9/4/13
I never realized how skilled I am at kayaking. We drove to the lake where it is warm and has small channels weaving between the forests. No one wanted to be my partner though because they were afraid to speak English with me. When the headmaster said for everyone to choose their partners… the boys all chose girls and then it was just me standing alone. Sunny was chosen but some quiet guy. I was standing there, alone, on the grass. Talk about an embarrassing moment. The headmaster told the guy also standing alone to be a man and ask me to be his partner. The boy finally gave in as everyone watched him walk over to me.
Turns out we were a good team and he spoke pretty good English. He was just embarrassed in front of his friends to have to kayak with the foreigner. I guess this is going to happen to me a lot. I am the intimidating foreigner to them even though they are intimidating to me because there are more of them.
I just remembered, the weirdest thing happened to me after breakfast!! I was sitting in my bed taking a cat nap while Sunny was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. Then there was a knock at the door so I pushed the covered off of me and started to get up. A boy, 16 years old, then opens me door and walks right into my room and straight up to the edge of my bed. He just stands there and stares at me. I said, “Yes?” He said hesitantly, “are you in 1M?” I said, “No.” He stands there for another minute contemplating something then turns around and walks out of my room. I guess in Poland they don’t know they need to wait for the response after the knock before they walk into someone’s room. Now I know to keep my door locked.
We had to do team building exercises like your team of 6 people all have to stand on 1 crate for 10 seconds. We also had to make a huge machine by each person touching the others, making a noise, and having an action. It was a very interesting looking and sounding machine. Another game was having to get your team on the other side of the rope by going over the rope. You couldn’t touch the rope or use any other types of material besides your teammates. We were being timed so the guys on our team lifted all the girls and threw us over the rope. Then we had to lift the guys over the rope. It was mind boggling how to get a 175 pound guy over the rope with just us girls. The best game though was when we played a hand game. Everyone sits in a giant circle. You place both your hands on the peoples’ knees next to you. You have to watch their hands closely because 1 tap of the hand means passing the energy but 2 taps on the knee means bouncing the energy back so it goes back the other way. I ended up winning though! Being a very observant person really paid off. I can’t wait to play this game at home.
After all the exercises, Sunny and I stayed with the staff by the fire pit. The staff gladly spoke English with us. This man Greg was an English professor so he was more than happy to speak English with me. All of the staff and I played a card game called Dabble. On the cards are pictured. Each card has at least one picture the same on another card. There are only so many pictures total so there are many combinations. There are 5 different games within this major game. We played it in English which was entertaining because the staff didn’t know all the pictures’ English names. I actually lost a few of the games but it was a really fun time!
At night I sat with the staff around the fire pit while they played English songs on their guitars and drums. We sand “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele and “Hit Me Baby One More Time” by Brittany Spears. The polish kids sat around staring at us and we just laughed when we forgot some of the words to the songs.
What a great day!!
Stephanie Raquel
