September 28, 2009

By Betty

Today you are to embark on our first day with students and staff in our assigned sites. Let’s take a deep breath and look at our preparation. We started our Monday with identifying the characteristics of an effective team…that will be us! Some of the characteristics we identified were having a positive attitude, consideration, sharing, being flexible, having fun, asking for help, and having patience. Like wow! Keeping these characteristics in mind and adding that smile characteristic should make us a strong team and effective volunteers.

Our morning continued with Dorota teaching us to pronounce Polish words and phrases. Now remember cz sounds like ch; the letter w sounds like a v; and the letter j sounds like a y. Our Polish lesson ended by having Perry and Shirley volunteering to demonstrate their Polish skills by reading our lesson aloud. They did real good. We gave a special conclusion to the lesson by adding the characteristic praise to our team list. We appreciated having that demonstrated on us by Dorota (and she was smiling….doubling-up on our list of effective characteristics).

In the afternoon we met with the mayor of the county, Mr. Zygmunt Wielogorski. Yes, indeed, we sat in his office and discovered that he is an attorney; has a sense of humor; is candid about dealing with complex issues; proud of his family; and wanted to hear about our backgrounds along with our views about his county. (I personally would like to know how he became a weightlifting judge at the last Olympics.) He said he was hoping to drop by and visit us later while we are here in Poland and he also said he would like to be a grandfather. I hope both happen.

Thought for the Day (from Ellen): “Don’t place your mistakes on your head, their weight may crush you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as a platform to view your horizons”.