Wait...this isn't Nebraska?

This week, the weather forecast for Poznań Poland has a dominating theme: rain. Yesterday, it rained throughout the majority of the day. Of course, I have yet to buy an umbrella. So, I managed to dart from my dorm to the tram to my institute without getting completely drenched. There is no shame in using a grocery sack to keep your head semi-dry--these are the things I learn in Poland.

Here's last night's sky as seem from my bedroom window. I thought the clouds were interesting; almost Wizard of Oz-like.
This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to wake up to sunshine. The sky was blue, and the weather was descent (mid 40s), so I decided to ride my bike to class. This is the Collegium Novum, which houses all the faculties of modern languages at Adam Mickeiwicz University. (The Economics University--a completely seperate institution--is visible in the backgroud. One of Marcin's first bits of advice was to always go [he he; I split an infinative] to the Economics institure for lunch. Their caffeteria is better.)
The main entrance:
Some trees in the parking lot and the cero-point/bookshop where one can illegally make lots and lots of photocopies.
And the other wing of the building. The place is huge; the first time I went there to find Marcin, I ended up being very, very lost. I never actually found him, and we had to reschedule our meeting.
This is my office, 214B; it's not quite as nice as my mommy's fancy desk as Home Federal Bank, but not everyone can be that special. I take what I can get. I share this office with (I think) four other people. We all hold office hours at differant times, so I have only met Marcin and one other prof who was in the office this afternoon. Note the lovely Polish sunlight--it makes the room seem very happy and bright.
Now for a momentary break from touring buildings, and a small change of topic. I got to lead part of the seond year class this afternoon! Mike spent the first part of the class explaining how they are expected to construct paragraphs in English, which is very differant from the Polish style. Mike has told me (many times already) that Polish has a tendency to be very flowery and elaborate in sentence construction. And because of the language's inflection-dependent structure, this writing style works well. However, if one tries to transfer this writing style word-for-word to English, the ideas, focus, and meaning of the writing tend to get lost. English is far too word order dependent to write this way. So one of the big things he stresses in class is writing short, simple sentences. Also, in Polish it's not customary to write argumentatively (my LAS kids from last year would have loved to write "Polish style."); instead, one is supposed to present both sides. In short, students need to put aside a lot of Polish writing habits in order to write well in English.

My portion of class focused on writing a letter to the editor. We read a short article regarding the Elgin Marbles from our book, and tried to compose an outline of what a letter to the editor should include. Jay Chipman would be very proud: everything I wrote on the chalk board was spelled correctly. The whole classroom expirience this afternoon was reminissant of Viva Elvis! from last fall (which is a very good thing). I really enjoy working with writing...which may be why Megan Larsen keeps sending me all of her personal statements.

Also, just as a side-note, I really enjoy talking with Mike, and I think I'm going to learn a great deal from him this year. He's a linguist by trade (he's fluent in Polish, as well as Polish and American sign language. I'm guessing he has more languages to go along with those--I just haven't gotten that information yet.) and he's really knowledgeable about teaching in relation to the behavior of Polish students. And he's very willing to give advice and answer my questions, which I greatly appreciate.

Returning to our Poznań tour, I rode my bike home through the stary rynek (old city center) and searched for a store that would carry a contact lens case. This item tops my list of "Most Difficult Things to Hunt Down in Poland." I was unsure of the word (and I forgot to ask Mike), so I went searching with "case for contacts" and "containter for contacts." Both got me some strange looks, and in one case, resulted in the English speaker being pulled from her lunch break so the she could decifer what I was trying to say. I finally found an Optyk that actually carried contact cases, and I attempted to ask the woman behind the counter "what is this called?" so I could avoid this situation again. But that didn't work out as I intended. She explained that "this is for the right, and this is for the left." So now, I have something to keep my contancts in...I'm still not sure what it is in this country. Anyway, rynek:
And the ride home:I decided to ride my bike home around the Malta, since it was sunny and nice. Here's the (almost) full rainbow that appeared...right before the downpour began.After a year of living with Lacey Johnson, I have learned to walk/ride home in the rain and enjoy it. But hail is where I draw the line...and hide under small awnings (sorry Lace).

Apparently, Poznań has it's share of weird Nebraska-like weather moments. Just as I rode up to my dorm, the sun came out again, resulting in a quite pretty sunset.
Just because I used my blog to be mean to my daddy, and I feel the need to make amends:
Go Big Red.