Our first visit to the ER

Of all the things a parent is bound to experience with a child, we can check off an important one from Lizzie’s list - our first visit to the Emergency Room. I guess that just leaves our first grounding for staying out all night with a boy, our first visit to her dormitory at university and our first visit to bail her out of jail.

Something to look forward to.

Ok, it is not as tragic as all that. Last Saturday night, Lizzie, who had been complaining of a stomach ache, got an incredibly high temperature and complained more and more that her stomach hurt. When I heard, “Mommy, it really hurts” I knew that she was not kidding. First reaction, call a doctor or emergency services. We did both and they were both in agreement - take Lizzie to the hospital because it could be an appendicitis. We were also asked if we wanted an ambulance. It was at night and we knew that Misiu would be faster, so he drove her to the surgical ER as indicated by Emergency services.

I cannot describe the feelings I had as I packed a little backpack for my baby (my almost 4-year-old baby) to go the ER and possibly stay at the hospital for an operation. Extra underpants, pj’s, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a plastic cup, a washcloth, a towel, one of her favorite books, her health book, and of course Maciek, her doll. Misiu quickly printed out his bank statement proving that we in fact pay our taxes and are insured. Hospitals declare that you have a week to provide them with proof that you are insured, but we know from our past experience that sometimes that is not the truth.

And so they left for the hospital, my brave little Lizzie and braver Daddy, while I stayed at home with Rosie. Talk about ants in the pants (or maybe owsiki w gaciach), I couldn’t sit still. I was pacing around our apartment, talking to myself and checking the clock every 5 minutes. After an hour and 45 minutes, I sent Misiu a text message asking if he had any news. I also congratulated myself that I was able to wait an hour and 45 minutes without calling. Misiu answered that everything was ok and they would be coming home soon.

And so my brave duo came back home, but not until after visiting 2 hospitals and a 24-hour pharmacy. Why 2 hospitals? Well, for suspicion of appendicitis Lizzie was seen at a surgical ER. When the surgical ER figured it wasn’t surgical, they were done with her and sent her to the pediatric ER…on the other side of town. Thank goodness we have a car, but for those families who don’t and cannot afford a taxi, what are they supposed to do? Misiu packed Lizzie in the car and was off to the pediatric ER where they diagnosed her with severe tonsillitis. They gave her something for her fever, waited for it to come down a bit and then sent her home with a prescription for antibiotics, a reassurance that tonsil infections can cause bad stomach pain in little creatures such as Lizzie, and a teddy bear sticker for the very brave patient.

Compared to our last ER visit (Misiu’s unfortunate pickle jar incident), Lizzie’s visit was quite good and for the doctors, I suppose, pretty routine. Lizzie did not have to wait in line, but she did have to go to 2 different hospitals. Lizzie’s stomach examination consisted of “macanie” (poking) and did not include any USG as I had expected. No urine was tested not did they draw any blood.

Emergency services offered an ambulance right away and nobody treated us like over-anxious parents wasting the time and resources of the Polish health care system. We did not have to pay for the ER visit(s) and that consideration never entered our minds. With our child in pain, we didn’t think twice whether we could afford an ER visit or an emergency surgery, and although I was pacing the apartment worried for the safety of my child, I wasn’t worried about the safety of my child and how I was going to pay for it.

Good Teacher/Bad Teacher: Teaching English the Kryśka way

There are many methods for learning a language. Unfortunately, there are no magic methods. Part of my job is to balance out the methods I like to use and think are effective with the methods my students are used to and prefer. Most importantly, I want my students to learn English. You’d be surprised how many teachers don’t really care if their students learn anything, as long as they all enjoy the lessons and pay the bills. In order for my students to learn English, I have to put forth some effort to teach them, but my students also need to put forth some effort to learn.

How do I get my students to do what I want them to do?

When I taught in high school in the Village, it was pretty easy. Almost all the kids had their eyes on the prize – university- and didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize their good grades and future studies.

With adults, it is a little more difficult. Firstly, I use two teaching tools - proximity and physical contact. I did not make that up myself as some sort of an excuse to touch my students. I learned it at teacher’s college. The theory is that if you place yourself near your student and from time to time make light physical contact, the student’s performance will increase (and discipline problems decrease). This works in groups. In individual lessons, your student will just think that you are weird and wonder why you are sitting so close and touching him all the time.

Another method I use is rewards. The simplest reward I use is praise, but that’s not very tangible. I mean you can’t take it home and brag about it to your friends. One of my favorite tangible rewards to give would have to be stickers. I have smiley faces and “teacher” stickers with phrases such as “Cool!” or “Good Job!”. The most coveted of all my stickers would have to be the American flag stickers. They are awarded only for tests (not homework) with scores of 89% or better. Some of my students (adults) ask me before the test if they get an 89% or better, could they get their sticker “unstuck”. Usually, they want to put the sticker on their class book or computer.

