Easter and The Resurrection

So, how do folks in Poland celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Here goes from beginning to end…

Most people start out with a good clean of the house especially windows as mentioned in previous posts. Next, comes shopping and decorating and then cooking. Some people go to church on Good Friday. Most people go to church on Saturday for a short service (taking place about every 30 minutes) in which the priest blesses your Easter basket. We did it one year and my basket was disappointingly under-decorated for the event. Here’s an example of a decorated basket for church. You can see why kids love this part.

Some people observe a fast for Friday and Saturday ending with Easter breakfast in which you share the blessed egg from the basket and give each other wishes (something like with the blessed wafer on Christmas Eve). Some folks go to the Resurrection Mass at 6 a.m. on Sunday and others go to ‘normal’ Easter mass later on. After that, the fast is off and most people really eat in earnest – sausages including white sausage, soup with white sausage and hard-boiled eggs, horse-radish sauce, meat, bread, cakes, chocolate bunnies ;) etc. The rest of Sunday is spent resting and visiting family and friends and if the weather permits going for a stroll.

Easter Monday begins as Śmigus-dyngus or lany poniedziałek. That’s where kids squirt parents with water or parents squirt kids with water and teens roam the street squirting or even pouring water on friends and passersby. Some say it is a spring ritual to wash away winter’s dirt. Others say it is a kind of popularity contest for the best girl in the village. I suppose that means the most popular girl will get splashed the most? Easter Monday is a national holiday in Poland and many folks go to church which with the teens and their buckets of water can be a risky proposition.

On Tuesday everything returns to normal (except for our waistlines).

As you can see some people spend their holiday practicing their religion, honoring their traditions and spending time with family and friends. As my sister-in-law who works in odwyk (drug & alcohol re-hab) can tell you, some other people, however, spend their Easter in quite a different way. Just check the drunk-driving statistics for this weekend. More than 1000 drunk drivers were caught by the police. No comment.

Our Easter was (and still is) totally cool. We did the shopping Wednesday and cleaned Friday sans windows. We decorated the house and eggs on Saturday and cooked all our delicious dishes. On Sunday the girls received a few Easter gifts and then we visited family and went to the playground. Now, on Monday we are relaxing at home. It was a nice holiday.

A few pictures…

pickled eggs and ćwikła

Easter cake for the kids

Pisanki

wooden eggs

real egg – blown out

real eggs – hard-boiled and decorated by a friend

our eggs

Happy Easter!

Easter Preparations

My mother called me yesterday. She wanted to ask if we received the Easter package that she sent. We got it, in record time, less than a week. I planned to hide the box until Easter, but since the kids were home when it was delivered, there was no chance of that happening. The box was full of fantastic things-swimming suits, clothes, books in English and a lot of Spiderman (Lizzie) and Dora (Rosie) things. Thanks Mom!

My mother also wanted to remind me that it is time to do my pickled eggs if I want them to be good by Sunday. I am one step ahead of her because I’ve already bought all the ingredients. I guess tonight after work, I’ll be spending some quality time in the kitchen instead of vegged out in front of the TV watching “The Biggest Loser” which I, in fact, count as my exercise time ;)

My mother’s pickled egg recipe can be found here.

I know it may be cliché (here in Poland anyway), but I really feel the pressure to clean my windows before Easter. I mean, not enough to actually clean them, but just enough to say loudly for all to hear that our windows are due for a cleanin’, sigh. Then another sigh, louder than the first. Then a third sigh and wait to see if it has had any effect. Nope, the windows are still dirty. Remember, I don’t bow down to the pressures of Polish society ;)

More on Easter window cleaning here. Gawd, that clip art really does look like me, all smile and teeth.

Happy Easter Preparations!

Happy Birthday, Dear Lizzie

Lizzie is 5 years old. I can’t believe it. It seems like just yesterday that we were bringing her home from the hospital and she’s already 5.

Her party was a big success. She invited her “ekipa” (crew) from pre-school consisting of all boys and one girl (her besty). The party was super-hero themed with Spiderman decorations and a Batman cake (that I made myself…fishing for compliments…).

I wore a Super Mom t-shirt, well, because I AM a super mom. Lizzie’s besty’s parents even wore masks and capes. What an entrance they made.

There were a lot balloons, games, play dough, mess and tears from the guests when they had to go home. I guess that’s the sign of a good party. One kid threw a badminton racket out the window. Crazy…and that was without Piccolo (“champagne” for kids which we hate). Luckily, it got stuck on the roof and we were able to get it back in. Those pre-schoolers really know how to party.

