinced me to write up on here was my orange (hence the title). On an excursion to the corner shop (sklep) to get some phone credit, I found the biggest orange I have seen in Poland...and it wasn't one of these ones with the scummy skins like you usually get here, but like a proper orange that looked like it had come straight from Florida! So I went into Iwona's room to
show her that this was like the oranges we get in NZ and California, and she took it, looked at it, and said "Oh, thanks..."! He he. And it seemed completely normal aswell! Like everyone brings out a fresh plump orange thats been sitting in their suitcase for more then 2 months. So thank Iwona/The Orange for this post.

Next on the agenda is school...I have told you a lot about the school, but I don't think I've shown you anything. For today i have one of the BEST lunches that we got about 2 weeks ago (as usual I was running late and Hugh txted me demanding that I bring my camera to take a pic of the lunch. So here it is:

(In case you're wondering its pasta with fetta cheese and strawberry sauce...sooo good)

Okie dokie. Next, heres some pictures from three of my favourite classes. They are the 1 classes. I have them twice a week for 15 minutes each. And the teachers have to be some of the coolest aswell. Ok, so...

1a

(The teacher is Gosia, and she is soo cool. Doc Martins, Punk hair and crazy jewelry included)

1b

(And the teacher here is Ania...she is one of the nicest teachers aswell...and helps me out on those days I blank out and have NO IDEA what to teach about)

And I've just realised I don't have a phto of 1c...next time!

And the only other photos I have from school are of 6d (yes, the naughty class) in PE...so I'll add on a couple of them:

and

And the last thing for the day is some views from the flat I live in with the Tabakas.

the city


and the park outside my flat

Oh, I'm such a lier. Ha ha. I've found more pictures. If memory serves me right, this would be the last snow that we had, and more then likely the last snow of the season, as it was actually a nice enough day to wear shorts to work.

and

Ok, well I have to be off for the night, but talk soon! Please comment, its GREAT to hear from you!

*ry

Easter

Hey everyone, hope you had a great Easter, and didn't eat too much! I think that dieting in Poland is physically impossible. Even if I use one of my few phrases, (I can now say I'm not hungry thanks), I still get food practically shoved down my throat. At least its amazing food (minus the cow stomach they tricked me into eating). So there isn't much writing happening today, just some snaps I took on our big weekend. My original plan was to go to Prague, but because the banks were closed money took a while to come through and things just didn't work but ended up better in the end. My host family took me on an adventure, and I got to meet both sides of the family. The first night we stopped in at Iwona's sister's flat, and had some coffee and cake and boiled egg, then we got to her mum's house, where her other sister and two nieces live. We spent Saturday night there, and went to church in the morning. It pretty much blizzarded as we were eating Easter lunch. So heres some pics from that half of the trip:

random photo

illegal photo of the army camp

grandma and aunty

church on sunday

snowing on me

and the farm

After saying our goodbyes on Sunday night we drove to Jarek's parents house, and spent the night there. On Easter Monday the Polish have a tradition of throwing water at each other, so I was woken up to a blast to the face on Monday morning by the girls. We had fun all day, and I got them back well and truly. And heres some pictures from Sunday night/Monday:

big scary church on easter monday

bobble head angel with jesus

Ok everyone, happy Easter again, and talk soon!

*ryan*

Good Friday

Hey everyone. Funny story! Today was Good Friday, and as Poland is an insanely Catholic country, it was a big day for everyone (the shops were still open at least). And a part of Good Friday in Poland is fasting meat for a day (not including fish), instead of how I was brought up where you fast for the whole season of Lent. Anyways, I figured that I went 2 years without meat, what could a day do? So I made it through until about 20 minutes ago, when I went out to the kitchen to get something to eat, and Iwona brought out the butter chicken she made yesterday (knowing how much I liked curry after telling her yesterday), saying that if I wanted to have meat I could eat this. I told here that I would be polish for the day, and not eat meat. She then opened the container and swirled it around under my nose, and I gave in haha. I think she was wanting to get rid of it!

The Great Gap

Hey everyone! So sorry about the Great Gap in my blogging! It has been a crazy month withschool and travel etc. I'll try my best to remember the highlights of this last month.

(This bit was written after I finished writing: make sure you have a while to read...its a biggie!)

First off about 30 of us GAPpers went to a place called Wroclaw (pronounced Vrroswav). Initially I wasn't planning on going, because I was under the belief that there would still be some people left in Warsaw, but it turns out they decided the day before to go without telling me! So when I came to the realization that I was going to be alone in the city, I decided to trek along to Wroclaw (about 3 hours before the train left! hehe). So we all met up in the mall by the station, and caught up and all that (9 out of the 10 Warsaw GAPpers, plus Magda, one of the teachers thats like a big sister to us all. The kind of big sister that shows you where to go when you turn 18/21.

