I've had time recently to work on my math paper for Tina and Olaf. That's not exciting to you, I'm sure, but it is to me.
Yesterday we met up with several Polish students. They are about our age, though comparison by class year is difficult across school systems. We spent much of the afternoon with them. It was fun as well as informative; we learned some relevant things like how to order politely and how to tell apart the words "ladies" and "gentlemen."
The last one is trickier than you would think. Most bathrooms are labeled with the silhouettes. That's easy. Circle and triangle is trickier, but still ok. Distinguishing between dziewcząt and chłopców? Not so easy.
We ate at a dumpling place near the giant mall, manufactura. The mall is very modern, just built a few years ago. The cool thing about it, though, is that it is built from very old buildings.
The better part of two hundred years ago, there was a great brick campus here. It was the biggest textile factory in Europe. It was used for a while, then eventually abandoned. It spent X number of decades in disrepair and entire regions of it were torn down.
Then the big money came in to build the mall (my Polish friends think the mall was built with Spanish money). The beautiful old brick buildings were restored and brought up to modern standards. Several of the largest buildings were joined by modern additions (the big sheet of windows in the picture) to create a mall. Smaller surrounding buildings became restaurants, movie theaters, discos and so on. The empty space became patios, benches and fountains. A remaining dilapidated building is being converted to a nice hotel.
I will include more (read: better) pictures of this later I'm sure. I think the whole thing is very classy. Also, we go there pretty often.
Our food situation is still not ideal, but we are stabilized. We do not have a fridge, and though we are optimistic it is not clear that we will get one. Joey and Paul did not have one two years ago, and last you Josh and David ate out a lot so they very well may not have had one either.
However, we are learning to take advantage of the mini-delicatessens all over the place. We still get to eat meat, dairy, produce and juice as long as it is consumed immediately.
Also, we've found that pasta is a very convenient thing to eat. We stocked up on it and are getting pretty good at it. Adding fresh delicious things in the sauce and so on. Every time we eat noodles and sauce we figure out how to make it better next time. By the end of the summer we will be quite proficient I think.
I also think this post is very long. I hope that things on that side of the ocean are going well.
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