Not wishing for winter

This post is a response to my friend Kathy's post here

For the last week or so in Poland, the weather has been fantastic.  At times I find it hard to believe that only four months ago the temperature was struggling to reach minus 10.

I do not miss the winter.  Not at all.

(Not even a little bit)

The Politeness of Polish Supermarkets

Over the last couple of years I have spent a considerable amount of time in Polish supermarkets.  Not by choice, but because I have to eat occasionally - and Polish supermarkets don’t usually deliver.

One problem with Polish supermarkets is that each supermarket keeps slightly different produce, which means that doing the weekly shopping requires visiting about three or four different shops.  This is compounded by the fact that bread only lasts for about 48 hours before it starts to mutate into something that requires something stronger than teeth to devour.

A good thing about supermarkets however is that they are a good place to try out my Polish and to interact with average Polish people.  Unfortunately however it is not always a positive experience, because Poles (like most people) can sometimes be rude.  In fact about six months ago, after making very careful observations (and some sideways glances) I prepared this table.

You will note that there seems to be a very strong link between politeness and carbon dioxide.  This was a big surprise to me!  Of course my research is very localised, and before I can make any scientific statements I will need to apply for a million dollar research grant to prove my point.

CAPTAIN RHUBARB AND THE IMAGINATION BUCKET

This is a feeble attempt at a children's story.  Tell me of you like it!  If you are a bit of an artist/illustrator then feel free to help me with some pictures...

Once upon a time, a long long time away (after about a million sleeps), there was this boy.  I can’t remember this boys name, but it might have been Tommy or Bobby or Alexander.  I don’t remember.

One day when this boy was playing with his father’s telescope he looked up into space and he saw a spaceship.  It was a very small spaceship far far away.  Inside the spaceship he could see a little girl calling for help.

Oh no!  He thought to himself.  I have to rescue her!  So he found his father’s telephone and called the Emergency Space Services…

Hello, this is the ESS, how can we help you?…  What? A girl trapped in a spaceship?…  Yes, we’ll send our fastest spaceship straight away!

The problem was that the fastest spaceship wasn’t very fast at all.  In fact it was very slow.  Very very slow…  It was so slow that when Billy or Timmy or Archibald watched it through his father’s telescope he could hardly see it moving.

Danny or Sammy or Frederick was very sad for the little girl in the spaceship far far away.  But then he had an idea!  He went down into the basement, looked through his mother’s cupboards until he found something.  It was his imagination bucket!

The imagination bucket was very old, even older than his school teacher.  It was made of wood and had a metal handle.  But it was a very special bucket because whenever he imagined something, the something that he imagined would come out of the bucket.

And so Jimmy or Becky or Theodore started imagining things.  But all he could imagine was picking strawberries at his grandfather’s farm.  Soon the basement was full of strawberries and so the boy went upstairs and imagined some more.

Next he imagined picking potatoes, and as they came out of the bucket his house filled up.  Then he imagined picking rhubarbs until there was a mountain of rhubarbs.

Then he imagined that all of his friends were imagining picking imaginary things until soon the pile of imagined things coming out his imagination bucket reached to the sky!

But the little girl was still trapped in the spaceship.  And so the little boy (I don’t remember his name) imagined that he crept silently into a dark cave and rescued a super hero from a dragon.  And the name of this super hero was CAPTAIN RHUBARB.

Captain Rhubarb flew out of the imagination bucket as fast as lightning.  He flew up over the mountain of rhubarbs, around the pile of imaginary imagined things and up into space.  He flew past the very slow spaceship of the ESS.

And then, Captain Rhubarb landed on the spaceship where the little girl was stuck.  The little girl was very happy to see Captain Rhubarb and she invited him inside to have a cup of lemon tea.

Captain Rhubarb and the little girl then waited patiently for the ESS spaceship to arrive.  When they finally got back to earth the little girl gave the little boy a little kiss.  And they all ate strawberries and potatoes and rhubarbs for the rest of the month.

Monthly Journal April 2010

April 2010

“Penguins have not got any ears…”
- Elizabeth Guy

Warm greetings from cold, miserable Poland.  I know it’s been a long time since our last journal, and for that we are sorry.  The last three months or so have been very cold.  This is my third Polish winter and even though I am starting to get used to the freezing temperatures, it doesn’t mean that I am enjoying them.  I guess if I skied it might be more bearable, but I don’t.  But having said that, I think I might prefer snow and ice to rain, mud and grey skies…  But enough complaining about the weather.

We found out today that our children have been accepted into Pre-School here in Jelenia Góra.  This is very exciting because it means that after September our children will not be stuck at home all day.  We have enrolled our children into a regular Polish pre-school (http://www.puchatek.hg.pl/).  We did have the option of sending them to an English speaking pre-school, but we decided that it would probably be better for them (and for our hip-pocket) if we sent them to the Polish school.  Both Jola and I know some of the teachers there and so we are sure that our kids will have a great time.

Jola is still working on her Masters thesis and assignments for all of her other subjects.  She is studying very hard but (unfortunately) her school is very disorganised, which means that she has been spending too much time dealing with bureaucracy and not enough time studying.  I really want Jola to write something here, but she won’t.  She says that she doesn’t have time.

We had a good Easter, it is always nice to catch up with our Polish friends from the UK who come back to Poland for the big holidays.  It was also nice to spend some time with Jola’s family.  It even snowed on the morning of Good Friday, which was quite exciting.

In the month or so before Easter, I led something like an Alpha course (basically an introduction of Christianity) which was very interesting (I was actually supposed to do the full Alpha course, but because it only ran for five weeks I had to heavily condense and modify it, so in the end it didn’t look much like Alpha at all).  We discussed things like the meaning of life and the role of religion and law in society.  It was very effective and all the participants seemed to enjoy coming to the meetings/lessons.

The kids are still growing, Chris is talking a lot more now (thankfully), Ela is starting to learn how to be responsible for things.  In the past few months it has been her job to pick up all of the toys (usually by herself) before we eat dinner.  It is a joy for us as parents when she actually does it without complaining (which is less common than you would expect).
I don’t think we can call Chris a baby anymore now.  He has all of his teeth, feeds himself (most of the time - well, at least when he isn’t feeling lazy), has started toilet training in earnest and can talk in full sentences in two different languages.  He doesn’t talk as much as Ela, but that is because she talks more than the rest of us combined.

Apart from that, we are all healthy and happy (especially when the sun shines).  Both Jola and I are working a lot of hours (a lot of hours = a lot of money = tired parents) at our respective places of work.  The other day Ela asked for a real pet, we said no.

On a sadder note, many of you would be aware that the Polish President and a very large number of other important people died in a plane crash last week.  Indeed it is a sad time for Poland, and everywhere we go we see Polish flags flying with black ribbons signifying mourning.  At churches there are piles of flowers and candles as people are praying for all the people that passed away so suddenly.  It is very endearing watching how the Poles always seem forget their usual differences and come together when something very bad happens.  Now the government has to somehow rebuild itself, which means we have a very interesting time ahead of us.

Have a lovely month (or three, depending on when we write the next MJMJ)

Malcolm, Jola, Ela & Chris

PS. Congratulations to everyone who’s got married, had babies and/or got engaged since the last MJMJ - you know who you are (if you’re not sure, then send us an email and we’ll tell you whether or not we mean you…)