Since I Last Posted

The last week and a bit have seemed to escape me, things are moving fast here! 

Last weekend I had a Rotary meeting in Torun, Poland, a city about three hours away from Olsztyn. It was great to see all the kids from the language camp again, everyone in that group is so kind and welcoming. We always have a lot of fun together! The day we arrived we went on a sightseeing tour around the city, if I'm being honest we all spent more time catching up with each other than listening to our tour guide, but it was great to see the city. 

The side streets of Torun!

We also got a chance to make Piernik (Ginger bread!) that the city is famous for. We made batter as a group but it takes a long time for that to be ready to use so we used pre-made dough for our souvenirs. I say souvenirs because they aren't for eating, once they come out of the oven and cool they harden. 

The following day we got to go on a short cruise on the Vistula river, it was a beautiful night for it! The group also had a lot of energy from the ice cream we were able to enjoy earlier that day :) The weekend went by too quickly, I already miss all the other exchange students!

As you know I have been running here. Today I got to go to my first race! It was a challenge for me because I am used to running five kilometer races on a very different terrain, today the race was just one kilometer. I may seem like that should be easier, but I haven't run a race that distance before and it was really hard to pace. There were only about 20 girls in my age group and I ended up coming in 12th. It felt so good to be running and the atmosphere of the meet was similar to the meets at home, I was very happy to be a part of it! 

School has still been a challenge, the kids are polite but not as open as I was hoping they might be at this point. Olivia and I mostly try to work on our polish but it is a very difficult language to learn, especially in an environment where you can not say the words and listen to the sounds. Next week we will be starting our language classes, I am looking forward to beginning this process. 

The highlight of the last week and a bit was meeting Domi! Kuba introduced me to her early last week. She is so sweet and so kind and was so excited to meet me, it made my whole week! This week we went to Old Town and got ice cream, it was so fun! She loves to speak English which is great but what is even more exciting is that she really wants to teach me polish :) Neither of us really knew where to start so we would just point at things and I would say the English name (which she knew) and she would tell me the polish name. Unfortunately my memory is not great so we've had to repeat all the same things but it's a lot of fun to talk to her! It's not exhausting like school is, we both were a little shy at first but we were very excited to meet each other! I'm bummed because she doesn't go to my school but I hope to see her after school and on the weekends when we can. 

I'm missing everyone at home and I send lots of love your way! I've heard that all the color is coming out in Vermont, it's not quite out here but the view from my house is beautiful without it so far!