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Let me introduce to a great Polish institution - 'Fat Thursday'. This is the day when you eat doughnuts. It's the equivalent of Shrove Tuesday - when you use up the fat in your larder and have a fine feed before Lent. The bosses brought in a whole tray full of jam doughnuts. They didn't last long (I only ate two - honest). Apparently there is also a 'Herring Day' but that didn't interest me quite as much.


I introduced my Proficiency (top end) class to 'Knock Knock' jokes the other day. Although their English is very good it took a fair bit of effort to get the idea across: "So I say 'Knock knock' and you say 'Who's there?' I say 'Orange' and you say 'Orange who?' and I finish with 'Orange you going to help me?' (We'd just watched a clip from the film 'You've got Mail' and a joke similar to this was in it and needed to be explained). Blank faces all round - they were having trouble with the punchline but got it after a while. When I told them that this sort of joke is very well known in Britain one student summed it up by saying, 'You English are very strange!'


That said, some British TV is very popular here - Mr. Bean & Monty Python in particular. Asia (Asha), my Polish colleague who lived in London for a few years, loves Steptoe and Son and can do a pretty decent impression.

I went skiing last weekend. Having previously thought the whole area to be totally flat I was surprised to discover a ski slope nearby. I was invited to go with Jacek (Yatsek) who is one of my students, and his daughter Marta.














I last skiied in 1989 and didn't know what to expect but it all came flooding back. Marta gave me a lesson (see pic) and even had me skiing backwards at one point. Now, the ski instructors amongst you might not be impressed with my posture, ski position etc etc. but I'm sure that you will all have noticed that my head is above my feet rather than the other way round, and that was good enough for me.




I played tennis with another student and two of his buddies last week. They didn't speak too much English but I got by. I can at least keep score in Polish.

I have been warned about a certain ruse that some Polish teenagers like to try on their teacher (my colleague almost fell for it a couple of weeks ago). Feigning innocence, they ask you how to pronounce some English words but don't tell you that this particular combination of words sounds a lot like Polish swear words. If you make the mistake of helping them with this pronunciation they fall about laughing. Fortunately, my teenagers haven't tried it, but I'm on my guard...

Talking of teenagers, we came across this game of ice hockey outside a block of flats a couple a weeks ago. It appeared to have been designed for the purpose. During the winter you often see youngsters walking around with ice hockey gear.



OK, that's all for now. I'll leave you with a short video clip of Torun in all its glory. The video was made to support Torun's bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2016.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmB3vsnLWUQ