Now, if I can just make it through Easter.

Happy Birthday, Dear Rosie

April is a month of birthdays for us. Last week was Rosie’s 3rd birthday. This week is my father-in-law’s 70th and next week is Lizzie’s 5th. With a niece’s and nephew’s birthday this month, that adds up to a lot of cake ;)

Rosie’s party went off without a hitch. Well, maybe one small hitch…she didn’t understand that the presents were for her. After the guests had gone, she asked why they hadn’t taken the toys with them. Sweet.

I am proud of the cake I made. It’s a ladybug, in case you are not sure. There are 3 layers of chocolate inside. Pycha!

Lizzie’s English group at Pre-school (yes, we send her to English lessons, it’s only 20 złoty a month) also celebrated some birthdays and the kids learned to sing “Happy Birthday”. Lizzie, however, had one small problem with “Happy Birthday” and quickly informed her teacher.

She said, “Teacher, it isn’t Misiu-day. It’s Birthday.”

Do you get it? I didn’t at first.

For those of you who don’t get it…

In Polish there isn’t the “th” sound like in the word “birth”. For people who have trouble with this sound, they replace it with “f” or “t” or sometimes “s” as one of my students famous for his “sank you”. In this case, Lizzie’s teacher replaces “th” with “s” making birthday into birsday which sounds like bearsday. Bear is misiu in Polish, hence my daughter’s conclusion that the teacher was talking about Misiu-day.

If you have an April birthday, Happy Misiu-day to you!

April 1st : Elevators and Me, Part Two

When we moved into our 1st apartment in the City, our dirty, stinky 1970’s apartment building without a 90 degree angle in sight, I was excited to find that we had an elevator,well, 2 elevators exactly. In my world, elevators are cool and our building had 2 stairways and 2 elevators and 2 sets of intercoms. Wow! Ameryka!

“Our” elevator exited right outside our apartment door. It was smaller than the other elevator. The other elevator (down the hall from us) was large and had one large door, you opened and closed by hand. There was no sliding automatic door. “Our” elevator was considerably smaller and had a series of doors. You opened the first door by hand, stepped in, the first door slamming behind you. Next, you had to close another set of double doors and press your floor and …usually nothing happened…because the interior doors almost never closed right. You usually had to hold them shut with your hands. Not that there was any danger that they would open and you would fall out, but if they were not closed properly you wouldn’t go anywhere.

My traveling on the lift usually looked like this. I got through the first door, then closed the second doors behind me and held them shut. I pressed the button for my floor and….nothing. I opened and closed the doors again, pressed the button and nothing and so on and so on in some compulsive-obsessive ritual until I finally gave up and walked to the 7th floor. Finally, I just gave up on the lift altogether and walked to the 7th floor (which had its own perils as our apartment building was a popular haven for the homeless…another post, another time).

Early one morning, I decided to pop to the store downstairs to buy something for Misiu and me for breakfast. On my way back, full of morning optimism, I decided to take the lift (or maybe I was just afraid the homeless people I stepped over on the way down the stairs wouldn’t appreciate me stepping over them again on the way back up). The same procedure as always, doors closed, hold shut with hand, press button and miracle of miracles, I’m going up, up I tell you! And then the lift stops…but not at my floor, well, almost at my floor, actually between the 6th and the 7th floors. I ritually open and close the doors, hold them with my hands and press some buttons. Then the lights go out and I cannot see what buttons I’m pressing. I pressed them all, one after another, until I located the alarm bell, which is just that, a little bell inside the lift which serves to do nothing more than to notify you, the person already stuck in the lift, that you are in fact stuck in the lift. The bell was pretty loud though and our apartment was not far away so I decided to ring and ring and ring. Nothing. I wasn’t going to be saved by the bell this time. I began pressing each button and manipulating the doors. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the elevator starting moving again and deposited me back where I had started on the ground floor.

As I walked back up to the 7th floor even the homeless people catching the look on my face got out of my way. I walked into our kitchen and slammed my shopping onto the kitchen table to which hungry Misiu asked, “What took you so long?” I growled back at him, that I had been stuck in the lift. He laughed, “All this time. Yeah, right.” I implored, “I really was. Didn’t you hear me ringing?” “That was you?” he asked disbelievingly. “I wondered what that ringing was.” “That was me,” I said defeated. “Really?” he asked again. “Yes,” I answered exasperated. “What did you think I was doing?” “Well,” he started, “it is April Fool’s Day. I thought maybe it was a joke.”

