Get the lead out!

Renovating an old farm house is something that sounds like fun when someone else describes it. Usually that someone else has an eye for style and deep pockets. We have neither.

Our house renovation is a never-ending story. We started from the roof, changing the original cement roof tiles circa 1935 to blachodachówka – brown sheet metal which mimics the look of tiles. Some people think that this is a blasphemy and if you are a renovation purist, you will not like my home. I have antique next to IKEA and I don’t give a shyte. When we did the roof, we also needed to replace and rebuild the top meter and a half of the chimney. The workers also cleaned out the chimney. Our next door neighbors got back an iron frying pan and a set of grocery weights that they had lost about 15 years before. They were in our chimney. Don’t ask. We also have a przybudówka (a porch addition) that needs to be torn down and rebuilt. For now, I’ve just decorated it (like lipstick on a pig) with a wind chime that my mother gave me. It is just like the ones my mother has at home so every time it chimes I think of her and home (sniff, sniff). We decided to install wooden windows but now I think plastic might have been a better idea. After that, we did rozpierducha totalna ;) (complete gutting) and removed all the plaster on the walls and removed the floor/ceiling exposing the beams. We put wooden planks upstairs and built an open space room, a bedroom, a bathroom and an open attic/loft. Downstairs, we put tiles in all rooms. The tiles are dirt colored which is quite handy with 2 kids. Each room has 2 doors so you can go around our downstairs in a circle from room to room. We have all the original doors except the bathroom door (here on the left) which we had made because there was not a bathroom before. We still have the original stairs and we are debating to keep them or change them. I wanted finished concrete stairs, kind of industrial looking but not one single ekipa (work crew) will make them for us. “People don’t make stairs like that. You’ll never sell your house.” I hate that kind of unsolicited advice. It was the same thing when we wanted to put the bathroom upstairs next to the bedroom. Everyone advised us to make a przybudówka downstairs. You can make one up to 20 square meters without a building permit if you are adding a bathroom (the first one) to your house. Our neighbor politely inquired if it wasn’t going to be burdensome traipsing upstairs and tracking in mud when I am working in the field in my Wellington boots. I wanted to ask when have I ever been known to work in the fields but instead I replied that in that case I would do my business behind the barn or take off my Wellies first.

Our house renovation is at a standstill. We are at the stage of just thinking about what to do next, not in any “designer’s” kind of a way, more in a “we’ve run out of money but when we get some what are we going to do next” kind of a way. We have to do something about our old doors. I really like that we have old doors. They make a nice contrast against the fresh walls and exposed beams.

kitchen doorliving room door

living room door (other side)

playroom door

playroom door frame after sanding

The one problem is that paint is in very bad condition. I even like that look but in some places it is peeling off. My plan was either to scrape off the worst places and paint a clear sealant over it or to sand down everything and then wax them. As I scoured the internet looking for info about paint removal, I noticed a lot of warnings about lead in old paint. I had some students in the US who were affected by lead poisoning as children so I really started to get scared. I found some information that lead paint was banned in Europe for home use in 1930 and my house was built in 1935 but that is no guarantee. I didn’t want to sand the doors and door frames down making potentially toxic dust. I also didn’t want to scrape off the paint and put it in the regular garbage. I began searching for a laboratory who could test the paint chips. Thanks to the recommendation of some fellow English teachers on the Gazeta Wyborcza forum, I was able to contact a laboratory to test the paint for 146 złoty. If you are one of those teachers, thank you again. We are waiting for the results.

pictures from upstairs

What do you know about Poland?

I have to admit that before coming to Poland for the first time, I did not know a whole heck of a lot about the country. I knew the basics of history and Poland’s unfortunate geographic location between the Germans and the Russians. I knew about Wałęsa and the Solidarity movement. I also knew that Polish people eat a lot of kiełbasa, cabbage and pierogi. As a typical all-American girl, I thought that little bit of info, a Polish/English dictionary, 200 bucks and a smile was enough to sustain me in this foreign country.

