extreme makeover... polish edition

hey guys... so things are pretty good over here. we've spent most of the last week either teaching, or tearing off wallpaper.. yep, no more winnie-the-pooh... but here are some pics of our exciting lives... our living room before...

here's chris working hard... it was quite a messme lounging in our new living room... once the canada jersey was up it felt like home again

and this is our bedroom with the wallpaper off, and the crazy carpet out.. we were pretty surprised to find hardwood underneath some blue sky.. yep, we have to take a picture whenever we see blue sky (thats how rare it is)
one of the markets here in town... where you can find almost everything, from fresh veggies, to 2nd hand clothes, to puppies

reminders of the past...
i guess we havent really talked at all about how we've been pretty fortunate to find this amazing little church near us... they have been so welcoming and friendly that its really made it a lot easier on us.. most of them dont know any english which is some encouragement for us to learn some polish. but last week we taught them all some english songs and they had a blast with that... anyways, things are good and i'm sure chris will be writing soon... she's actually teaching right now... my lesson was cancelled so she's the one making the big bucks (or big zlotys) tonight

mmmmm... gofry

hey everyone... sorry we havent updated this in awhile. but things are starting to get a little busier for us over here, yep, no more of the retired life... but we found these amazing little waffle type things last weekend, they are called gofry's and you can get them covered in whipped cream and fresh fruit.. oh yeah, sooo good.
hmmm... what else??? well, we have been working all this week. our hours are usually from 4-8 but then we teach some classes at some businesses throughout the days too... working is good, and i dont even have to wear a tie which may be the best part, even though chris and me found some pretty stylish 70's ties down in chicago, yep, they go with our wallpaper!! speaking of wallpaper, we are getting our place painted!! and the school is even paying or it...

i almost forgot about this funny walk we had the other day in the park here in inowroclaw.. anyways, we were living the retired life, strolling through the old park and there were tonnes of birds out that day for some reason.. and chris was like "kc, my amazingly intelligent husband... how often do you think birds poop on peoples heads?" and i was like, "uhhhh, i'm not sure, not too often.. i think" and i'm not kidding, no more than a minute later, "pppsssseeeeeeewwwww (thats supposed to be a sound effect of something falling from the sky) splatttttt!!!! yep, one of those birds must have heard chris talking, cause they got her with one... yep, we couldnt believe it... but we had a good laugh, and chris had to take a couple showers that day... this here is a picture of three girls giggling.. (chris thinks its heather, kerri and her) so we always have to walk by it.. and chris is wearing her new-euro-second hand-coat she found so she can fit in with all of the polish girls...so in all of the grafitti we've seen so far here, we keep seeing "kc" plastered eveywhere... yeah, i'm not sure what the deal is? but i'm pretty sure everyone was so excited that i came here they all went out and couldnt help painting my name everywhere?? i dont know??

some people were asking a bit about the hockey situation over here... so.. i've found a team in a city sort of close to here, and i practiced with there pro team a couple times this week.. but i'm no sure, they want me to play on their second team, but it could be a lot to teach and play.. so i guess we'll figure something out... the idea of teaching some young goalies has crossed my mind.. and its been pretty neat, cause there has never been a CANADIAN hockey player here before so its cool to talk about things back in canada.. and i sure appreciate what we have at home more now.. the equipment here is pretty interesting to say the least...

ok, i think its chris' turn..

Things are getting a little easier here, understanding the culture and a bit of the language....only a little bit. I am excited about getting the appartment painted, I even get to choose the colors, so it is going to have to match our bright green coach.
So, KC has made some waves in the Hockey scene in Torun, he is being a little modest but he has had 2 interviews with the local newspapers since he has been practising with the team... I picked up a paper the other day and the only thing that I could understand was "Casey Guenther....."so I am going to get one of our fellow teachers at our school to translate it. So, I guess we will see what happens with the hockey thing.... we still want the freedom of being able travel.
I have been really enjoying the markets here, they sell everything from second-hand goods, old machinary parts, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, clothes, fresh fish and puppies... and so much more. Okay, I hope that everyone in Manitoba is enjoying the snow!

