Monthly Journal Oct 2010

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

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.

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).

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).

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…

View Larger Map

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

Back from Holidays

Hi folks!

About a week ago we came back from a week long vacation/conference in Mazury, not far from Olsztynek  .

We had a fabulous time and the weather was mostly kind to us.

But one of the problems of holidays is that when you come back home, you have a lot more work to do.
For us, this statement was an understatement!
In the last week the following has happened to us:

• We were given notice to leave our flat
• We had to insure our car
• Our tenants in Australia stopped renting our house (without notice)
• We had to apply for a visa to stay in Poland (which involved driving about 300 kms)
• Jola had to go to daily training for her new job at pre-school
• Jola discovered that she was getting 20% less salary than we expected
• I (Malcolm) have read Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde by RLS
• The kids have both had fevers (which fortunately only lasted two days each)
• And a few other annoying things that I can't really explain in dot points

So, you'll have to forgive us if we have been a bit slack writing our latest Monthly Journal.  I know it might seem that we are complaining and completely stressed, but it's not true.  We are strangely calm and happy.

PS. as I have been typing up this Blog, I have received an SMS saying that we have been offered a place to rent.  So sometime in the next few weeks we will be moving.  Hooray!

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…)

Monthly Journal Jan 2010

Malcolm and Jola’s Monthly Journal

January 2010

“I lost myself in the summer rain…”

- U2

Sorry it’s taken a while, but welcome to our latest Monthly Journal.  I’m tempted to change the name of our regular newsletter to ‘Malcolm, Jola, Ela and Chris’s randomly ridiculous ramblings…’  I would like to say that the reason that we haven’t written a Journal for such a long time is that we have been too busy.  But that is simply not true;  instead I have just been too slack.  But having said that, so many interesting things have happened to us in the last three months that it will be difficult to list everything here.

At the time that we wrote our last Monthly Journal (back in October) we had both just started work again after the summer holidays.  Not much has changed on that front.  Jola is still teaching English in Pre-Schools during the week, going to Uni and working on her thesis over the weekends and teaching Sunday School once or twice a month.  I’m also still teaching English.  I have almost learnt all of my students names; and I know all of the English text books inside-out.  It’s not as interesting as it used to be, but now I am getting better at my job.  Soon I think I should ask for a pay-rise (funny joke).

Our kids are continuing to grow up.  We have been very fortunate that our kids have not suffered from colds and flu’s like they did at the same time last year (in-spite of the flu epidemic that swept through Poland in late October, early November.  Chris continues to improve his vocabulary, both in English and Polish, I think he is starting to understand both languages quite well now.  Ela likes to think that she is teaching all of the people that come to our house English.  Sometimes I am tempted to take her with me to school and get her to teach my students with me; but I think that I would have to pay her then…  They have been stuck inside for the past few weeks due to the weather and they are slowly learning how to play nicely together.  Chris likes to play by himself and Ela always wants to play with someone else, but not Chris.  But they are learning.

In November, thanks to a few comments made by our Monthly Journal readers, I entered a ‘Novel Writing Event.’  It was very interesting and I managed to type out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  It was the first time that I had ever written something that long.  It was an action/adventure novel about some guy called Bob, aptly entitled ‘Bob’s Big Day.’  Unfortunately after writing it I haven’t had the motivation to edit it (or even read it again), and so I don’t really know how readable it is.  But if any of you want to have a read, then send me an email and I’ll see what I can do to get a copy sent to you (by email, don’t expect it to be published) for your reading pleasure (or horror as the case may be).

We had a fantastic Christmas and New Year.  The kids loved getting presents from all over the world, and we loved eating Christmassy food.  We spent about a week with Jola’s parents.  It was great fun because Jola’s brother came with his partner and her son (who is 3) and so the kids spent most of the time playing together (I’d like to say nicely, but that would be a lie).

Now that Ela is almost five we have to start looking for a pre-school for her to join later in the year.  Fortunately for us, Jola knows the directors of all the local pre-schools so hopefully we will be able to find a place for our little ones later in the year.  She has also been asked to work in a new English language pre-school that my boss is starting up later in the year.  It’s all very interesting because we are slowly learning that Jelenia Góra is a lot like Tassie, in that everyone seems to know everyone else.  For example the director of the pre-school that Jola wants to send our kids to, knows that she has been offered a job by my boss.  Another example of this was the other week when some people from the local water authority came to inspect our pipes turned out to be students that I taught last year.

