Just me and Krakow.

This morning I said good-bye to Vova, Mihal, Bartek and Monika and departed for Krakow with Julie, Ala and Charles. Leaving the Wojewodzic family was a lot tougher than I ever imagined it would be. Though I've only known them for just over a week, we had a great time together and we all found ourselves holding back tears as I left. I miss them already!

Now that I'm here in Krakow, sitting in Hostel 7 on the beautiful main square, I actually find myself wishing I were back in Nowy Sacz. Sure, I was able to spend a fun afternoon here today with Julie, Ala and Charles walking around Kazimierz (the Jewish neighborhood) and seeing beautiful architecture... but now it's just me and Krakow for a day and half - and I have to say I'm lonely. Marc - where are you?

Tomorrow morning, I will venture out into this beautiful city to see more of the amazing architecture, meet other travelers, buy some Polish memorabilia, see some more synagogues and churches, and eat a few final Polish meals before I head home on Thursday. It's been a great trip! I have met some remarkable people along the way and I have been to some pretty crazy places. Now, I believe I'm quite ready to come home and start processing everything I learned. Just me and Krakow tomorrow and then on Thursday it's Boston, here I come!

Checking in before my last weekend in Poland.

This weekend will be my last here in Poland - for this trip, at least. Time has been passing by so fast. I can't believe that this time next week, I'll be home already! (Sad, really.) I'm not exactly sure what my plans will entail for the weekend - I am at the mercy of my host family, which has proven to be just fine so far. However on Tuesday, I will be traveling to Krakow to spend (my final) two days/nights exploring the town. I have managed to coordinate my schedule perfectly so that I will be in town for the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow! This means I will get to attend different concerts and exhibits, as well as a workshop or two - maybe on Jewish cooking, or Hasidic dancing, or paper cutting... Or maybe I'll simply wander around the town and enjoy the sites. It sounds like it will be a peaceful and reflective ending to a busy trip.

Of course, there are so many observations I still have yet to put down in blog format, so I hope you all will continue to check this site even after I return home. In the meantime, I just wanted to say have a good weekend, whether you are in Japan visiting Hiroshima (and your husband/wife to be), or Vancouver celebrating a 30th wedding anniversary, or in Tennessee visiting schools, or lounging around at home enjoying the summer weather. Have a good one!

My host family.

The Wojewodzic family quickly has become my Polish family. Monica and Vova (pictured here with me in Krynitsa) are both about forty years old and have their own business - making and selling designer bags. Evidently, this is the real deal. They have their own factory and designers and sell their products all over Europe. I am expecting to take a tour of their office and factory before I leave. They even have a website, which I will post under the links tomorrow. (It seems I wrote down the wrong website this morning.) The two of them work very hard every day to provide a nice home for their boys. Monica says she believes they are different from many Polish families in that they have a rigorous schedule (working from 8am to 6 or 7pm everyday) which means that they do not spend tons of time together as a family during the week. But they do sit down every morning and evening together to share a meal. This is a lot more than many American families can say!

Their home (to the right) is situated just outside downtown Nowy Sacz. It is beautiful - and it was designed by Monica and Vova over many years. It is a completely open space with no walls separating any of the rooms on the first floor, except the hallway, closets and bathroom. Upstairs, there are 4 bedrooms, plus 2 bathrooms. It is very comfortable here - to the point of making me feel as though I'm on vacation somewhere far away from Poland. They have a decent sized yard with a large pond, hammock and barbecue pit. Do I have to come home?

Monica and Vova have been very kind and gracious since I arrived last Friday. Monica's English skills are limited, but we have been able to find a way to get across all important ideas. And she surprises me with certain words sometimes like "grave" and "stain." They just seem like unusual words to me. Anyway - we get along so well that stayed up until midnight my first night just talking about life and the many differences between life in the US and life in Poland. This is our most popular topic of conversation.

The boys, Bartek and Mihal, have been great, too. Bartek has been at school most days, so I have limited interaction with him. He's also a 16 year old boy who is anxiously awaiting summer break, so he's off with his friends a lot. Mihal is a wonderful young man who is getting ready to head off to the university in Krakow next fall. He has been a great help transporting me everywhere, showing me different sites and serving as translator between me and Vova. Vova speaks no English and a lot of Russian and Polish, while I speak a lot of English and minimal Russian and no Polish whatsoever. It is difficult living here for these 2 weeks knowing that I came here with little interest in learning Polish. Monica and Vova knew the situation (that I only speak English) before agreeing to take me in, but I can't help but feel as though I am being disrespectful for not trying to learn more Polish. I have been making an effort lately to learn phrases and words, but I think my brain is just so full of information that I hardly retain anything for long.

Despite the language issue, we have been having a great time together these past few days and I am looking forward to the next week. Maybe we will get to go out for ice cream again tonight?

Village - the beginning of the journey.