I do have some Polish heritage on my paternal grandmother’s side, but in practicality that was of no use to me. I knew only 2 words of Polish from my Grandma, szafa and dupa (wardrobe and arse). I cannot think of any bind that I could get myself into that these two words alone could save me. I didn’t realize that szafa was even a Polish word until going to school and asking the teacher where the szafa was. I had never encountered that word except at my Grandma’s because who has wardrobes in America? Not too many people I think. I discovered the word dupa as foreign during a school recess game of “duck, duck, goose”. My cousin was “it” and when she hit the goose she screamed “I hit you on your dupa!”. None of the kids knew what we were talking about. I asked my mother what was up and she explained that it was Polish. Huh? Polish, another language. People in Poland speak Polish. Huh? Grandma’s parents came from Poland where they speak Polish. Huh? People from different countries speak different languages. What?! Yes, I was a sheltered child.

Armed with szafa and dupa, I applied for a few jobs abroad. I thought it would look good on my CV. The job in Poland was arranged through a non-profit organization that finds you a job and…that’s about it. I had to buy my ticket which I did not earn back in a year!!! of teaching in high school in Poland (and that is with trzynastka even -the 13th salary which is a bonus for teachers). I was able to meet with the organizer of the job in person. That’s where I got some strange information about Poland. The strangest being that there’s no soap in Poland. C’mon it was about 10 years ago and I somehow survived each day without Googling everything but this was a fact I didn’t even need to Google. I was pretty sure that Polish people were washing and they were using something resembling soap. After a bit of grilling this man (who has been coming to Poland for the last 20 years), he conceded that Polish people do use soap but that it is very hard to come by and that I should bring soap along with me. Soap for a year?! I don’t think so. I decided to check out this information with a friend who had been on a student exchange to Poland a few years earlier. She assured me that there was soap in Poland but that there wasn’t Secret antiperspirant. Ok, that I could live with. In addition to putting my mind at ease about the soap issue, my friend had a few more pieces of advice.

Piece of advice #1-When offered flaki, decline. (Flaki is tripe.)

Piece of advice #2- Carry about 50 złoty in your pocket so when you are mugged, you can give the money quickly and escape. (Useful, except the first time I was attacked, the attacker wasn’t interested in my money. The second time I was attacked, my attacker stole my shoe…from my foot.)

Piece of advice #3-When you meet someone with gold teeth, they are probably Russian and you should be careful (Never needed to use this advice.)

Piece of advice #4- Budapest yes, Bucharest no. (Went on a trip to Budapest organized by the Dept of Agriculture with a bus full of farmers and retired farmers from the Leszno area. Fun!!)

My next source of information about Poland came from none other than the Polish Tourism Bureau. After looking at their brochures, I thought Poland was an awesome country where everyone either spends time on the beach or climbing in the mountains with intermittent visits to luxurious spas. Sign me up!

Later when I became more knowledgeable about Poland I liked to make fun of those less knowledgeable than I. I’m cruel like that. My parents were quite worried about me so to make them feel better I sent them a couple of pictures. First, I sent them pictures of our school’s basement and told them that was my apartment. Next, I sent them pictures of some garden sheds (szopki i altanki na działce) and told them that those were people’s houses. It was in revenge to my complaining that I didn’t have access to a washer and my father telling me to just go and buy one. It would have cost me 3 months salary at the time. My sister had other concerns for me such as worrying about my access to hot water. She also wanted to know if we have bread in Poland. I informed that we do, but second hand from Germany. “Second hand bread from Germany? How does that work?” she asked. “Yes,” I wondered, “how does that work?”

What do you know about Poland?

He don’t read.

I just read an article about Jenna Bush Hager (daughter of George W. and Laura Bush) who is joining the TODAY show as a part-time correspondent. She also works as a reading coordinator in a school in Baltimore, Maryland.

I also worked in Baltimore, Maryland in the Baltimore City School District and we didn’t have a reading coordinator. I’m sure of it because one day I discovered that one of my 15-year-old students could not read and I went looking for help only to find I was on my own.

