Week two (20/02/12 – 26/02/12): Personal experiences

 To begin our week DarÓma and I decided to make ourselves feel more at home by decorating and cleaning our room. After the shock of having no kettle, oven, microwave, or toaster, we are now very comfortable with our new surroundings. This week we got the practical aspects of our stay in Poznan sorted; paying for all of our accommodation, food shopping and getting my student card (as I couldn’t get mine last week.) We also managed to wash our first batch of laundry, which is something neither of us was accustomed to doing at home, (to our shame).  On Tuesday evening we were introduced to: Truita de potates and pá amb tomáquet which is Catalan for potato omelette and bread with tomato. We are planning to make traditional foods every week with our Erasmus friends, so we will need to find some ingredients for stew!

We had been having a few difficulties organising our classes, (meaning we had none!) which we have finally got sorted with some help from Laurence and Margaret. The two classes we managed to organise this week were not quite what I had been expecting, to say the least. Polish lessons terrified me! The three of us are constantly confused and clearly have no clue what is being said. I found myself understanding why people are asking me to slow down when I speak. It has taken us six hours to learn all the ways to say “hello, my name is...” However, I will be practising this week, so hopefully I will be able to type something in Polish by next week, as I know I will not have an opportunity like this again. “Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”  (Brown, R. M., 1988:155)
Our other courses, “Teaching Strategies in Early Childhood Education” and “Education in Poland,” have been combined and involve us looking into other countries methods for teaching and visiting Polish schools to see how they differ from schools in Northern Ireland.  After attending this class I felt much happier as the professor is very helpful and I know I will learn a new perspective of how to teach from being in the class.

WROCLAW



Hot chocolate and Polish cheese cake

Over the weekend we headed off to Wroclaw, which is two hours south of Poznan, with fourteen other girls and Michael (I didn’t hear him complaining!) DarÓma and I had been very proud of ourselves after being able to ask for the very complicated tickets, (in Polish) correctly. Wroclaw seemed very big in comparison to Poznan (after us thinking it was huge compared to Belfast!) It is filled with streets of beautiful, old buildings, which have a modern interior. Due to the weather being ridiculously cold we had to find shelter in coffee shops, where I discovered so many delicious treats I will make the most of while I am here! (I just hope I don’t arrive home five stone heavier too). The weekend was also a great opportunity to build on our relationships with the other Erasmus students. From being involved in the Spirit of Enniskillen at home, I find it very interesting to hear about other countries conflicts in comparison to ours in Northern Ireland. My friend Aina, has been teaching me about Catalan, which has its own difficulties and benefits with being a part of Spain. Michael, Aina and I got to travel first class on the way home! I can’t say it was very different but we enjoyed it nonetheless! Overall, it was a great way to end the week.  

Reference

Brown, R. M. (1988) Starting from Scratch: A different kind of writer’s manual, Bantam Books, USA.