pierogi and pronunciation

Aaaahhh ... pierogi (see pic). Dumplings stuffed with various fillings. Truly yummy. They come in the baked or boiled variety and may be sweet or savoury. The pierogi shown contains cabbage. You can get chicken & mushroom pierogi too and I've had one of those to make up for the lack of chicken & mushroom pies around these parts.

The other pic is a beetroot soup with ravioli in. Not something you can order at the local cafe in Manchester.

I have had a few problems though. I'm not always sure what I'm buying and so I got home the other day and looked at a tin I had bought. It was cat food, I was sure of it. The only doubt I had was due to the lack of a picture of a hungry cat on the tin. Once I'd opened it I was suddenly convinced again. I sniffed and poked and decided that I wasn't prepared to risk it. The tin went in the bin. Turns out it's quite a popular sandwich spread...

I have warned not to buy Flaki (but came close once because it looked rather nice). It's tripe.

Pronunciation is another tricky matter - Polish might appear to lack vowels but many letters work in pairs and once you've learned the rules for them you can pronounce any word. However, the tricky part is the apparent need to pronounce several consonants all at the same time and the large number of syllables in some words. The numbers are a good example - I've been teaching myself to count because I'm determined not to be out-counted by a toddler. It gets interesting though; twenty nine is spelt dwadziescia dziewiec (a few accents are missing).
It is pronounced: dvah dj'yehsh ch'yah djyeh vyehn'ch Try saying that without your teeth in.
Anyway, I practise things like that by saying them to my students during the break. Any stand-up comedian would be envious of the laughs I get.

I was in Warsaw last weekend visiting Jan, a friend from Bolton who's on her hols here. We had a good look around the 'old town' - it isn't that old as Warsaw was totally destroyed during the war. The rebuilding took 30 years and is amazing. There are also several moving monuments to the uprising that took place - an attempt to rid Warsaw of the Nazis by fighting them from the sewers. It lasted a little over 60 days.




















Throughout Poland millions of people went to visit their family graves over the weekend for All Saints' Day. Since I arrived there have been candles on sale everywhere. I finally found out why - they are put on the graves which are cleaned up and tended to, often being covered in flowers as well. One chap I chatted to estimated that two thirds of the country follow this tradition.







OK - have to go as I've got some lessons to prepare. I'll tell you more about work in the next thrilling instalment of this blog ...

I realise that I've been here for almost five weeks now and have done very little to keep you all up to date with my progress and that this has caused many of you to lose sleep etc.

One reason for this is that I can only blog from the PCs at work and I get distracted by other things. I hope to have a laptop after Christmas which will make things a bit easier.

I find myself in Torun more by accident than by design - I hadn't heard of the place two months ago. However, as places to live go, it takes some beating; the town centre is absolutely lovely and it's surrounded by forests.

That's Nicolaus Copernicus above (Nick to his friends). He was the first to suggest that the Sun is at the centre of our solar system, rather than the Earth (whatever next?) and is considered to be the father of modern astronomy. He is a bit of a local hero and has roads, bars and shopping centres named after him. From my point of view he serves as a jolly good meeting point when you're planning to go out ('meet you at Nick at 7').

As I said, two months ago I hadn't heard of Torun - I left St. Mary's Primary School at the end of July, had a week at home to sort out my house, and then began my CELTA course (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) in Manchester during which I got to practise teaching English to classes of students from all over the world.

One month later I emerged back into the daylight and started looking for a job. I had decided to stay in Europe for the first year and then to move further afield. However, a lot of jobs are snapped up during August so I didn't find too much at first. I had heard a lot about International House (a large company that has schools all over the world) on my course and so I decided to try for a job with them. Eventually this job came up and I was asked to go to London for an interview. This was followed an hour later by a phone call from Poland and so I had another interview by mobile phone while I tried to scurry for a quiet spot in the middle of London. At the end of the call I was offered the job and was asked to fly to Poland the following weekend.

So here I am - International House, Torun. I'm here until the end of July and can transfer to another school after that. I get a few hols - two weeks at Christmas and one at Easter so I'll be back in the UK then and hope to catch up with a few of you then (unless you fancy a trip to Poland!). We get a two week winter break at the end of January as well so I'll be nipping off around Poland at that point I expect.

I'll leave you with a view of the river that goes throught the middle of town. Rather annoyingly, I can't find anywhere to hire a kayak...

The first month ...

I know it's taken me a while to do this, but here is my first blog. I'll keep it brief and will see what happens. Once I get the hang of it there'll be more.

OK, to begin with, I'm in Torun. A jolly nice place (see photos).

















I have been given a nice flat about 15 minutes' walk from the centre of town and onlt 5 minutes
from the school ...














That's it for now. Let me know if you received it OK.