What’s it like to find out that one of your students in the USA cannot read? It was scary. All of our reading had to be done in class because we only had one set of books which absolutely had to stay in the classroom. The books weren’t in great condition but considering that they were older than I was at the time I was teaching, I guess they were holding up pretty well. Want to read about the Vietnam War? Sorry, not possible, it’s not in our book. Want to read about the end of segregation in the South? Sorry, in our book the South is still segregated. As we were reading a few bits in turn, I called on a student to read. Another student promptly informed me, “He don’t read”. I responded that in my classroom everybody has to read. She said, “No, he can’t read”. The student in question in fact could not read or write. He was neither embarrassed nor proud of this fact. I was mortified. I mean, Jesus, Baltimore’s motto is “The City that Reads”. (It’s also the city with high levels of childhood lead poisoning and the number one ranking for syphilis and gonorrhea.) As soon as I could, I informed my bosses and asked what I could do. The reaction I got was not what I expected. From one boss, I was told to make all necessary adaptations to allow the non-reading student to be successful in the classroom (WTF???). From another boss, I got something like -Poor little girl in the big city school. You’ve got a lot to learn.

So with no reading coordinator or any assistance I tried to make adaptations. I gave the student oral exams. I allowed him to create artwork for his homework. I tried to teach him to read. Were we successful? No, because to actually pass through high school without being able to read and write you have to be a genius with a perfect memory. I’m not knocking this kid, but genius he wasn’t.

At the end of the semester, I did the only thing I could have done. I failed him. I did not see the next part coming. I was called into the principal’s office and ordered to pass him. “You don’t want to see him again next year, do you?” I refused and was written up for disobedience. In the end, he was passed by authorities over me. Sometimes I wonder what happened to that kid.

Article about Jenna Bush.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/32618067/ns/today/

The Gospel according to Doda

I’ve recently discovered a blog that probably the rest of the world discovered more than a year ago - http://www.livingoprah.com/

It’s by a writer from Chicago who did an experiment of living her life for one year following all the advice given by Oprah and her guests. It got me thinking. Who would I model my life after here in Poland if I wanted to do the same experiment?

At first I thought about Ewa Drzyzga whose talk show Rozmowy w toku on TVN is the closest thing we have to The Oprah Winfrey Show…except that it is nothing like it. It’s a talk show alright but there is none of the lifestyle advice or fashion advice or shopping tips or whatever else is on The Oprah Show now ‘cause I haven’t seen it in more than 5 years.

Then I thought about Kinga Rusin, TV journalist and presenter, probably most famous for her divorce from another TV journalist Tomasz Lis (yeah, I know stuff) and her win on the Polish version of Dancing with the Stars. I gave up on that idea. First of all, I can’t dance worth shyte and have you seen her arms? Living the life according to Rusin probably involves a lot of weight-lifting or pick-axing in a mine or testosterone injections or whatever it is that she does to get arms like.

Kinga and her arms.

Maybe former first lady, Jolanta Kwaśniewska, who is said to be a classy lady and now hosts her own television show Lekcja stylu (Style Lessons) on TVN Style. She explains things like the global importance of owning a cashmere twinset and the proper way to eat a ptyś in public. She also follows the model of former US first lady Hillary Clinton (No, not in the political arena. She doesn’t have time when there are so many people with pressing ptyś issues) in that her hair keeps getting bigger and bigger. From all my candidates she would be the best, but I can’t get over the fact that she is a big Communist, oh I mean former Communist, new Social Democrat. Whatever. By the way, she recommends a very complicated ptyś eating procedure which involves cutlery. I have a piece of advice for ya. If you are not confident enough to lick cream off your fingers in public, then don’t pick the ptyś. Order yourself a nice safe piece of cheesecake.

Jolanta and Hillary back in the day and more or less now.

Completely and totally unrelated cheesecake story. Once when boxer Andrzej Gołota (known for hitting Mike Tyson below the belt) was in town for a fight, I met some of his crew by chance at a bakery in the Market Square. They were easy to spot- 2 New Jersey guys wearing sweatsuits that said “Golota Crew” on the back. I helped them with their order of 2 cheesecakes. Yeah, that’s right. Not 2 pieces of cheesecake, but 2 cheesecakes. What’s the proper etiquette for digging into a whole cheesecake in public? I ran into them later at the airport and they were quite sure I was stalking them.

