What a busy (and kind of strange) week it’s been.

We had off and on snow from Sunday to Wednesday. No major accumulations, but it was nice to see. The weekend was very cold (or seasonal for here), but sunny.

On Valentine’s Day, I received snail from my good friend Nancy in Kentucky. What great timing! Nancy, I never realized that Kentucky was such a beautiful place. I’ll have to make it down there when I get back to the USA (someday).

Also on Valentine’s day, Mary and I received boxes of chocolate from Lucja. They were good! I finished them off today. Mine had vanilla filling..MMMMMM….

I didn’t have water in my flat during the day until Wednesday at noon. They were doing work on the pipes and had it shut off from 7h – 15h. That would have been fine had I known about it in advance and could have set myself up properly for it. I finally found a notice on a bulletin board saying that it was suppose to be off for those hours all week. I was pleasantly surprised when it came back on earlier than expected.

I gave a final exam to my Intermediate class on Tuesday. All passed, most doing very well. Most of the essays were FANTASTIC, two of them being just about good enough to have been written by native speakers of English. Onto Upper Intermediate!

On Thursday, I received two postcards from my buddy Brad, in Miami. My students LOVED those. They have heard a lot about Miami and now they were able to see what it is really like. Brad, thanks a lot. Also, as far as you wishing me some of your warm weather and sun to me, I totally appreciate the thought, but it didn’t work. It actually got a lot colder (it went down to –10C) that night and has been around there every night, with days going up to around –2C.

I spent a lot of the weekend writing Report Cards. When I was in school, the teacher set up generic computer related comments. We don’t have that luxury. I did a lot of writing.

I wrote the two paragraphs below in an email to my buddy Brad (in Miami) and am including them on here with his permission:

Every day I count my blessings for having this opportunity to live in such a wonderful country. My students find it interesting that a person of English/German decent like myself would love this country so much. My older students recognize my surname as a very German one. However, I have explained to them that my family has been in the USA the 1800’s and any traces of German are long gone (I am a fifth generation American). Unlike some cultures, they don’t hold my ancestry against me. Poland will always hold a special place within me.

I was trying to think of how I could be happier than I am right now. All I could come up with is that if someone gave me either a condo in Midtown Manhattan, and/or condo on the beach in Miami Beach, Los Angeles, or Hawaii. Other than that, I must say that my life is exactly how I want it at this point in time. If it all ended tomorrow and I had to return to the USA, I would be quite sad, however, I would be even more glad that I was able to spend this time in this splendid land. Call me crazy, but I love it here.

I don’t have a lot to add this week, so I am putting it on the bottom of last week.

It was another very busy week for me. I gave tests on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I like to have the tests graded by the next class, so I was busy grading papers. Also, I had to finish writing report cards. Needless to say, last week and this week were equally busy. I was very tired this weekend and spent the time just relaxing and sleeping.

The days are getting longer. It's been just over two months since the shortest day of the year and we have gained about 2 hours of daylight (sometime even sunlight!). There was a beautiful sunset today at 17h15.

We had some snow on Monday morning, and in the evening on both Wednesday and Thursday. It didn’t stay long. I guess that winter is over. That’s fine, I’ve had enough of it, although I still smile when I see the snow fall. Also, I have been told that March can be cold and snowy.

There was a segment on CNN World today y about the musical RENT, one of my all time favorites. It is now playing in Thailand and has been sold out every night. The purpose of the segment was to show how a musical with content like that is now reaching around the world, even to areas that don't discuss the issues that it portrays. Great! I hope some day it makes it to Poland (but that may take a long time...if ever).

Today, I saw something on BBC World t hat totally interested me. In the Republic of Mali, a nation in Eastern Africa, they have one day a year that is called Complaints Day. On that day, the government opens it's doors to ordinary citizens so that they can formally lodge any complaints and requests for help that they may have. What a great idea!