Avanti Italia goes to Poland. Molly and Annabelle Dawidow were part of our Avanti training in Searcy last August. Molly and her husband run the Bible Institute in Sopot, Poland, and the two women have come up with their own syllabus and their own methods for teaching English using the Bible. They had many interesting things to show and teach us in August, and so Jillian and I have been wanting to go up there and experience their process for ourselves. We took a ten day trip to Poland!
We left beloved Italy on Thursday morning, December 3rd from Pisa. I had made the Ryanair reservations about a month before we left for Jillian, Kyle, our friend Phyllis, and myself. What I didn't realize was that Phyllis was bringing a checked bag AND a carryon. Oops. We had a connecting flight in Frankfurt (most of you already know what horrors that place has always held for me) that was scheduled to depart one hour after we landed. Which would have been close even if we all had just carryon luggage, but it was almost catastrophic in Phyllis's case. So we landed, were shuttled to the main airport, and then we flew! Not on a plane, but through the doors of the airport to the luggage claim. Then Jill and I continued our flight to the check-in desk, through security and to our gate while Phyllis and Kyle waited for the suitcase. Jill and I made it through about 5 minutes before the flight desk closed, so we had little to no hope that we would ever set eyes on Phyllis and Kyle again. Of course, in a moment such as this, something ridiculous would have to happen. Some kid comes up to Jill and tells her that he needs to check the size of her bag and weigh it - this is after we have gone through check-in and security. Luckily all was in order, but it gave us a scare. Then, while anxiously waiting at the gate, we see the crowds part, and Phyllis rounding the corner just out of the security line! Running through the crowds, yanking on her coat while toting her not-too-small carry on, she finally caught up with us. But no Kyle! They stopped him in security to search him. Arrrghhh! Just then, they announced that they were boarding our plane. We had priority boarding, so Jill and I went ahead and got in line. Still no Kyle. Finally, just as they were taking my boarding pass out of my hands, Kyle comes through the door. By then, however, the other passengers have formed a huge line, blocking the path to the priority line. So everyone has to wait as Kyle pushes his way through the crowd, saying "Scusi, scusi"...in Germany. Then the flight attendant asks if there are anymore priority boarders, and Jill proceeds to explain to her in Italian that there are two just right over there. ahhahaha! We were a little bit frazzled! But we made it onto the plane!
Little did we know that our flight would be re-routed. Instead of landing in Gdansk where we were scheduled to land, we had to land in the city of Poznan due to the weather. The flight attendants informed us that a bus would take us from Poznan to the airport at Gdansk. Sadly, Poznan is about 5 hours away from Gdansk/Sopot. Also, at the airport information desk they didn't seem to know what bus we were talking about at first, and then they told us it wouldn't be here for another hour. So rather than waiting for an hour, riding five hours on a bus to arrive at a destination that we weren't ultimately headed for, we rented a car. And droooove to Sopot! We arrived at midnight - Molly had already prepared a lovely dinner for us, as she thought we were arriving earlier, so we had a nice leftover midnight meal. :) Craziness! But we made it, and that's the important thing.
So we stayed in Sopot at the Bible Institute for the next week, teaching English lessons learning the things that Molly had to teach us. It was very, very helpful, and I feel like I will be able to use the things I learned and apply them to my lessons here. I made friends with a lot of the students, and I was sad that we were just staying a week. They were all so sweet and intelligent. Several of them remember when the Harding chorus came and sang in the local competition and won, so that was a neat thing to have in common.
During our time in Sopot, we were able to make some day trips to the nearby towns of Gdansk and Malbork (which has a medieval fortress which is the largest brick building in the world). And then our time in Sopot was over! It went by so quickly. We left early on Friday morning on a train to Torun on our way to Warsaw. Torun was a neat town - the home of Copernicus and a gingerbread museum. We really enjoyed seeing it. And then Warsaw! Warsaw is an amazing city. So much history there. If you ever go, you have to go see the Warsaw Rising Museum. Trust me. Also, we got to see our friend Ivo! He used to live in Italy when he was little and returns there once or twice every year. But he is Polish and lives in Warsaw, so he picked us up from the train station and ate a late dinner with us. It was nice to get to visit with him. The next day, we went around and tried to see as much as possible - impossible to do in just one day. But we got to see a lot of interesting things. It was cooooold! In Sopot it wasn't too much colder than here in Italy, other than there being no sun during the day. But in Warsaw there were snow flurries and wind. Brrrrr. We flew out Sunday morning at 6:15am. Yippee. We were sad to leave, but happy to see beautiful, sunny Italy again. What a great trip.
I got to catch up on a little bit of the culture shock that I haven't had yet in Italy. Polish! What a daunting language. The title of this post is about all I picked up while I was there...I learned to say some other phrases like "thank you" and "hurry up" (for Kyle), but I only know the phonetics. It was kind of tough to be in a place where I couldn't communicate WHATSOEVER. While I'm not fluent in Italian, I can communicate. I guess I'm just going to have to make sure that this never happens again. It's going to take a long time to learn all the languages of the world, so I think I'd better get started now...on to German!