That leaves me with one obvious choice, Dorota Rabczewska aka Doda the famous Polish popstar. She’s kind of like the Polish Madonna but in her younger years. Yes, she is a bit scandalous but who cares? When you have an arse like that you can command the world. My life as Doda would begin with obvious cosmetic surgery. Then I would have to learn to sing or something. Next on my agenda after visiting the little Lolita dress shop would be getting myself a football player husband to marry and then leave and then get back together with and then leave again, and so on. I think some tatoos would be in order as well. And what should all of that bring me? Well I’m hoping for a legion of loyal fans. In fact, I know where I could get my first fans - in my village. Let me explain. In my village, there’s no bar. There used to be, except the bar didn’t have a liquor license (I’m totally serious) so you had to go to the shop, buy some alcohol and come back. For obvious reasons, the bar went under. Now if you’d like to drink in the company of your friends (ie other former PGR workers who want to get away from their wives for awhile) you need to go to the shop, buy some alcohol and drink in the little “bar” set up by the shop owner. I would never dare enter this place but under the cover of early morning, I was able to get a shot of it.

In my opinion it looks a little bit like a chapel with an altar to…...you guessed it, my new life coach Doda!

I will let you know how my plan works out ;)

Super Skeeters

Headline: The City has been overrun with mutant Super Skeeters mercilessly biting you and your children day and night getting fat from your blood and coming back for more.

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/

Ok, there was no such headline, but I think there will be soon. Due to the wet weather conditions, the City has been taken over with mosquitoes. The City has tried to strategically spray against the mosquitoes more than once only to have their plans foiled by rainy weather. I am convinced that this spraying has in fact led to a new breed of Super Skeeters. It used to be that we had a skeeter problem only in the evening. We’d pop a Raid® Electric - Fly & Mosquito Protector into the electrical outlet and 15 minutes later our mosquito problem was forgotten for the night. Not anymore. No longer does the mosquito liquid get rid of all the skeeters. A few annoying stragglers are left alive each night. For the ones that the Raid manages to kill, the sheer number of them littered on every surface in the morning is a bit scary and kind of gross. We are bitten at night when we sleep, in the day at home and at the playground. The worst is when one gets in the car with us. There’s no escaping them.

Lizzie seems to be the most afflicted. When she is bitten, she has got a huge, itchy welt lasting for 3 weeks or me. Yesterday, Lizzie asked why skeeters like her so much. I told her that she must be very yummy. She informed me that she is tired of being dinner for the skeeters and that we should buy some mosquito food at Carrefour instead. Logical, isn’t it?

I know you will not believe this, but I received my first mosquito bite in Poland. I also sliced bread for the first time in Poland too, but I’ll save that story for another time. Somehow, I managed to avoid mosquitoes in the US and really did not give them a second thought. Then I came to Poland the first time on a teacher exchange to a very mosquitoey place and found out my first night what it meant to deal with those buggers. I spent half the night trying to squash those pesky things until I finally fell asleep with exhaustion. I woke up the next morning to find myself covered with bites including 5 on my face alone, 2 of which on my eyelid resulting in swelling so bad that I could not open my eye.

When I met with another teacher from the program, I saw that not only I had a skeeter problem. My colleague, however, had come up with a much better solution than my ineffective and time-consuming pillow-squashing technique. He had bought himself a Raid skeeter thingamajig. I had not even heard of such a thing at that time, so I marveled at how he was able to find it and buy it in a small town with no self-service shops. For those of you unfamiliar with what that means, it means that all the stuff you want to buy is behind the counter and you have to tell the lady what you want to buy in a language you do not know. Imagine doing your grocery shopping via a game of charades. The first hundred words I learned in Polish all revolved around food and toilet paper (I wanted the tp with butterflies, not the gray stretchy kind. I don’t recommend the charades thing for buying tp though). My new best friend armed with the knowledge of the word “no” in Polish went to the shop and told the lady behind the counter, “Nie, bzzzzzz. Nie bzzzzz” and went home the proud owner of his new skeeter defeater. Hmmm, what should we have done to get beer?

