Jesus is Coming, and Other Important Announcements:

These are posted throughout the city. They remind me of something my Uncle Gary would bring home for Easter.

There's a few random photos that I've been promising to put up (My computer was uploading photos ridiculously fast this morning--I thought I should take advantage of it). So, this is for my Home Federal fan base: But, I don't want Leo Kringle and his SCB friends to be jealous:

And I just thought this was funny:Here's a better view of the firetruck, as promised:

In more recent news, I went out to Gravitatsia (the club across from Olowek) with the chemistry masters students on Saturday night. Sathish likes to steal my camera and take lots of pictures. He has plans to come and steal them off my computer...eventually.

Here we have Sorin, who after about three beers turns in to a dancing Maldova Man.Sunday morning, I attended Palm Sunday mass at St. John's Cathedral on Ostrow Tumski. The mass schedule was written entirely in Polish, so I compied down what I thought was the most important part, and asked Kasia to translate it for me. Well, what I had written down turned out to be information regarding an "adult mass" at 9:00 and a "grammar school" mass at 11:00. I decided to attent the little kids' service simply because my Polish is equivalent to that of an infant, and I figured that this mass would be lively enough to keep me entertained. Plus, it offered two extra hours of sleep. I arrived at the church 20 minutes early; I knew the seats would fill up quickly. Well, to my surprise, mass was already in full swing--from what I could tell, they had just begun the first reading. So, I bought my palm from the lady at the door, and squeezed in to the group of people standing in the back (standing also meant that I had to keel in the stone floor, which was not fun since my knee is still purple from the "finding the theatre all by myself adventure.") There was a huge children's choir behind the alter consisting of at least 40 twelve year olds. Between, the choir, the priests, the acolytes, and the bishop, there were at least 60 people on the alter. There was one alter boy whose main job was removing the bishop's hat. Another element of this service that I found strange was that there was no line for communion. The priests simply came down from the alter, and everyone who wanted to recieve the sacrament mobbed them.

Throughout the mass, there were a lot of people coming and going from the back of the church--mostly tourists. But, as the service drew to a close, all these people started coming in and pushing their way to the front of the crowd that had formed in the back of the church--the crowd I was standing with. I was really confused because they weren't tourists; it was mostly older Polish people. As the bishop and his groupies exited, so did about half the congrigation. Those who had been tricking in filled the vacant seats, and not five minutes later, another mass had begun. It was like a marathon of Palm Sunday services.

I was a very bad Catholic and took a picture at the end of mass. But in my defense, the lady standing in front of me did it first.

Here's the line of people streaming out of the Church of the Holy Cross. It's a huge two-storied building that was errected in the twelfth century. (I had never been inside this building, since it always seems to be locked during the week. So, after all the people left, I ventured inside and met this really friendly nun. She spoke a little English, so she tried to tell me about the church.) All the people had palms, especially the little kids--theirs were very brightly colored with purple, green, yellow, and orange.

Moving on from my adventures in analyzing Catholicism, my Indian friends invited Kasia and I to dinner on Sunday night...at around 10:30 pm. Just as a side note: nothing is spicy in Poland. I thought it would be July before I had anything even remotely spicy...well, think again. Sunday night, we fried our tongues. The Indians were laughing because everyone--especially Kasia and the French girls--was turning red as they ate their dinner. Between all of us, we only had four glasses, so along with the food, those glasses of juice were passed around the table. I don't have much expirience with Indian food, but this was excellent. There was curry, and chick peas, and rice, and a bunch of other stuff that I'm not too terribly sure what it was.

Here's the group in the kitchen:

No matter if you said you were full, someone would smack another scoop of food on your plate. By the end of the night, we were all stuffed.

Here's our cooks (minus Sathish), and Claire. She brought cookies from France, so I guess she can be considered a "cook" as well.
Another group shot in the kitchen:

No one could leave before trying the Indian tea. Sathish thought it was funny to take my picture whenever I tried something new. There's also a picture of me (on some random camera) at just the moment I tried mint apple juice.

These are my flatmates: Emikla, Kasia, and Zehra...see, they do exsist.

In other news, we're not spending Easter in Krakow. The consensus was made that Krakow is fine for a weekend trip and for the five days of Easter break, we should venture further. I was sort of disapointed, but there will be multiple opportunities to visit that city. Instead, I think we're going to Berlin, Hamburg, and the German coast. Hopefully, it'll work out.