Dowidzenia to Poland

I said my last good bye to Poland tonight with a wonderful going away party. I wrote all my students “love notes”  telling them what great students they were and that my door is always open to any of them who want to visit the USA and practice more English. My host family had another  rabbit stew dinner– see below- and it was hard to eat the cute little rabbit I befriended earlier. And of course the Polish Vodka was brought out and I made sure I also had lots of water in my glass at all times.

I left Poland with no arrest or fines. And I am ashamed to say I broke the law numerous times. For example if no one was looking I would cross from the designated walking path to the designated bike path outside the zebra lines.  This was a forbidden practice, you could not cross over to the bike path outside the zebra stripes, but every now and then, feeling young and daring, I would look around and if no one was looking I would cross over outside the lines and then if I was not caught I would chuckle to myself, yell “YES!” under my breath and be please that I had committed a crime and gotten away with it.

On my last day I went to say good bye to the Baltic Sea and used the park bath room. Upon leaving the room I discover I only had the equivalent of about 0.15 cents in small change and was not able to give the customary 0.25 cents to use the toilet.  When I left, the toilet policewomen below began to sort of lecture me.  I tried to explain that I did not have the correct change and that earlier in the month I had actually deposited 0.50 cents, so really she owed me for using the toilet.  But she did not understand and followed me a short way scolding me.  I wondered if she was asking me to please retrieve the urine I had just deposited in the toilet. In any event I shrugged and walked away expecting to be picked up by the toilet police at any time.

I will be sad to leave Poland, it is a beautiful country, the Baltic Sea was amazing and I am glad to know  that I had a small impact on helping my students say three instead of free!

PS. If you don’t hear from me with in two weeks, I may have been arrested before getting out and in a Polish jail with no internet privileges, please send help.

This day will never happen again.  Thomas Merton

Life is like a mentor who teaches you new things every moment whether you want to learn or not!

I ate the little brown one in the back and 2 crime scenes!!