Cut Hillary Clinton some slack

If you have not heard how American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost her temper last week, here it it is in a nutshell. Hillary Clinton, during a press conference in the Democratic Republic of Congo, took offence to a question from a student who mistakenly asked her what the opinion of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, was instead of the opinion of Barak Obama the current president. Instead of supposing the student could have nervously misspoken, Clinton ripped into him with, “Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state. I am. So, you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I'm not going to be channeling my husband,". That poor student probably wet his pants.

Read more: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2009/08/13/why-hillary-clintons-outburst-in-africa-was-reasonable.html

I say cut her some slack. Her husband has been all over the media for swooping down into North Korea to save those 2 damsels in distress while Hillary has been visiting refugee camps in Africa. Who knows how many times journalists have asked her questions or the same question about her husband. Maybe this question was just the last straw.

I can totally sympathize with Hillary. Not about the Secretary of State, husband former President of the free world/damsel in distress swooper thing but with the annoying and repetitive questions thing. Have you seen the television show Ranczo? No, well, neither have I but that somehow doesn’t make a difference to the people who like to ask me about it. Everything I know about Ranczo is what I read in the first few lines of the wikipedia entry http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranczo_(serial_telewizyjny. Basically, Ranczo is a sitcom about an American lady named Lucy who inherits a manor house from her grandma which she plans to sell but after falling in love with the charms of village life in Poland she decides to stay, renovate the house and make her life in Poland. After reading that I think you know what people say to me.

Some unfortunate person says, “Oh my god, have you seen Ranczo? You are just like Luuuuceeee. You have a house in the village too, just like Luuuuceeee. You are renovating your house, just like Luuuuceeee! Do you blah, blah, blah, just like Luuuceee? Did you see the one where Luuuuceee does blah, blah,blaaaaaaaaaaah?

I scream in response, channeling my inner-Hillary Clinton, “Aaaaah! I am not just like Luuuceee! My house is not a manor house! It’s a red brick money pit! I did not fall in love with the charms of village life but with the charms of my Misiu! Congratulations on being the 1000th person to ask me that. Your prize is my foot in your arse!

Unfortunate person who hardly noticed my screaming, “But you are American just like Luuuceee. That is so funny”.

Actually my response is something like this, “Really, I’ve heard something about Ranczo but I’ve never seen it. It sounds funny”. I’m too polite for my own good.

Ranczo could be funny for all I know because I have never seen it and I don’t really care to either. The fish-out-of-water set up sounds promising but I suspect it falls flat like most other Polish sitcoms (think BrzydUla, Polish’s Ugly Betty). Misiu says that he adores my sitcom sense of humor and that is enough for me.

Ok, Ranczo fans. Let me have it ;)

Awkward moments

Here is just the first installment of awkward moments I have had with my students. There will be more to come.

Who are my students? Mostly, they are business people who would like to learn English for work. If they are lucky enough, they have lessons at the office, during work hours, paid by their company. Most often they already know some English but from time to time I get a student who is just starting out. I teach factory workers, accountants, doctors, company presidents, politicians, lawyers, other teachers, university students and even some children. Some of my students take lessons just for fun, some focus on business English and others are preparing for exams such as CAE. I also have a small group of students who have lessons because their friends have lessons with me and they want to have bragging rights too. For whatever reasons my students have lessons, I am happy to teach them awkward moments and all.

**Please note that the ranking does not represent level of actual awkwardness. It represents nothing other than what popped into my head first.**

Awkward moment #1 When I go to a company for a first lesson, it is easy to place my student in the hierarchy of the company. I see the position on the door, the size of the office, the number of hot secretaries, the obligatory leather furniture, the framed picture with Bill Gates (Did somebody say, “Next, please”?) and any other office status symbols. When I meet on neutral ground for a first lesson, I often get some information like this from my boss Misiu, Przezes Zarządu (CEO) of our language school: “You gotta meet with Jurek from the bank. 9 am Saturday. Don’t be late.” And so I met with Jurek from the bank on a Saturday morning 9:00 sharp. I was wearing jeans and a blouse. Jurek was also wearing jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days. Think the t-shirt you paint your house in after you’ve painted your house.