I understand that the weather in Europe has been in the news in Australia lately.  Well, just to put everyone’s mind at rest, our winter (so far) has been quite mild.  There is snow and ice and the river is frozen over in places, but not too much.  The temperature hasn’t dropped below minus 20 yet; certainly not bad enough to write home about.  Today when I went to the shops it was only minus 12.  We didn’t have a white christmas, which is something I am very grateful for.

In the next few months Jola is going to finish off her thesis and we will need to decide what to do next.  It will not be difficult for her to find a job in a pre-school, but we need to decide if that’s what we want to do.  I will need to start filling in forms for my permanent Polish visa and possibly apply for Polish citizenship.  We also need to find out about whether or not Jola can apply for Australian citizenship from Poland or whether we will have to go back to Australia.  And I will need to decide if I want to turn English teaching into a long term career, or whether I should try and find a job as an accountant in a local firm…

That’s probably enough for now.  In addition to the pictures we have here, you can also look at the pictures that we post on Facebook.

Cheerio!

Malcolm, Jola, Ela and Christopher Guy

Monthly Journal Oct 2009

“Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active”

- Edith Hamilton

Hello fellow compatriots!

I bought a new dictionary the other day. It has 72,000 words in it, and I think I know all of the English ones already. It’s the 30,000 Polish words in it that I don’t know.

The weather is starting to get cold now (last night it dropped down to 2 degrees), which should make you Aussies less jealous. One of the disadvantages of having central heating throughout the entire block of flats is that we don’t decide when to turn it on. Maybe they are waiting for the first snow. Who knows?

We are all back at school now. This week I have 25 hours of teaching (that’s 25 hours of standing up and talking), and Jola has started working five days a week (she only has to talk for about 11 hours, but because she is teaching little kids she has to talk twice as loud). I think Ela would make a good teacher because she talks for about 10 hours a day with little or no encouragement – sometimes we turn on the TV just so that she will stop talking for half an hour.

I think most of the regular people at the playground know our names now – thanks mostly to Ela. And they all think that we speak German…

Talking about speaking, Captain Rhubarb is learning a lot of words very quickly now. I think he has taken so long to talk because he got his teeth late. Or maybe it’s because he can never get a word in edgeways because Ela does so much talking. Before he goes to bed at night he says: pa pa Mama, pa pa Daddy, pa pa Lella, pa pa Becky. (I have taken special care to teach him the English 'Daddy' instead of the Polish 'Tata'.)

I had a couple of comments from the last monthly journal that I had lost some weight. Well, it's true. We bought some bathroom scales and I discovered that I had lost about 10 kilo's since leaving Australia. I'm not sure if it's because of the food, because we don't have a car, or because of my job. But in any event, it's nice to have more energy and to be able to play with my kids at the playground (yes, on the swings!).

I have also had a few comments (based on what people read in these monthly journals) suggesting that I start writing professionally. I think I would like that, but I don't really have the imagination to write novels and there are very few English speaking newspapers that need a correspondent in south-west Poland (although it is a world centre for Boleslawiec pottery and tissue-paper making machines).

Last weekend was Jola's birthday. We had streamers and balloons and THREE cakes! As a family, we really like cakes. We did a test on Facebook to decide what Jola's real age is, and so we have just celebrated her 21st birthday again.

Unfortunately Jola couldn't celebrate too much because she has started writing her thesis for her Masters. It's a bit boring.

Jola: Hey! My thesis is not boring at all! It’s still rather short but as it gets longer I'm sure it will get more and more interesting?? That's what I say to myself anyway…

Congratulations to everyone who has got married or got pregnant (or both) in the last couple of months! (We know who you are, even if nobody else is supposed to know yet).

So long!

Malcolm, Jola, Ela & Chris

PS. As I am sending this it has started snowing...

August Monthly Journal

AUGUST 2009

“That’s what you get for waking up in Vegas!”

- Kate Perry

Hello friends,

We’ve had an interesting month, full of ups and downs and sides to sides. As you may have read from the last journal, it is summer holidays at the moment, which means that we haven’t been teaching. I’m sure that most of you would jump at the chance to have a two month summer holiday in the centre of Europe. It sounded great to us too, until we realised that we didn’t have enough money to do anything exciting.

