Thursday, August 2, 2007

Thursday, August 02, 2007

By Lynsi

Thought for the day (Lynsi): "Measure your impact by laughter and memories, not by numbers".

11:30 am.: Our day began on a slightly sour note as we learned of news that a major bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last night. Given that it is a bridge which is my primary route to and from work in addition to many other destinations, it was quite a shock to hear that it had simply collapsed. As we checked the news we were all amazingly surprised, but it is easy to forget about such things when you are surrounded by screaming kids and lesson plans waiting to be written, and the simple tranquility of the location in which we find ourselves. We quickly found ourselves joking about “conjugated Polish cheese,” a joke leftover from last night at our dinner when Judy’s exploratory foray into the Polish language has created somewhat of a vocabulary of her own. It is great to be able to share leftover laughter. It never seems to end and we continue to create new things to remind ourselves about how silly everyone can get.

It is our second to last day of teaching today and our last full lesson planning. Most of my day was spent working with Ania’s group preparing our skit for Friday’s parent presentation. Like another group, we are doing the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and it just so happens that the movie of the afternoon is just that. Fortuitous preparation, I guess. Our students made a wonderful poster and if the presentation doesn’t turn out exactly perfectly, they did all work together on it, which is more than you can often ask of a group of 13 teenage students. To anyone else reading this journal, for future reference, keep your group size down to 6-7 when preparing something like this! Otherwise you will find yourself in inevitable chaos! Others were also working on their preparations, but I am sure there were other activities involved. Ania and I discussed how we felt somewhat guilty given that we had not prepared actual lessons for some time, but as all have mentioned on several occasions, we have to step away from that American model of quantification of effort and goals met. That, in and of itself, is a learning experience for nearly all of us.

11:30 pm: What a day, though it has fully sunk in that we have to leave. Many of the students stayed to finish “Pirates”, a true feat of lasting attention, while we dined on pork, potatoes, bread, and all of our other usual assortments and took it down with some wonderful coffee. The staff is too accommodating and has realized that we very much like our coffee at all possible hours of the day and have begun bringing it to us without our request. Two students and the camp director came in and gave us their condolences for what happened in Minneapolis and I know that I very much appreciated it (too much in fact given that I found myself all teary-eyed…though many of us did and it reflects just as much our sadness over leaving as our astonishment over what happened while we were away).

After lunch, we were to take a nice walk but were sidetracked by usual Polish hospitality, but shortly thereafter found ourselves walking down the paved way and into the land that was recently purchased by one of the Polish English teachers who has come. The area is so beautiful and peaceful and the weather has warmed up a bit, so it was more than nice to get out and take in some of the scenery.

After our fried cabbage and mushroom dinner, we took our usual seats in the white tent and watched the several marriages take place. The little kids were especially cute and dolled up and they walked down the aisle, signed their papers, exchanged rings, and headed out a married couple. I felt a little left out. I kid, I kid. After that there was the usual discotheque and my student Monica made sure that we got out there for our last discotheque at Reymontowka. We managed to close out the dance floor and now we are all, slowly but surely, turning in for the night but working feverishly to finish some last minute items for our final presentation and/or some cards for our students. Do we have to leave?