On Friday, June 1, we arrived in Vidin, Bulgaria - our first destination. It took us 2 days to get there by car - and I must say we saw many amazing sites and met some true characters along the way. During the drive, we stopped to visit different villages and cities in Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria where former synagogues still stand - some in a better state of repair than others. In Subotica, Serbia, we spent our first night of the journey in a brand new hotel in the city center. It was so new that no one in town even knew it existed. (Mind you, it is situated on the main pedestrian square in the center of town.) There, we met with a group of budding activists who wanted to learn more about the Polish Solidarity movement of the late 1980s. The next morning, we continued our journey and saw more synagogues and sites, mostly churches and municipal buildings. That second evening, we stayed in a roadside hotel connected to a gas station in a village called Svrlig, still in Serbia. Gordana, Chedo and Gaga, partners of MTO, warmly welcomed us into their home for dinner and a long discussion of the irrational processes and procedures related to receiving grant funding from the EU. The following afternoon, we reached our destination - Vidin. Can you believe that we bypassed both Belgrade, Serbia and Budapest, Hungary in order to arrive in Bulgaria on time? I guess that means I'll have to come back at some point to explore these places.

OK. So - to the point of this post...

On Saturday, June 2, we began our workshop - the Village Project. As I have mentioned before, Village is a kind of curriculum that encourages democracy, civic participation and social responsibility. It is intended to be carried out by children ages 8-12. In Vidin, we conducted a very basic workshop on this program with 12 Serbs, 12 Bulgarians and 2 Moldovans - all educators - with the idea that they would take the information back home and implement the program in their schools. Village Project is a dynamic event with unique aspects that depend very much on the interest and motivation of the group of participants. Therefore, it is difficult to describe the project in concrete terms, but I will do my best to give you the overview (see link for more details).

During Village Project, the group of participants actually physically builds a village from scratch, but everything is done on a scale of 1:25, which means that it's miniature and there is a lot of math involved (YUCK!). Each person or "peep," the name of the being that lives in the village, receives a plot of land on which to build a home - and then you build your home with the craft materials provided. Just imagine 26 adults in a room making small houses out of cardboard, paint, paper and glue over the course of 8 days. It was a remarkable sight. Some of them took the task very seriously and considered every last detail down to the leaves, stones, and roof tiles. But, alas, this is not the point of the project.

The brilliant idea behind Village is that once you have done all that you can do on your private property, you start to think about the village as a whole, and different questions start to arise. Will there be any public buildings in the village? If so, where will they be located? And who will build them? How will the community make decisions about these things? Will we have a system of governance? What will it look like? Who will be in charge? How will we determine who will be in charge? Will each peep have responsibilities? Jobs? As these questions arise, the peeps come together to discuss issues and make decisions. Sometimes good decisions are made and everyone is happy, while at other times poor decisions are made that frustrate the village citizens. So - then the meetings and conversations continue... It is a very hands-on way of teaching children (and adults, too) about government and the common good.

Because we only had 8 days to implement the project, it was difficult to take people away from building their homes and to get them to recognize the issues that make the Village Project such a useful tool. Another MAJOR obstacle we encountered was language. The workshop was conducted mostly in English, but many of the participants did not speak English. Some translation was needed into Bulgarian, Serbian and Romanian, which took up a lot of time. Despite this, the project was well received by the participants and the community of Vidin. The local media came to document the final ceremony and to see our village, Oaza ("Oasis"). I also spoke to many participants who already were thinking of ways to implement the program in their schools.

It was a great experience for me to see the project in action, and to debrief with Julie, Ala and various participants each day. Through those conversations, some participants were able to work through the finer points of the project and gain a deeper understanding of the possible impact that this curriculum could have on children. If even ten percent of the program participants take what they have learned back to their schools, then we have the possibility of teaching thousands of children in the region about some very important issues. I have received e-mail addresses from many participants, such as Holly from Vidin, Milan from Svirlig, and, of course, Galina and Mariana from Cahul - and I hope to remain in contact with them throughout the year to learn about the successes and challenges of the Village Project in their communities.

I'm back!

My whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe is over - I'm back in Nowy Sacz. On Friday morning just after midnight we returned after about two weeks of workshops and driving - I will write more about this in a later post. Now, I am living with an amazing host family, the Wojewodzics (Vohevodich) - Vova (dad), Monica (mom), Mihal (19) and Bartek (16). They have a gorgeous home just outside downtown Nowy Sacz, and I already feel quite at home here. We stayed up until midnight last night just talking about life. I am looking forward to a great few weeks with them.

This weekend, I expect to spend time resting and seeing different sights. Internet time is limited at home, so I will not write much from here. But I will check back in during the week.

The true journey begins

Tomorrow morning at 6am, Julie, Ala and I will depart on our two week(+) trip through Central Eastern Europe. The purpose of this trip is to conduct a 10-day workshop in a village on the Serbian/Bulgarian border, as well as another 2-day workshop in Ternopil, Ukraine. Our plan for the journey includes traveling through Poland (of course), Slovakia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. Though I will see much of these countries from the backseat of a car, I am nonetheless filled with excitement and anticipation for what we will experience during our travels.

