Malcolm and Jola’s Monthly Journal
October 2010
“Haven’t I always done everything you asked me?”
- Destiny’s Child
Warm salutations!
Welcome back. When I wrote the last Monthly Journal I was feeling a bit lazy. I guess I didn’t know just how lazy I would be. It has taken only six months to write this Monthly Journal. Of course I’d like you to think that we haven’t written it because we have been too busy. But that is simply not true. It doesn’t actually take much effort to write one of these things… But I’m getting side-tracked.
Since last April a great many things have happened in our little lives. The biggest thing that happened of course was summer. One of the most wonderful things about being a teacher is that we get a two month summer holiday every year. It is just a pity that we are casual teachers and we don’t actually get paid for those precious six weeks or so in the sun. This year we went to the Mazurian lakes. There are a few nice pictures here: http://malcolmguy.blogspot.com/2010/08/back-from-holidays.html
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| Daddy and Chris kicking the water |
Also check out some photos of our kids playing in the sun: http://malcolmguy.blogspot.com/2010/07/not-wishing-for-winter.html
Over summer we bought ourselves a car. We decided to take the plunge when we discovered the cost of using public transport to get to our holiday. It was cheaper to buy a car (including insurance and gas) than to take the train/bus to our holiday place. The kids like us having a car because now we don’t have to walk to the shops all the time. Also we have been able to take a few trips into the surrounding countryside. I’d love to drive a bit further (eg to the Czech Republic and Germany), but the price of petrol is still quite high here and Ela gets car sick too easily. Not to mention that I am still waiting for my permanent visa.
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| Exploring Legnica the easy way |
Now there is a story. In June we applied for my permanent visa. We filled in all of the forms, submitted all of our documents, had our ‘Green Card’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099699/ style interview and we were waiting for the final decision when we were (very politely) informed that we had actually applied too early and that we had to submit all of the documents again. We were not happy; and are still waiting to hear back from the second application.
Talking about applications, Jola finished her Masters and scored top marks. We are very proud of her! Now she is a Master of Teaching (or something like that).
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| My two girls sleeping in a tent |
Jola has started her new job as an English speaking pre-school teacher at Happy Kids (There are a few photos of her and her group at this website http://akademiahappykids.pl/przedszkolejezykowe/ - just click on ‘Galeria’). She seems to be enjoying it. Apparently her class is the best behaved. This is obviously because she is the best teacher (maybe I’m just biased). It has meant a few changes for us. This is the first time since we have been married that she has had a full time job. Mostly it means that I am stuck at home by myself during the day.
The kids have started pre-school at Kubus Puchatek http://puchatek19.pl/ For the most part they are loving it. Little Chris had a few issues with missing mummy and daddy (mostly daddy), but now is doing much better. But having said that, they have spent two weeks at home because they caught various bugs from the other school kids. Fortunately they didn’t catch chicken pox when all of the other children did (our kids were immunised when they were younger).
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| My little MasterChefs |
We also have a new flat now, which is wonderful. Our old flat was cheap and cold and not very nice. Our new flat is nice and warm and 250 zloty more expensive. Actually it’s kind of funny because we are renting from mine and Jola’s boss’s parents. So our boss pays us and then we pay their parents most of our wages the next day. We feel a bit like serfs…
You can see our block of flats second from top and the kids pre-school is the T shaped building on the bottom
I think that that’s about all I can write about at the moment. If you have any questions, then send us an email ☺ (we like emails)
Malcolm, Jola, Ela & Chris
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