So we have been spending a lot of time with our kids. Jola’s parents have been to visit us a few times, we visited all the local playgrounds many times. You get the idea.

About two weeks into our ‘holiday’ I found a job on the net. A local firm was looking for someone to do work in an office that could speak English. So I asked a few questions, but because I didn’t get a response I assumed that they didn’t want to talk to me.

One of our friends found a job and needed a babysitter for her kids, so all of a sudden we had four extra kids in the house. It was great! Our neighbours thought that we had started a pre-school. So we spent a lot of time outside in the sun with the six kids (ranging in age from 2 to 12). I think it was good for our children to spend time with other children, but it was very tiring for them.

Out of the blue on a Tuesday afternoon, we received a call from the people that wanted the English-speaking office worker. Jola and I went for an interview the next day. It was the oddest job interview I have ever been to, and apparently they didn’t even read the questions I sent in my email. I should have realised then that would be some problems working there, but because I needed the money I accepted the job. On the Thursday I started work with an importer/exporter of dental and gynaecological supplies.

So, all of a sudden we were very busy. It was nice. I must admit that it took a bit for me to get used to working for eight hours again, and Jola enjoyed spending large amounts of time outside in the sun with six kids (not to mention cooking lots of food).

This month we bought Chris his first single bed (mostly because we were sick of him trying to get out of his cot). For the first two weeks it was very difficult to put him to bed. He kept getting out and going to where his cot used to be, or going into the lounge to watch TV with Mummy & Daddy. So we have stopped watching TV when the kids are going to sleep (the joys of a Hard Disk recorder – not that there’s anything on) and Chris helped us dismantle and pack away his old cot. Now Chris and Ela share the same bedroom so they can both learn to get on better with each other (plus our house is too small for us to do anything else).

My job was fun, but I had some problems. My boss seemed to care more about the Feng Shui of the office (including fish tanks) than the computer network (my computer took 20 minutes to load up each morning). There was no OH&S. We had to spend a great deal of time on the phone, but there weren’t enough phones to go around. There was no job description, no price-lists in English (funny because I was supposed to be selling stuff to the UK), no clear organisation. As an accountant and business consultant, you can understand how difficult this was for me; especially because the boss wouldn’t listen to what I had to say. And so after 3 weeks I was fired for ‘not working fast enough.’ And to add insult to injury, the boss wasn’t even brave enough to tell me himself, he had one of my colleagues tell me. However I’m grateful for the experience. It has taught me that you don’t have to be that good to run a business in Poland, and it has given me a few ideas for making some money on my own.

School holidays end in two weeks, so we are making the most of the sun and time with our kids. It’s a pity we don’t have a car for day trips, it just means that we spend more time walking and watching Ela ride her bike.

And that’s the end of the story!

Malcolm, Jola, Ela & Chris

Mal & Jolas Monthly Journal

JUNE 2009

“Dance, dance, dance…“
- Lykke Li

Hello friends,

Can you believe that it’s already June? The end of the Australian financial year, the end of the Polish school year (actually I started writing this about a month ago, I’ve been slack). We are almost half way through the year now; and about 95% of the way through the decade. I wonder what this decade will be referred to as in the future: probably the two thousands, as the norties sounds a bit contrived.

A lot has happened since the last journal:
- Easter
- Ela’s Birthday
- Jola’s exams
- School
- Oliver and Rebekah Jessup visited us
- We went to Prague
- More school
- Surfing the net
- Et-cetera

(Ela blowing out her birthday candles)

Part of the reason that this Monthly Journal is so late is that we have been quite ill with a number of different things. Personally I partly blame the weather (it has been manic) and our students (I’m sure we caught something off the couple of hundred people that we teach between us).
But anyway, if we went into too much detail explaining what has happened, then I would get sore fingers, so I thought I would just explain what happened yesterday. A bit like a day in the life of the Guy family…

Saturday the 20th of June 2009. Jelenia Góra, Poland

We woke up at about 7 in the morning when Chris decided it was time that he got out of bed. Because his cot is still in our bedroom, he likes to wake us up by throwing his blanket and teddies at us. It is normally quite effective. Fortunately he went into the lounge room and played quietly by himself for half an hour or so until Ela woke up. When Ela wakes up she is less quiet. She normally goes and plays with Chris for a short time and then comes into our room and wakes us up for a second time; normally by climbing on us or asking for juice.