With coffee, notebooks and pens ready, the first-lesson tango begins.

“Where are you from?” he asks. “From Pennsylvania,” I answer.

“Why do you want to learn English?” I ask. “For work,” he answers.

“Why did you decide to come Poland?” he asks. “Long story,” I say.

“How long have you been learning English?” I enquire. “For 15 years, on and off,” he states.

“Mówisz po polsku (Do you speak Polish)?” he jokes. “Trochę (a little),” I laugh.

“What do you do at the bank?” I ask.

The music stops and our tango screeches to a halt.

“Hmm, umm, well I, ah, I work there,” he says.

“Ok, but you have a job title, I suppose. What is it? Knowing what you do will help me prepare our lessons,” I explain.

“Well, I do so many things that my job title is unimportant,” he defends.

“I understand that, but it must say something on your business card,” I pry.

“Well, it does but it doesn’t really matter because it is my brother’s bank. I basically help my brother,” he explains.

Reverting to Valley Girl, I ask, “ So like what, like your brother, like owns the bank?”

“Yes,” he replies.

Thank goodness I had not led out with my Exercise on the 2nd Conditional entitled, What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Awkward moment #2

After many lessons with questions such as the million dollar one from above, I can predict what my students are going to say and what mistakes they are going to make. That’s my job. However, you should not ask a question assuming you know the answer and you should never ask a question you do not really want the answer to. I learned that lesson well when I was starting out teaching. (BTW, top answer by Polish people to the million dollar question is to travel around the world.)

I had what I thought was a brilliant worksheet practicing the difference between “Have you ever done this?” and “Would you ever do that?” Most of the questions were pretty tame like “Have you ever eaten sushi?” or “ Would you ever jump out of an airplane?” For one particular student I decided to spice up the questions a bit. With the mildly spicy question “Have you ever driven drunk?” I got to know that my definition of drunk driving (drinking alcohol and then driving) is different than my student’s definition (drinking alcohol, driving, getting caught by the police). The question “Have you ever stolen anything?” required a Bill Clinton definition of what exactly “ to steal” means. In the eyes of my student, poorly-secured items could not be classified under “stolen” and if you acquired them while abroad, whether the items were secured or not ceased to be an issue. While strange, those moments were not awkward. Here comes the awkward.

First, I must explain that this student had a peculiar habit of closing his eyes for extended periods of time while speaking. He would begin to speak and take a 20-second or longer blink. It was very unnerving when we started our lessons together. Later, I learned to take advantage of my 20 seconds of invisibility to yawn, glance at the clock or scratch my nose. After learning that my student had in fact eaten sushi, been bungee-jumping and climbed Kilimanjaro, I asked the next question on the list, “Have you ever been to a prostitute?” ha, ha, ha. A very awkward yet honest answer ensued. My student had started his career as a sailor and as a sailor often frequented prostitutes in ports all around the world. Thank goodness his eyes were closed and he couldn’t see that my face was red as a beet.

Awkward moment #3

Awkward moment #3 also involves a 2nd Conditional Exercise. Who knew that grammar could be so dangerous? The student in this case was a very nice, soft-spoken middle manager. He was so nice in fact that he made up a wife to talk about in order to make the lessons more interesting. It almost backfired on him when he invited the secretary on a date and I told her that he was married!

Question: Would you donate a kidney to a stranger?

Answer: No. (That’s not the shocking part.)

Question: Would you donate a kidney to a family member?

Answer: No. (Still not shocking)

Question: Would you donate a kidney to your child?

Answer: No. (There’s the shock for ya.)

Chris: No?! Not even your own child!?

Selfish, middle manager: No.

Chris: But, but why not?

Selfish, middle manager: I have only one kidney.

Totally embarrassed English teacher: Oh, sorry about that.

One-kidneyed, middle manager (There’s one-legged so I guess that is how to write one-kidneyed): That’s ok, you didn’t know. Maybe my wife could donate her kidney…

Misiu has reminded me that I have also had awkward moments while teaching in the US-maybe next time.

What about your awkward moments?