Wow, that Eddie Murphy Sure Can Sing!

I'm uninspired. Really. I feel like I have nothing to blog about. But, in reality, as I think about it, I do have some things to share; some meaningful, some utterly not. So, in no particular order, here goes:

*we found a meeting place right in the center of town and have already held our first english club/Bible study this past Tuesday. We had 4 people come and had a great time! The first hour is topical english conversation and the second hour is an optional Bible study in English. Everyone stayed and we all had a really great time. We're starting another group on Thursdays and have had two people contact us already to tell us that they're coming. One of the two is a man who saw our flyers we posted around campus. To be real honest, I didn't expect to hear from anyone who saw these flyers, and then Peotr (the Polish version of Peter) called! Woo-hoo! Please pray for these students, that their hearts would be opened and hungering to know God more.
*I went and got my nails done again this past Saturday (a week ago) and we spoke Polish for an hour and a half! I was EXHAUSTED afterwards! Now, don't get too excited, there was a lot of pointing, grunting, and looking up words in the Polish/English dictionary. It really wasn't all that impressive, but darn my nails look good!
*Also on that Saturday (see above) we had no cold water in our bathroom. We had hot water and had both in our kitchen, but absolutely no cold water in the bathroom. Considering our track record with water in the bathroom, we were a little nervous! Turns out, it was not working in the other flats on our side of the building (which I found out from the English speaking man two floors below us--God is faithful!) and Amber and I had a slight moment of sheer terror as we heard the water start running again and did a dance of joy once we realized it was NOT flooding our flat, simply coming back on.
*I am currently loving using Coppertone Faces sunscreen as my moisturizer each morning. It makes me feel like it's summer and I'm getting ready to hit the beach. Ahhhh...
*I am reading Jane Eyre right now and LOVING it! It started out real slow, but has gotten so interesting! I have to find out what happens!
*I bought a new pair of sunglasses today. They're my "glam" sunglasses, that I feel like are totally NOT me, but were so fun. Let's just say they have a row of rhinestones on the front. Love 'em! (However, since purchasing them I've developed some sort of funk in my eye...it's all bloodshot and kind of burns. Nice.)
*By the way, that first picture (see previous post) is of the pier in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina (at least, I think it was North, maybe it was South. Mom, a little help in the comment section please!)
*Amber and I are going to our friend Agnieszka's classroom Thursday. She teaches English to high school students and wants us to come in. I'm excited about it. I think I might work on a little song and dance number. Maybe a medley of "My Country 'Tis of Thee/You're a Grand Old Flag/God Bless the USA", complete with an Uncle Sam outfit and the "glam" sunglasses...what do you think?
*There's apparently a European remake of a classic 80's song that's topping the charts here right now. I know you're holding your breath in anticipation, so I will keep you in the dark no longer....that classic Eddie Murphy hit "My Girl Wants to Party All the Time". Brings tears to the eyes. Why didn't that guy make more records? Oh yeah, that's right...talent.
*Apparently, Sunday is the day all of the rookie bus drivers get assigned to work. No joke. It seems like every Sunday to and from church, we get stuck with the drivers who are still figuring out this whole braking process and still labor under the delusion that a yellow light means speed up real fast, then slam on the brakes when you realize that you'll never make it through the light. We all know this is bad enough when riding with someone in a car...try it in a 100 person public transportation bus. We've decided that we'll be pretty good surfers after having to ride these busses standing up. Either that or we'll blow out a knee.
*Did you know that the time change just happened here? Yeah, the rest of you changed two weeks ago, but we just did last night! I love that it stays light longer, but losing that hour of sleep is rough!
On that note, I should go get ready for bed. I told you that this was a (mostly) pointless post.
I will close with this little nugget of knowledge for you: I sleep on a couch. Yes, a couch. This is the norm for many Poles, as it conserves space in flats that are typically fairly small. These couches aren't big, overstuffed couches like we're used to in the states, but more like a blend of a couch and a futon. It's not uncomfortable, but it makes finding sheets a challenge! Dobranocs! (that means Good-night!)

Do you like the new look? Our internet is being fishy again tonight, but for some reason I'm able to get to my blog dashboard, so I got to playing around and...voila!

I've got good news!!! It looks like we have a place to meet with college students and are going into Ella's classroom this Friday to invite them! Praise God! We found a room on the top floor of a building that we can use on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons and evenings for a very cheap price. It's actually a room used for physical therapy, but put up a few chairs and tables and a dry erase board and you've got a multi-functional classroom that you can make some profit from in off hours! I love it! This is definitely exciting news. Please pray for the students we'll be talking to on Friday, that they'd be interested and drawn to attend. We're also telling them to invite their friends, so please pray that the Lord would make any connections there too. This is definitely all new to me and maybe that's part of the great (in an uncomfortable kind of way) thing about doing ministry overseas...it's a continual "new step" of throwing yourself out there and trusting that God is faithful, He hears our prayers, He sees our situations, and cares about our needs. He promises to always be with us and never leave us. There's a continual choice to walk by faith or walk by what seems possible and what seems right and what seems logical (there's also a continual storehouse of grace and forgiveness when I have made the choice to NOT walk by faith). I was reminded today of the verse that says "It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that there is a God and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6). I guess that says it pretty clearly...walking with God means walking by faith, but the rewards will be sweet!

In other slightly more shallow news...I got new shoes yesterday! I even asked for my size (a petite size 39) in Polish and she understood. Also, I'm putting some pictures on here that are a salute to the new blog look. Enjoy!

It's a Beautiful Day in My Neigborhood...

I thought you might like to see some of the sights that I see every day here in Olsztyn. These are some of the places that we frequent in our little neck of the woods here.

