In the bigger picture, not all that exciting or important, but we all live in the little picture...well, anyway, I do...so just a couple comments...

Yesterday I had a student come into class (we're rotating 10 groups) named Anna Matejka. After introducing myself to the class I pointed out the similarity between her name & mine, and even more importantly, between her name and that of Jan Matejko, probably Poland's most famous painter. Her name is Matejka because that's the feminine version of Matejko. Female Piotrowskis in Poland are Piotrowskas.

So anyway she points out that Jan Matejko was her great, great, great grandfather. Cool.

Tomorrow I have a student from another group coming in named Katarczyna Ostrowska. Who do (some of us) know of that name? Aunt Catherine Ostrowski. Also cool.

Classes are great. Tremendous students, engaged, knowledgeable, fun. I miss teaching. A few, of course, are none of those good things, but they are very few.

I've been reading them a Ted Kooser poem (A Room in the Past), talking about Shakespeare, blahblahblah. Today in homeroom, just for the fun of it we played Black Magic. Also cool.

This afternoon we had pickup softball out on the huge blacktop area between buildings, where Prussian officers then Polish officers trained for more than a century, sometimes on horseback. Most of the Polish students had never picked up a bat or glove before, but it was great fun. One of these afternoons we're going to do some American football.

At noon & 9 p.m. a trumpet sounds from the tower of the garrison church, Swiata Katarcyna...maybe a recording...but it's also cool.

The weather hasn't been very cool. Mostly warm to hot, though it cools off at night. Nice that I can leave the windows to my room open & not be bothered with pesky insects.

After two days of teaching I'm feeling almost a pro...and still really having a good time.

The night we got here two of the young female teachers were coming back from a Club in the wee hours and were accosted by bad guys. They had their purses snatched. One, a petite young thing, ran after her thief, and as she said, I'd almost caught up with him when he dropped my purse. I'm thinking -- probably good for him he did. The other one got away, but they found her purse a day later, after much police involvement, sans her cell phone & camera. Credit cards were still in it.

A retired cop from St. Paul who's become my best buddy here, and I, just got back from a short shopping trip in town. Looking for costumes in a resale shop, for our Halloween night next week. We may go in drag. Jim has a great story about setting a vase full of marijuana leaves on the Chief's desk one day, the Chief coming in & asking who was nice enough to bring him a bouquet, and his secretary asking...Chief, do you know what those are?

We stopped for a short one. We're exploring the diversity of malted beverages. We've found a really nice one with a bison on the label, called Zubr, made up by Bialystok. We have only begun to plumb the possibilities...

Hope everyone is ok. I miss you all, miss the woods & fields & tennis, but no regrets at all about my choice to do this.