It's A Brand New Day...

Near the end of Christmas break we were finally feeling well enough to start venturing out into the world around us again to take in some of the sights around us.  While we unfortunately didn't manage to take pictures of the light displays around town, we have other pictures from events we've run across just in our first month here.  I should explain that the street we live on follows the old town walls and there is are two parks maybe a block away from our flat.  If anything is taking place there or in the square, chances are we'll hear it.

 Recently Poland began taking the first Monday in January as a statutory holiday to mark the arrival of the three kings in Bethlehem (I think I've mentioned before that a huge proportion of Poles are Catholic).  If we had stayed in Radom, we would have been working Thursday-Friday before having the long weekend to ourselves.  Here we were, jobless in Gliwice and the English schools were all sensibly closed until after the stat -- so we had a little bit of time to look around before the hunt for work got beyond the internet.  Since arriving here, the vast majority of our travels (the one exception being the trip to Kazimierz Dolny) have  been by  train, and to wherever our feet can carry us.  We have had plenty of fodder here to keep our intrigues fueled -- the festivities at 3 Kings Day, the concerts for charity fund-raising that were in various locations near our home and throughout Gliwice.  We learned from Peter that these events were happening all over Europe and even in places across North America.

Polish Reggae band playing in the park

Unadulterated Joy

Once schools opened up again we dropped off about a dozen CV's at different schools that were within easy walking distance of our flat, and by Monday the next week Level Language School gave us a call because one of their staff members had been told she needed to go on immediate long-term medical leave.  It was apparently a very fortunate time for two native speaking teachers to walk through the door.  We started doing the odd hours here and there pretty much right away, then Speed School of English got in touch with us because they had more hours than teachers to work them.  We are almost finished training at Speed, and start our first working days next week.  In the meantime, Level had us visiting classes to meet some of our potential students and run conversation class during the winter break.  We've worked it out with our employers that Sarah will work Monday/Wednesday at Speed, while I take Tuesday/Thursday -- and the off days will be spent at Level.  The only thing that may throw a tiny wrench in the works is the fact that many of the aforementioned teacher's students outright told her when she announced her departure that they were afraid of having a Native Speaker teaching them.  After Radom (and some of the observations at level), I understand some of their apprehensions: most of the students worrying about this are kids who may not always have the ability to communicate their needs or get a point across in English; quite a bit of Polish is used in the classroom to explain difficult points; and lastly, all of them are quite close to her so there is understandably a great upheaval in their learning environment.  Hopefully most of them come around, as we have met the vast majority of them in her last days and hope that they can come to like us and the different (and by different I mean "crazy," to use the secretary's term) way that we do things with the course material.  Will it be difficult?  You bet.  Difficult for everyone.


That doesn't mean we can't do it!  :-D