Another kind of reward is the opportunity to give me homework, too. Yes, sometimes I allow my students to give me Polish homework and then laugh at my mistakes. I’m generous and self-deprecating like that.

If there are rewards, there have to be punishments as well. Adult students are really reluctant to do homework and by reluctant, I mean lazy. No amount of explaining, asking, pleading, ordering, screaming or stickers will get them to do it. So instead I have to resort to punishment – punishments which I call “The Power of Public Humiliation”. They don’t teach that at teacher’s college, and it is a pity because I feel public humiliation as a teaching tool is surprisingly effective and highly underrated ;)

Punishment #1 – Students who do not do their homework, must sing a song for the class…with the classroom door open for the whole office to hear. Number 1 most selected song by students would have to be the very popular Kotek na Płotek with Happy Birthday coming in a close 2nd.

For the most stubborn of cases, I implement Punishment #2 –If your boss is paying for your lessons, you have to explain to your boss why you don’t have your homework, now, right this minute, with me by your side. That one works, but then they hate me. It’s a trade-off.

Sometimes I don’t have to resort to punishment. I just threaten them with the power of, “Your boss said…” It’s a kind of good cop/bad cop game or more like good teacher/bad boss, except what the students don’t know is that in most cases their boss didn’t say anything. It’s a bluff – insert evil laugh here…Wahahahahaaaa…

When all else fails, I bribe them…with baked goods. Do not underestimate the guilt-value of a homemade banana-nut muffin. I can easily get a month’s worth of homework out of that.

It’s not just homework that students don’t want to do. They don’t want to do grammar, either. Lately, in an effort to get some of my students to do more grammar, I have come up with a scheme which seemingly forces them to choose grammar exercises and like it.

How do I do it? It is ingeniously simple. It’s all about choice. I offer them 2 possible activities for the lesson, one being grammar and the other being much worse. They always snap up the grammar, grateful at having been spared the “much worse”.

“Much worse” is different for different students. For some it is a text to read, for others it is a speaking activity, but for the some of my students, it is the grammar exercise which is the “much worse”. So for those who hate grammar exercises, really dread them, I have to be a bit more creative with the “much worse”. Out come the articles on difficult or boring topics: Pregnancy and Childbirth: A Lesbian’s Perspective, The Inevitability of Gay Marriage, Valentine’s Day Vasectomy Discounts….you know, your basic Sunday morning reading.

I have one group of gentlemen who are very grammar averse and by grammar averse, I mean lazy. I knew that to get them to finally stop stalling, I’d have to pull out the big guns. Bam! Grammar exercises or New Circumcision Recommendations of the AMA. Exasperated sigh, my plan backfired. They chose the circumcision article, even after I explained what circumcision was. I gave my students the incorrect statistic that 90% of American males are circumcised which prompted them to ask in disbelief “19 or 90”. I wasn’t far off though, as the estimated rate is around 80%. Despite the painful topic, the conversation was quite good and my students learned some words they may never have had an opportunity to learn. How they will ever use those new words at work is their own problem.

Next time their choice is going to be between difficult grammar exercise and even more difficult grammar exercises.

No more fooling around!

PS When I took my first trip to the sea side, I remember that my new friend asked me, “Are all men in America circumcised?” I responded, “I don’t know. I haven’t checked them all yet.” ;)

Polish is hard

Polish is a difficult language. I know with that statement I am not “discovering America” (nie odkrywam Ameryki) as you say in Polish, but it is worth stating.

When I first came to Poland, I didn’t know a word of Polish. Well, except for szafa and dupa which are not especially helpful in everyday life. I didn’t even know tak and nie. (szafa=wardrobe, dupa=ass, tak=yes, nie=no)

Stupid, huh? Travel to a country for an extended stay not knowing the language at all. For an American, not really. As a 22- year-old American girl, I had the utmost confidence in myself and truly believed I’d just learn the language. Just like that. I mean I figured I’d have to spend about 4-6 hours a day every day for about 2 months, but that for sure, it’s learnable. It just requires some effort and a lot of memorization.

All of that would be true if I had been learning, I don’t know, English perhaps, but it just doesn’t work for Polish. Not that I didn’t try…until I finally gave up and stopped trying, my effort seeming futile ‘cause I couldn’t say anything anyhow.

I did learn a lot of vocabulary though. I loved sitting in my Archiwum reading the dictionary, making lists of words and memorizing them. I also tried to learn the vocabulary lists of the 1st and 2nd classes of high school (9th and 10th grades). I wanted to show my students that I was making an effort and on test day, they also prepared a test for me. I didn’t always do too well.

