Oddsnends

Gas here is just over $6.00 a gallon.

At the little grocery not far from camp where we pick up odds & ends yesterday I counted 8 different kinds of kielbasa. I'd like to try them all, but don't have any way to cook them.

We have bread, tomatoes, cukes and cheese (Polish cheese doesn't have much character) at every meal. The tomatoes & especially the cukes, tho, are really delicious. We have ham with at least 2 meals a day.

Watched Ghana beat the US soccer team last night on a barge/bar in the Vistula. Not a big crowd, and was surprised there seemed as many Ghana fans as US fans, among the locals. Twenty years ago anything to do with America was admired. Is this fallout from Bush & Abu Ghraib?

There's no toilets on the barge, but several portapotties on the levy. Public toilets in Poland have their women who watch over them, clean them, etc., and so they're not free. Last year I paid up to 80 cents in one train station, just to pee. Last night they were 1 zloty, about 33 cents. I didn't have that in change, was fumbling with my billfold to get out a bill, pretending not to understand what she wanted, making a small scene because I'm pissed you have to pay to piss, and a guy came out of one of the portapotties & handed her a zloty coin, for me.

We have two sets of couples teaching this year, one from Nevada, the other from Chicago. Bob & Carol, from Chicago, recently returned from a round-the-world trip of about 8 months, including several weeks volunteering at a camp in S. Africa for kids affected by (either themselves or their relatives) by AIDS. I'd guess he's near 70, she's 65? (I later learned he's 77, a tennis-player like me, and we share bad knee stories...)