So the trains in Poland are awkward. We stopped through in a major town called Poznan, which was completely out of the way. From there, we made a 90 degree turn, and continued onto Wroclaw. The whole train trip in total was about 5 hours, so not to bad. But there was a mix up with the seats. We all bought tickets in the open car but at the last minute the changed all the cars, so some other people had tickets with seats in the OPEN CAR haha...so we were all shuffled up. An because I had bought my ticket at a different time to the others, I was moved into a completely different carriage. However, when we got to Poznan, the train practically emptied, including a 30-something lady and her father that were quite rude to me and Magda, insisting that I moved seats because I was in theirs, despite the fact that there were plenty of other empty compartments in the car. So after about 20 minutes of sitting by myself, I deserted my seat and went and sat with the others. The rude people got off at Poznan, and I sent them on their way with a pleasant farewell (nothing rude I promise, just a cheeky papa! (papa is a slang for goodbye in polish)).

We finally arrived in Wroclaw at about 11pm, and trekked with a drunk Willy T. to our hostel, him insisting that we trust him because he knew the way (one of the most famous lines in our group, "Trust me bro!"). We all ignored him, and he finally gave into the peer pressure and crossed over the road back to us, having a near escape with a tram. On the way to the hostel we encountered some strange communist looking metal statues...well I'm not sure how you can look communist...but they looked as if they were from the communist period I guess. So the WPC (Warsaw Party Crew) took a posed picture with them:

yes, I am the one riding the one half way into the ground...oops.

We got to the hostel eventually, and after an hour of sprucing up and quickly catching up with everyone we (at least I) hadn't seen in a month, we were ready to go out. It took us a good hour of wandering to finally find a club we could all agree on (the one that was recommended was 21+ for guys only which sucks). We finally got to a club called WZ (pronounced Vu Zed) which was a great find. It had two dancefloors, one Hip Hop, the other Trance Techno. It was pretty cool until some dodgy guy started dancing with all the GAP chicks, and finally stole one of their phones. We found him, and I was like "you have her phone", he looked at us and in an obviously fake drunk state mumbled in polish. When we finally rounded up all the guys to try to get it back, he had disappeared into the night, and that was pretty much the end of the night for us too.

Our first day in Wroclaw was spent wandering around the old square, a beautiful sight. It is much older then Warsaw as it was not completely obliterated during the Second World War. My favourite part of Wroclaw is the colourfull buildings


This is a photo that I stole off of one of the other GAPpers, but still! I was there...haha.

Some of the other parts of Wroclaw i enjoyed were the churches and views. Heres just a couple pictures of what Wroclaws all about

and

So the highlight of the whole trip was the journey back. Magda had forgotten to tell us that the 25zl extra we paid for reserving a seat was only for the outward bound trip, so we didn't have seats on the return trip. And as it was Sunday afternoon, it was obvious the train was going to be PACKED, and the only place where we were guaranteed seating was in the dining car. So we took over three of the dining car tables, which was fine in the beginning, but as the train started to fill up the waitress became annoyed, as she had agreed with Magda that as we were all together, as long one of us was eating we could sit there...so what did we do? Ordered a dish at a time for 5 hours! Haha.

Since the trip to Wroclaw not much interesting has happened. I went to a Rhianna concert two nights ago in Warsaw which was AMAZING. There was a ban on cameras, but one of my mates managed to get hers in (they weren't patting down the girls), so I should have some pics up shortly. For now, however, there are some videos on youtube. She saved her most famous song, Umbrella, for last, and it was definitely was one of the best performed. Her second best song performed was Please Don't Stop the Music, which was awesome to dance to, as everyone knew the song and was singing along. And as she was getting changed, her DJ was putting on some tunes that everyone could groove to eg. Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson.

Well, for now its time to be off...I think I've said this before but this HAS to be one of the most epic posts I've put up...and to follow suit of Homer Simpson...I have to say that this is the most epic post so far.

So for now, farewell, and I promise that I will write soon, maybe even tomorrow if anything interesting happens today/night.

*ryan*

p.s. It has been snowing for the last days on and off...yesterday was the best by far because the snowflakes coming down were massive! About the size of an American 5 cent piece/New Zealand @20 cent piece. The best bit about the snow this week is that it hasn't been sticking to the ground, and therefore my shoes don't get all grotty when I walk to school! Somehow, not even the ground gets wet. It just kind of snows...and disappears!

OK, bye for now!