Shelly has done a wonderful and thorough job updating the blog but I thought I would throw my two cents in since I have a minute. The first three weeks have really been a whirlwind for me. Its been hard to even digest all the stuff that has gone in order to summarize it properly on this blog. In short, the move has taught us that the greatest pleasures and pains overseas come from the little stuff. For instance, we've really enjoyed going to the corner-store to get ice-cream bars and taking a little walk in the evenings. But we've really dreaded getting little things done like trying to get a cell phone plan or setting up our internet. I have really gotten a thrill from walking around the city and just people watching and taking in the sights and sounds of a new place. But I have dreaded the rainy weather. For the most part though, the pleasures have far outweighed the pains and we feel really blessed to be in a wonderful place like Poland.
Although I am still in the middle of a very steep learning curve at work, I am really enjoying myself and the time is flying by. It helps a lot that I am surrounded by a very cool group of co-workers who have been extremely patient and helpful. Our Polish staff is super professionial but also can let their hair down and have fun while we're working. They have been doing their job for so long that I sometimes wonder if behind their friendly smiles they get super annoyed at the new FSO's that rotate through every 2 to 3 years and make the same silly mistakes over and over again.
Shelly and I are really looking forward to mom and dad coming to visit in late July. We can't wait for them to show us around their old haunts in Warsaw and to get out to my Mom's hometown in the eastern part of Poland. It will be interesting to see if anything looks familiar. Last time I was there was about 27 years ago. Mom and dad have also offered to watch the kids for a long weekend while Shelly and I travel somewhere. So far Stockholm is the leading choice because we can get round-trip tickets for about $100 to $150 (total with tax for both tickets!). Someone suggested a website called skyscanner.net to me and I now feel like a kid in a candy store! You can plug in your start city, your preferred dates of travel and it will seek out every carrier, including low cost ones, and give you the best prices for any city in Europe for your dates. Most of the time the prices are like $50 to a $100 a ticket round trip to places like Italy, Norway, Sweeden, Germany, Belgium. My goal is to travel to every European country that I have not been to yet by the end of the tour. So if anyone out there gets the itch to travel to Europe but does not necessarily want to come to Poland, just give us some notice and we'll definitely try to meet you where you are.
I now have to get back to working on a speech I have to give to a group of Polish middle-schoolers on Tuesday about multi-culturalism in the US. I am thinking about starting the presentation with a joke about a rabbi, a priest and a iman walking into a bar but I am not sure if they would get it at their age. We'll see....
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