I had my favorite words, too. One of my all time favorites is smakołyk and its plural, smakołyki. It means a delicacy or treat as in a food treat, but I just love the sound of it - smak-o-łyk. Cool.

My favorite expression, I learned from my neighbor in the Village. It is lepszejszy. It should be dobry, lepszy, najlepszy (good, better, best,) but in his version it is dobry, lepszy, lepszejszy (good, better, bestest). This expression is totally awesome and I use it all the time. (Remember, Professor Miodek says the first rule of language is to communicate and next is to speak correctly.)

One of my least favorite words is wdzianko. It means something like outfit or smock, but somehow sounds like a dirty word to me.

Misiu’s old school mate who studied both Polish literature and English has his least favorite word – ruchać - (say it like you mean it and don’t forget to roll your “r” for dramatic effect). In old literature, it simply meant “to move”, but now it means “to fuck”. Another word from this base is ruch meaning movement, motion, traffic. And by the way, if while hitchhiking somebody stops to pick you up and asks you if you are going to Ruchaczewo, say no.

With a large vocabulary in Polish, you can understand a lot more of what people are saying, but you yourself cannot say very much. In English, it is quite the opposite. With just basic grammar and some vocabulary you can express a lot, even after only a few lessons.

Let’s take a look.

Today I go school. (Today, I’m going to school)

Tomorrow I go school. (Tomorrow, I will go to school.)

Yesterday I go school. (Yesterday, I went to school.)

Understand? Pretty much.

Let’s try in Polish.

Dzisiaj idę szkoła. (Dzisiaj idę do szkoły.)

Jutro idę szkoła. (Jutro idę do szkoły.)

Wczoraj idę szkoła. (Wczoraj poszłam do szkoły.)

(Wczoraj poszedłem do szkoły.)

Rozumisz?

Not convinced. What about this?

Using the same verb form in English we can change the subject to “he” or even “she, we, they” and still be more or less understood.

Today he go school. (Today he is going to school.)

Tomorrow he go school. (Tomorrow he will go to school.)

Yesterday he go school. (Yesterday, he went to school.)

In Polish, it is more difficult to figure out who we are talking about.

Dzisiaj on idę szkoła. (Dzisiaj on idzie do szkoły.)

Jutro on idę szkoła. (Jutro on idzie do szkoły.)

Wczoraj on idę szkoła. (Wczoraj on poszedł do szkoły.)

Kumasz? Coraz trudniej.

After learning food, I couldn’t order in a shop or restaurant. I had to learn whole sentences by heart.

Poprosze dziesięc plasterków szynki…

…which was good if I wanted 10 slices of ham. If I wanted 5 or 15 slices I was out of luck and how to explain to the lady that I don’t want the ham located near the hairy pig’s leg in the display case. That was beyond me.

After learning numbers, I couldn’t tell time because you tell time in Polish in ordinal numbers.

Która godzina? Pierwsza…

…which means 1st o’clock, not one o’clock and don’t get me started on the 24-hour clock and how that screwed me up at the beginning.

After learning days of the week, I couldn’t make an appointment.

Kiedy się spotkamy?

Na Poniedzałek? W Poniedziałku? W Poniedziałek?

Somehow, I managed to learn Żywiec and how to get 2 of them, practically from day one.

A girl has to have priorities.

So, I started to make sentences. I mean, I couldn’t just learn endless lists of vocabulary forever, could I? And one day walking with Misiu, I lamented that I didn’t have a hat. “Nie mam czapka,” I said. “Nie mam czapki,” he corrected. “What?” I asked. “It should be ‘nie mam czapki’ not ‘czapka’,” he further explained. And that was the moment I realized Polish was hard.

hat = czapka

I have a hat. Mam czapkę.

I have hats. Mam czapki.

I don’t have a hat. Nie mam czapki.

What???

I don’t have hats. Nie mam czapek.

Huh???

I have a blue hat. Mam niebieską czapkę.

I have blue hats. Mam niebieskie czapki.

I don’t have a blue hat. Nie mam niebieskiej czapki.

I don’t have blue hats. Nie mam niebieskich czapek.

And if you want to buy a hat and you ask the lady, “Czy są czapki?” her answer may be “Są czapki” (there are) or “Nie ma czapek” (there aren’t). But hey, why isn’t it “Nie są”???

UGGGHHH! What did I get myself into?!?

Women’s Day

Or should I say, International Women’s Day (or Woman’s Day), except we don’t celebrate in the States and most people there have never heard of it.