Happy April Fool’s Day

Here’s Part One of the elevator saga – Elevators and Me – Windy i Ja

Too shy, shy

Last night I spent my evening blowing my nose like crazy and coughing enough to hack up a lung – pre-school virus. I hope you all spent your Saturday night in a much more entertaining way.

I also had a run through all the channels to check what was on and settled in on MTV’s One Hit Wonders from the '80’s. As I remember the '80’s from the first time around, a lot of memories of childhood came flooding back as I listened to those old hits. I also like to watch those kinds of programs with Misiu and hear his memories of the 80’s. We have a lot of similar memories and excluding one crucial potassium iodide incident, you’d hardly suppose we’d been brought up on different continents. Oh, the uniting influence of pop music.

My favorite video from last night’s line-up was Kajagoogoo’s hit “Too Shy”. Who could forget that song? (Who could figure out what they were actually singing?) And who could forget Limahl’s hair?

Misiu has a memory connected to this characteristic hairstyle…and no, he did not wear this style himself, but an older boy from the village did. Can you imagine what an influence music has that young boys in England, in the US, in Poland and all around the world were sporting the same crazy hair-do after one hit video. So it was not Misiu who was sporting this do but rather his friend Tadek. Misiu to this day is convinced that Tadek, armed with his Limahl hair, was able to single-handedly score all the chicks from DDR (Eastern Germany) who were in Poland on kolonia (camp).

Who could resist?

PS Do you know Shakin’ Steven’s song “Kła czas tu lulbe”? No? You’ve never heard Misiu’s friend Danka’s version? The actual title is…..??? Anybody venture a guess?

I guess Polish really is hard, even for the Poles ;)

In case you haven’t heard, Poland has suffered a serious spelling gaffe, by our President none the less.

Here’s what happened. President Bronisław Komorowski and wife wrote an entry in the book of condolences at the Japanese Embassy. He wanted to write that Poland connects with Japan in pain and in hope which should be “w bólu i nadziei” but instead he wrote “w bulu i nadzieji”.

What can I say? Even I know how to spell these words in Polish. President Komorowski responded in the only way he could. He apologized and has corrected his entry. He did also add a little dig at Kaczyński (opposing party) claiming that Kaczyński writes “obiad” (dinner) as “obiat”, but overall his apology was genuine.

Here’s my question: Why do Poles even have spelling problems? Excluding a few letters which have interchangeable pronunciation “u,ó” for example, Polish is completely phonetic. Sorry Polish people, I have to explain this to our English speaking friends who have suffered through years and years of spelling tests and spelling bees trying to figure out if it should be “so” or “sow” or “roofs” or “rooves”. Listen to me English folks…in Polish if you know how to say a word properly, you should be able to write it properly as well, with little to no interpretation. No homophones. Can you imagine that? English speaking people should make spelling mistakes. Our language is completely messed up.

Now back to the President’s mistake. Just how big of a mistake was it? You know, after 8 years of George W. I have a pretty high threshold for presidential gaffes but for those of you who do not know Polish, I will try to explain the extent of the humiliation. It is like if in one official letter, the President wrote, umm, I don’t know “definately” (instead of “definitely”) and, umm, I don’t know, “ejucation” (instead of “education”). Ok, the “ejucation” example is maybe a little harsh, but it is taken from reality**.

parody of the President from Szymon Majewski Show

Spelling mistakes really get on my nerves (of course when made by others). I was interested in looking at some terraced houses being built close to our place until I saw the price :) and the billboard advertising “wysoki standart” (high standard) instead of “wysoki standard”. With an ad like that you are just shooting yourself in the foot from the get go.

One of my students who is infamously unpleasant to all (to me as well) writes “ktury” instead of “który”. It was my pure pleasure to point it out to him. Normally I wouldn’t have said anything but it was right after he very strongly criticized my Polish skills. Revenge is sweet.

** This is taken from a real life example of a classmate of mine from university. We were asked to exchange compositions in English Literature class before handing them in. My classmate’s paper was entitled, “The American Ejucation System” or something like that. It was in no way his attempt at irony, believe me. I told him to take a look at “ejucation” and he slapped his forehead and said “Of course” to which he promptly changed it to “Ejucational”. Problem solved.

PS Here’s a link to an old post of mine about the Polish language – Polish is hard. Enjoy.