one week... or so

This is Casey typing:
so we've been over here for a little over a week... and here are some of the things we've picked up so far:
-people over here dont realize smoking is nasty for them
-there are no such things as "pedestrian crossings"... yep, the drivers are insane
-coal is still used to heat most places, so there is usually a weird smell in the air
-the food is awesome!! peroigies, sausage, potatoes, and today we had these amazing waffle things with whipped cream, called gofry's
-most cars here make the volkswagon rabbit seem huge
-people love wallpaper, this is a picture of our bedroom

since our schedules have been pretty slack so far, we've been spending a lot of our time walking around town, exploring different places, and basically living the retired life. yep, inowroclaw is known for their spas so we've been down to this one quite often... it's not your typical north american spa though (i think, but i've never been to one at home). but they drip this salt-mineral water down these ginormous walls and then the air inside is supposed to be super good for you... so we've been told...

we start our jobs next week, which should be fun... we hope... and i think we'll get our phone hooked up at some point, yeah, everything takes time when you dont understand anything...

Chris's turn:
The fashion is a little different from what we are used too, all the women are very dressed up. They all have the crazy pointy boots, with the tallest, skinniest heels. It would be the last thing I would want to be wearing on uneven cobblestone streets. ( I haven't seem anyone wipe out yet). Actually, there are some very nice clothes too....I only have been window shopping so the prices might be expensive.
It was Independence Day today, we caught the tail end of a memorial service in a park. In the town there were Polish flags decorating all the buildings....other then that we didn't see or go to any other events...so it was a pretty average day for us.
Tomorrow we are taking the train to Torun, and we are on a mission to find the hockey rink, I guess I should say that KC is on a mission and I am dragged along. Actually, Torun is a very pretty town, with lots of things to see.... Okay....don't want to bore you too much. Thanks for reading.

some pics..

so we had the day off today, so i guess its time to get osme pictures up on this site. but school is going good, we've been sitting in on a lot of classes, but tomrrow is our last day, and then we'll be good to teach. they students all seem pretty eager to learn, and are usually full of smiles and laughter, especially when they hear us try to say anythign polish.

but these are some random pictures from our trip so far... a statue of copernicus from our trip into torun... chris keeping busy on the train... the downtown square from inowroclaw...

everyday things

I am sitting in a very smokey internet cafe right now, it is even hard to see the screen. It has taken KC and I a couple of days to find a place to e-mail. The definition of internet cafe has changed for us, you think that it should be a nice quiet place while you drink your coffee and e-mail your friends. Wrong, what we have come across are very dark, somewhat spooky, dance music blaring and very smokey rooms with a few computers and sigh...no coffee.
Everyday we are reminded how little things, like taking out the garbage, can be a chore if you don't understand the language or culture. There are so many mysteries when having a language barriers, for example we went out for pizza tonight and I don't know what I ordered but when it arrived it was like an omelet on a slice of pizza....and they eat ketchup with their pizza! Also, grocery shopping can be a challenge, I thought that it would be easy...but I bought pepper and it turned out to be lemon pepper....and then I bought salt and it turned out to be salt for softening meat. (we were wondering why all our food tasted funny)
I know that it will get easier with time and then we will laugh at our struggles. Actually, right now we are working on painting our appartment, but we really don't know how to go about this. Our bedroom had alot of wallpaper on the walls, and it was very childish....so we ripped it all off to expose plaster walls. So, I guess that next step is getting some paint...but the problem is that we don't even know the word for paint. Okay, I think that we will survive and we have meet some very helpful people here.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles...

So after 16 hours on a train, a couple days in Chicago, a flight to London then Warsaw, to the scariest taxi ride ever to the most confusing bus ride ever.... we finally made it here!! A lot of you are probably wondering where "here" is... but we are in the city of Inowroclaw, a couple hours northwest of Warsaw. There are around 80,000 people here, and not too many of them speak English. At first we were a bit confused when everyone we asked about Inowroclaw just looked at us with this dumb Canadian look, but we figured out that its pronounced a little different than we might think, its more like in-a-wvats-wah.... and we learned some more Polish last night at this little cafe where they had these sort of verenka pierogies with strawberries and blackberries!! , yep, so now we can not only pronounce the name of the city we're in, but we can also say thank-you too!! but you can't say it before you pay for the bill, or else they keep the change. But we are starting to get settled here, and we'll hopefully get the internet hooked up in our 70's style apartment soon as well as getting some pictures on this thng for you all to look at.