Because Jola had school that day, she got up, dressed the kids and generally did all the things that good wives and mothers should. whilst her favourite husband rested his weary eyes...

Anyhow, Jola went to school at about 9 am and Daddy and the kids had the house to themselves. The kids played very nicely with their new scrap books. Ela asked for a screaming out (a colouring-in picture from the laser printer) of a dinosaur and they each coloured in very happily until about 10 am. At 10 am it was time for morning tea. Daddy wanted to give the children a banana, but Ela said she had a full tummy for bananas, and wanted a biscuit instead. Daddy, who is the master of negotiation, gave them some jelly with apple instead (that we had made on Friday because the kids weren’t eating the apples).

(A random picture of Chris getting ready to eat)

After the kids had finished eating their morning tea (it’s amazing how quickly kids eat fruit after it has been cooked and put in jelly), we went to the shops. Kids love going to the shops, and so does Daddy. We went to Kaufland which is a medium sized supermarket within walking distance of our home. Chris sat in the pram and Daddy and Ela walked. On the way, Ela sang Christmas songs over and over again - it was great.
Kaufland is not a very interesting shop. But the kids made it very interesting. They sat in the trolley and played with the groceries. Somehow they managed to build a tower out of mayonnaise and pasta sauce jars. Then Chris opened a chocolate bar and, whilst Daddy was looking for a glue stick, he tried to climb out of the trolley. One of the problems with Kaufland though is that the aisles are quite narrow, so we have to push the trolley down the middle of the aisle so that little fingers don’t touch/get the items of the shelves (much to the annoyance of other shoppers).

On the way home we stopped and played at a little park (there are about ten little parks within walking distance of our home) where Ela met a new friend. They played in the sandpit and made pretend cakes and food. Captain Rhubarb was happier climbing on the see-saw and sliding on the slide (our little monkey loves climbing, whenever he sees a ladder he goes up it – which is not always a good thing…) Ela’s little friend also did a wee next to a tree, which, unfortunately, has inspired her to want to do the same.

We got home from shopping at 12:30. Just in time for Daddy to cook pasta for dinner. Unfortunately he forgot to buy mince meat and he bought the wrong vegetables (let’s just say that the children were a little distracting in the shops). But the kids ate it anyway – they love pasta. Whilst Daddy was cooking dinner and washing the dishes Ela played Pet Society on Facebook and Chris played with his toy animals. When they are separated they play very nicely and quietly.

After dinner, Chris collected his cars, picked up his blanket, and went to bed. He is very attached to his blanket and likes to have it close to him all through the day. Fortunately he doesn’t want to take it outside with him.

Whilst Chris was sleeping, Daddy and Ela made cherry jelly. We were given about four kilo’s of cherries from Jola’s parents, but unfortunately they were starting to go bad. So in order to make the kids eat them, we pitted them and made some jelly. Ela loves cooking (if you can call making jelly cooking) and stirring things (Part of the reason that we didn’t eat them is because we also got about 2 kilo’s of strawberries at the same time).

After Captain Rhubarb woke up we went and played outside again. The kids met some more new friends. Ela always surprises the other kids with how well she can speak English (and her Polish is getting better too). Ela and Chris both had ice cream in a cone. Unfortunately Chris’s Ice cream fell on the ground and then he started stepping in it.

(Only a two year old fully understands the joy of ice-cream cones!)

Jola came home from Uni at about 6 and was quite happy to lay down and rest after the whole day of sitting on her bottom. I (Jola) was supposed to have an exam, but somebody stuffed something up and our teacher felt so guilty about it that without making us sit the exam he gave everybody A’s. Easy peasy lemon squeezy J

At 7 the kids watched their cartoons, ate their supper, brushed their teeth and got ready for bed.
Mummy and Daddy then had some time to themselves. Jola was supposed to study for her exams the next day, but she was feeling a bit tired so we watched some episodes of Scrubs instead.

And that’s the end of the story!

Thank you to the twenty four people from five different countries who have visited my blog (Malcolm’s Occasional Rant: http://malcolmguy.blogspot.com ).

Remember, if you are on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/malcolm.guy ) or Nasza-Klasa, then look us up and be our friends. If you have Skype then send us your Skype address (our Skype address is malcolmjola).
Feel free to email us and tell us your own stories (and even send some pictures)

Best Regards,

Malcolm (mostly), Jola, Elizabeth & Christopher Guy