October 28, 2002

My first experience in Poland was in the car with my host father and host sister. I thought I was going to die! I was told about how crazy people drive in South America, but no one told me how it would be in Poland! My host father went to pass a semi on a two lane highway and there was a car approaching on the other side, just when I thought it was all over the oncoming car veered out of the way and we where safe. This was the entire trip to my new town. I swear we escaped death about twenty times that night!

School didn't start until two weeks after my arrival so I had time to settle down, meet new friends, and see the town. When school started I met different friends from my class. In Białystok there is 10 different high schools so you get to know a lot of kids from different groups. My class has 28 people including myself, and just this last past week I was finally added to the roll call, so my class gets the biggest kick out of me calling out "jestem" (I am) with my very American accent. My class is the advanced English group in my school and we have 6 hrs of English a week. So everyone speaks English so well that it is nice to have translators and people who understand what I say in English when I can't convey it in polish as friends. I also take Chemistry (chemia- pronounced hem-ia), Biology (biologia- be-oh-low-gia), and Physics (fizyka- fizz-ee-ka). These courses are hard because they are all theory and not application courses like in Wooster High School. I'm also taking German (niemiecki- nay-me-es-ki, which translates to 'the people who have no language'), which is good because I can keep up with the German I already know. My teachers are really nice; even though I can't speak to most of them! It makes an interesting situation when standing with my friends after class while they translate the conversation my teacher and I are having so that we both understand!

I'm moving to my second host family soon and it is neat because I will be in the same neighborhood as my first host family. Actually I can see the back yard of my new house from my present bedroom window. What I know about my new host family, as of right now, is that they lived in Sweden and Germany for a while and they are artists. They also have a son and daughter but I am not sure of the ages. I'm so happy to be staying in my neighborhood because I have come to love it so much. At my bus stop there is an open-air vegetable market; it smells so good walking through there. (I'm even starting to enjoy the smell of walking by the fish market!) And I live in a little congregation of houses amidst many, many apartment buildings so it is nice to be reminded of city life yet still feel a bit back home (we have an open field opposite the apartment buildings, so all it needs is some cows and I swear I think I'd be back in Wayne county!)

I have now visited three towns outside of my own but I think that I love Bialystok the most. I visited Warsaw, Toruń, and Mikołyki. Toruń is the birthplace of Nicholas Coppernicus and also famous for its ginger bread. I felt like it was Christmas when I was walking down the streets because of the smell coming out of certain shops. I visited Toruń on a Rotary weekend overnighter. We learned about polish history, made and ate traditional polish food, learned about holidays and the traditions that follow- I can't wait for Easter! They have one tradition in that week that all the boys in the town find the girls and soak them with water! I think on that day I'm going to avoid the water fountain that we have in the center of our town! In Mikołyki I have a friend that Ohio-Erie also sent out, so I went to visit him for a day. It is such a contrast to Białystok. His town is a highly populated tourist town in the summer that basically shuts down in the winter. It is in the lake district of Poland and his house is on the lake so he has a beautiful view!

My friends are great here, teenagers in Poland are aware of so many more dangers that the world has in it then American teenagers. I felt so naive when I first was with my friends and they gave me advise on where to go and where not, and what type of people to avoid. I guess growing up in Wooster I never really thought of potential dangers. But my town is safe; you just have to be smart about your actions. My friends and I normally hang out after school and just walk around down town or go to a cafe for coffee. Just little things. And on the weekend we go to a club to dance or a pub to chat and watch a football game- European football, but it's great to hear about OSU's ranking! My friends didn't understand when I told them how good that was, then I got a lecture on how I don't appreciate true sports, such as European football. (Imagine Big Dog at the Cleveland browns game and you can imagine some of my friends about soccer!) But overall I'm starting to like the sport.

I love Poland so much! And I think it is the great people here who are so warm and loving that make it the great country that it is! So I have to go study now, Do Widzenia,

Kelsey Pajak