If you are planning to celebrate this day and you are a man, proper etiquette requires you to give a flower to the important ladies in your life, traditionally, a carnation. (Carnation is gożdik the flower, not the spice. Karnacja is complexion)

Women’s Day (March 8th) has definite political connotations for many in Poland who still associate it with the Communist Era. For that reason the carnation, a perfectly good flower, has gotten a bad rap. If you want to check it, give your love a bouquet of carnations and see the reaction you get. (The florist will be sure to ask you if you need an invoice ‘cause nobody buys so many carnations except for official celebrations.) One of my students one year gave his girlfriend this kind of goździk (cloves) and a package of pantyhose (communist joke). The reaction wasn’t any better.

Another of my students has given the name “goździki” to communist style office ladies. You know the ones that drink too much coffee, wear too much make-up, set their hair once a week and can be pushed along with kiss of the hand and a box of chocolates. As you can gather, it is not a compliment.

Another of my students, an owner of a company that employs a lot of women, provides reserved movie tickets for each and every woman in the company and an afternoon off to go together to see the movie. That’s nice.

And what will I get for Women’s Day? Probably the same that I got last year and every year before that. Nothing. Misiu always says, “Women’s Day is for communists. And besides, you are American, every day is your day.”

I can’t argue with that.

PS While being called a “goździk” by my student is not a compliment, it still sounds a lot nicer than the popular nickname “biurwa”. This is also an office lady, the word a combination of the Polish words for office and whore. It’s not a compliment either ;)

PS2 Lizzie was complaining that her school practiced “teatr” on Friday and that only boys were allowed to be “rycerzy” and girls had to sit and watch. Before I could lock into conspiracy theory mode, I figured that they were probably practicing for Women’s Day. Probably the boys are going to be knights and give the girls flowers. How sweet.

Pasowanie na Przedszkolaka

Lizzie is officially a Pre-schooler. This Thursday, she took her preschooler oath (Ślubuje…) and was dubbed a Pre-schooler by the Principal. The children presented themselves in front of the Principal who tapped each child on the shoulder with a fairy wand. It was all very serious and very exciting!

Lizzie’s class dressed up as butterflies while another class dressed up as teddy bears. Thank goodness for H&M butterfly wings. We weren’t the only parents who paid a visit to H&M ;) Each class recited poems and sang songs for all the proud parents to see. There was the usual shuffle of parents trying to get the perfect shot of their little one. Our camera battery died on the way to school, but I knew that I could depend on my bestest friendka and neighbor to take fantastic pictures from her place in the front row. Now, if I could only get the CD to her to save the pictures.

Lizzie, in this picture, is the butterfly in the middle in the pink skirt (also borrowed from friendka) reciting her poem:

Motylek mnie rozwesela

Humor mi się jego udziela

Cieszymy się oboje

On i oczy moje…

The kids received a present of Domino Logopedyczyne Ż(RZ)-Z. Maybe I will practice some sounds, too.

And of course a diploma.

And more excitement from the Pre-school front – Tennis lessons AND English lessons start on Monday!

Wyątkowy dzień!

Here’s a postcard recently received by my Misiu, holder of an Orsay Club Card.

Wjątkowy dzień!

Witaj Misiu,

Czas spełnić marzenia. Odkryj siebie na nowo robiąc zakupy z Twoim osobistym bonem urodzinowym

20 PLN + 200 DODATKOWYCH PUNKTÓW

i przeżyj niezapomniane chwile myśląc “Thank God I’m a woman”.

Życzymy miłych urodzinowych zakupów

Zespół KLUBU ORSAY

Dear Misiu,

It is a special day!

It is time to fulfill dreams. Discover yourself anew doing shopping with your own personal birthday bonus

20 PLN + 200 EXTRA POINTS

and experience an unforgettable moment thinking “Thank God I’m a woman”.

We wish you a pleasant birthday shopping!

The Orsay Club Team

Who knew?

Why I need an SUV

In defense of my SUV, well, my little SUV, my SUV-ek:

Exhibit A

The road in front of my apartment building

Exhibit B

My road to work

And now that Spring is upon us, the potholes have sprung up to greet us as well…. And the Gold Medal goes to Chris for her amazing Pothole Slalom…

That’s what it means to live in a country that has less money to spend on infrastructure than the previous country where you lived before. It means that there are fewer miles of highway, fewer good roads, more potholes, more traffic jams, more time lost sitting in your car, more trips to the mechanic to fix your car on the day you didn’t get a gold medal in the pothole slalom, but on the day you and your car disappeared into the pothole and you were disqualified from competition. At least we have health insurance ;)

On an optimistic note, near my apartment in the City the road workers were repairing a pothole…wait for it…wait for it…AT NIGHT!!!! Only Polish people or those who have lived in Poland for any amount of time can appreciate the true miraculousness of that occurrence. Aaaaaaa-mennnn.

On another optimistic note, our house it thawing out…… and deer have visited our garden through the gaping hole in our fence. The rest of the fence is staying up through sheer will power alone. All the news can’t be good news ;)