Dziennek Torunowski

The Daily Torun Post: The latest news from northcentral Poland. Actually we did have an article about our language camp in the local "Gazeta," which covers the region (voyvodship.) If I get the url I'll post it.

Valentine's today. Some teachers gave their students valentine candy. As a biologist, mine got gummi worms. They liked them. I got some valentines, too, from students... There are opportunities for further silliness tonight during some games & a dance.

I was walking down the hall this morning on my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and a good looking Polish student (guy) smiled & wished me good morning. They're very pleasant...so I had this thought, everybody should have a smiling young Pole wishing them good morning, every morning. What a nice way to start the day!

Polish night tomorrow night. My homeroom has given me a poem to read, in Polish. I'll post it so you all can practice, too...skits, poems, songs, etc. put on by the Polish students.

Had a basketball game last night between the two dorms, guys except for two. Some great play, the best player a guy named Kuba (short for Jacob) who told me he doesn't play b.b. because his school doesn't have a big enough gym...yet he had all the skills...

Thursday night is Christmas, that's when I'll give my students the t-shirts Judy & I screenprinted for them.

Friday is graduation. Each homeroom (10) does a skit or reads a poem or whatever, to demonstrate their English. Mine is writing their own skit about the language camp. So very very similar to Folklore Village, in many ways...

I know I'm going to miss the camp a lot. What lovely kids.

Saturday students leave. We teachers will take a field trip not far from Torun to a place called Barbaca, because there was a supposed apparition of St Barabara there long ago. But it's also where the Nazis took many of the intellectuals from town, in Sept. 1939, into the woods, and killed them, then dumped their bodies into a mass grave. Sunday we visit a spa.

Jim (my friend from MN) and I walk the short walk every evening to the Krajina Piva, a new local pub, with a huge selection of beers -- about a dozen Polish beers on tap, 40 more in bottles, and another 50 or more from other countries. We asked them what Krajina Piva means; they said, an imaginary land where you can get any beer you want. I said, we have a name for that in english...heaven.

Well gotta go.

Hope everyone's well.