The picture of the little shop is our local bread store, called a Piekarnia. I love to stop in there and get a fresh sunflower seed roll after language class. The ladies who work there are really sweet and help us with our Polish ordering skills.

The picture of the other store (called Malwa and pronounced "Malva") is our grocery story of preference. Grocery shopping is an ongoing process here in Poland. Since most people don't have cars (including us), you can only buy what you can carry in small amounts. Most things here are packaged smaller, making them easier to carry, but also meaning that you use it up quicker and have to go back to the grocery store! We go several times a week and have a feeling that we're becoming known as the Americans who smile a lot and have no idea what's going on.

Finally, the last picture is of one of the bus stops that we use. Just like in most big cities (So I'm told...oddly enough, Huron didn't have a public transportation system!), you have to figure out which bus to take to get where you want to go, then figure out which stop to go to AND which side of the street you need to be on. Confusing! Fortunately, I came to Poland with the human GPS; Amber's really good at that stuff and LOVES reading maps. (On a side note: I had a teacher in HS who actually made us practice folding maps because his wife couldn't do it and it drove him nuts. Quality education right there.)

So, short of a picture of our language school, these are the places that are pretty much a part of my daily routine here in Poland. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures soon of where we are meeting to hold our English conversation/Bible study meetings with college students. That's a pretty big prayer request right now. We've got a few leads, but haven't found anything definite yet, and the semeseter is getting well underway. We want to start meeting with students very soon but, of course, need a meeting place first! We're waiting to hear from a few different places, so I'll be sure to let you know when we hear anything!

Panera in Poland???

Well, I will honestly say that they weren't quite Panera, but our homemade bagels were pretty tasty! They were a bit of work, but a good Saturday afternoon activity. Did you know that you boil bagels before you cook them? Who knew?! And, do you notice the Philadelphia Cream Cheese we found here topping the bagel, as well as one of my Polish pottery coffee cups. Too bad Amber's mom found "genuine made in Poland" pottery at her TJ Maxx. I guess you really do get the "max for the mimimumski". My next goal is to try to find some good coffee-drink recipes on-line. The word on the street is that the Starbucks head-honchos are talking about expanding Starbucks to Europe. Bring it on.

Details, Details...

Can you find the one tiny difference between these two pictures? Look hard. Get out your eagle eyes. If you noticed that picture 1 has no hose from the washer hooked to the commode and picture 2 does, you're right! AND, if you guessed that if you forget to put the hose into the commode you flood your bathroom, hallway, and create a small lake in your roomate's bedroom, you're even more right! Yes, it's true. No worries though, everything's cleaned up now, Amber's carpet is drying, and the downstairs neighbor didn't have any damage and was kind enough to alert us to the flood by ringing our door bell, pointing, and saying something in Polish that probably translates to "why don't these flakey Americans just go home!"

And the Top 10 Best Things about Living in Poland are... (drum roll please, Paul)

So, since my last post kind of dealt with some of what's hard about living overseas, I've decided to post a list of my 10 favorite things about Poland.



10) The peanut butter!!! If you know me at all, you know that I am a peanut butter fiend...crunchy PB, smooth PB, PB ice cream, PB cake, PB fudge, PB topping on ice cream, PB mikshakes, basically, if it's made with PB, I'm all over it like white on bread...the PB here is really good, it's kind of natural tasting. It makes me happy.
9) Fresh Bread--there is a bread bakery (called a piekarnia)on almost every corner here. You can buy the most delicious rolls made with sunflower seeds for the equivalent of about 30 cents. AND the piekarnia ladies are really sweet and patient with us.
8) Tortilla chips---yes, that's right, tortilla chips here in Poland. The brand is called "Casa Fiesta" and for whatever reason, they taste different here and are my favorite. We have a standing order on Patsy's grocery list to pick us up a bag, since they're only sold at the grocery store near her flat. She's our supplier.
7) Walking--obviously, we don't have a car here and rely on public transportation, however, to get to the stops for the public transportation, we do lots of walking. I have actually enjoyed it during the winter, so I really can't wait for spring! It slows the pace of life down a bit, which I really like.
6) Being an aunt--as I posted earlier, it's great to be an aunt to Abby, Cara, and Becca
5) The history--I love history, and the history here is amazing. I've only really seen Olsztyn and a small part of Warsaw, but I'm planning to get out and see more as the weather gets better.
4) Seeing babies in snowsuits--I think babies and little kids are SO stinking cute all bundled up in snowsuits and you see them all over here. At first, it kind of took me by surprise to see babies out in any weather (when it rains or snows, they literally put this plastic zippered covering over the baby stroller and keep on walking!), but it's just what you do here and, amazingly enough, the babies survive and don't "catch their death of cold"! However, if a child so much as steps across the thresh hold of their home without a hat on their head in cold weather, every grandmother in a five mile radius will quickly come by and chide the mother. They're serious about covering children's heads here!
3) Cooking--there are few frozen meals here, and what few there are are nothing to be excited about SO we've had to get creative with cooking. So far, it's been great. We've made some great meals and have only ruined one pot, and that was making popcorn! I have really enjoyed learning to cook more and am even planning to attempt bagels tomorrow! I'll let you know how it goes.
2) Outerwear fashions--I suppose it comes from the fact that you have to be covered pretty much from head to toe for at least 5 months of the year, but there is a huge array of outerwear fashions here that I love! There are hundreds of styles of hats and scarves and coats and boots you never know what you might see next!
1) Of course, the people-I've met some great people here and have been so blessed by so many helpful, kind, and patient people. It sounds corny or obvious, but people are people. They may speak a different language and have different customs and traditions, but people deal with the same issues and same concerns here as anywhere else in the world.