The first leg of our trip will take us across the border into Slovakia where we will stop along the way for a swim. I have been assured that there is an ideal swimming spot that we must visit! Then, we will take the scenic route through the mountains (purely for my benefit) and enter Hungary. We will press on through Hungary, just barely bypassing Budapest, and arrive in a small town in Serbia called Subotica where we will spend our first night with some friends of MTO. The next day, we will continue our drive through Serbia with a stop in Belgrade, and we will spend the night in the town of Svrlijg with another friend. On our third day of driving, we will cross the border to Bulgaria and arrive in Vidin, a town which is very close to the village where we will be hosting our first workshops. For the next 7 days or so, we will be conducting workshops in Dunavci - these workshops will explore issues of social responsibility, group decision-making and teamwork by tasking the participants with creating and running their own village. The participants, all educators, will then take their skills back to their schools and teach their students about what they have learned. Most of the people planning to attend the workshops are Serbians and Bulgarians who live in the area and who have been ensconced in an ethnic conflict for some time now. It will be interesting to experience the group dynamics in this situation and to see how successful they are at bridging their differences. (To learn more about the subjects we will be presenting at the workshop, please visit the link to the Village Project on the left side of this page.)

After this workshop, we will move on to Ukraine, by way of Romania. On our first day of driving we will stop in Timisoara and visit with some more folks who have ties to MTO. Then I think we will drive directly to Lvov, Ukraine where we will spend an evening relaxing in a lively, modern city. The next day we will travel to Ternopil where we will conduct workshops on the Public Achievement program model (see link on the left). This program teaches young people to identify common problems in the community and to take the necessary steps to solve them. We may take a third day to do a monitoring visit in another village nearby or we may simply head back to Poland. Ultimately, we expect to arrive back in Nowy Sacz on either June 15 or 16. Whew!

Now that I have had a few days to adjust to the change in time and a different way of living, I am looking forward to this next part of my adventure. I have enjoyed spending time with Julie and Ala over these past few days, even though all we've been doing is preparing to leave! It has been an eye-opening experience for me to see where MTO is, who plays a role in their programs and how the organization functions. I am impressed by their hard work and commitment to helping people.

During these next few weeks, I expect to have limited access to the Internet. I will post as I am able, but please do not be alarmed (mom!) if I don't write as regularly as I have been. I will report back when I can with pictures and stories so, hopefully, you can get a feel for my experience.

Arrival in Nowy Sacz

After a 7 hour flight to Munich, a 6 hour layover in the airport, another shorter flight to Krakow, a 30 minute taxi ride to the bus station and a 2 hour bus ride, I finally arrived in Nowy Sacz (pronounced No-vee Saunch). OK - so the length of time it took to get here was nothing compared to Marc's 41 hour trip, but I'm definitely worn out.

When I arrived at the bus station in Nowy Sacz, Ala was there to meet me. It has been almost two years since we last met in Moldova during one of MTO's monitoring visits. After receiving the warmest of embraces and briefly catching up, Ala whisked me away to the home of one of her friends, Ioana, where many were gathered to celebrate Ioana's name day. (In Poland, birthdays are not celebrated. Instead, they celebrate name days that are tied to Catholic saints days.) There I enjoyed a feast of salads, meat, fruit, vodka, wine and Ioana's famous dessert - layers of meringue and mocha frosting. It was such a great introduction into Polish life. I wish I could eat dinner there every night!

Despite the fact that most of Ala's friends were speaking Polish, I felt surprisingly comfortable in this situation, thanks in large part to my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova (and Ala's kind attention, too). Having people speak to me or around me in different languages is something that was very commonplace as an American in Moldova. Plus Polish can sound very similar to Russian, so I was able to pick up on the context of a few conversations last night.

After dinner, I was brought back to the MTO dorms and was able to get settled in. I will stay here for the first few days of my visit and then will move to a host family when we return from Bulgaria. The dorm is located in a beautiful building with all the modern amenities such as a shower with hot water and computers with Internet access. I really am feeling quite spoiled.

This morning, Ala took me on a basic walking tour of Nowy Sacz. The town has some beautiful architecture, including many churches and municipal buildings. Since the weather was so nice, there were many families out taking walks together and enjoying the sun. Ice cream seems to be a popular food item - at least in the summer time. In fact, Ala told me that the richest man in Nowy Sacz is an ice cream manufacturer. Evidently his ice cream is very popular in Russia. I guess I'll have to sample it before I leave.

Tomorrow I will spend some time learning about the school and meeting some of the kids, teachers and parents. Unfortunately, my Polish is minimal, so I hope everyone will be interested in practicing their English with me. I also hope to continue my conversation about MTO and SPLOT (their school) with the people who live and work here.