Long time no speak...

Wow! It has been wayyy too long since the last time I have blogged! So much has happened in my life! This will probably be too long and I will still probably not be able to remember every detail from my past week or so! Anyways, I guess the last time you all heard from me was after that pretty terrible test. Soooo......QUICK UPDATE of the rest of last week before I go into major details about this past weekend. Last Wednesday, we had German class, of course, and instead of Humanities class, our local trip tour group came and explained our Eurail passes and our trip for that weekend. We were headed to Poland on Thursday morning for the rest of the weekend! So, they talked a little about Poland, what to expect, and what we would be doing while there. It was so strange to think that we could just hop on to a train and be in Poland! What a life! After they left, we had a group discussion about what we have been missing from home and what we have come to love about our "home" here. It was really neat to see what other people had been feeling and how MOST people are kinda on the same page. One of the most commonly missed items was definitely Chick-fil-a! Oh and sweet tea of course! hahah You can tell we are from the South! :) After class, I went with Amy and Becca to Stadt Park to just walk around and then to one of the shopping streets/districts.

 It was a lot of fun and so neat to be able to get to know these girls a little bit better. Ohhh! We did have a small problem, however, but made for a great memory! So here is what happened. We were riding the U-bahn to the park and were standing near one of the entrances. Anyways, this guy says something in German very loud (which was so strange since they are all WAY quiet here) and of course we didn't understand, so we just kept standing there. I guess he could tell we were confused because then he said to us "Tickets please!" The way they do tickets for the subway here is kind of on the honor system. You are expected to buy passes, but they don't always check. And then every now and then they have undercover ticket checkers, like this guy. Luckily we knew this was a possibility, so we had our tickets with us. We handed him our tickets, but he just took them and kept looking at them! We were so confused. Next thing we know, he tells us that we have the wrong tickets and we had to get off the train at the next stop. The thing is we knew our tickets were right. Our trip leader had bought them for us and there was no way they wouldn't be the right ones. He barely spoke any English, so the three of us got off the train and all of a sudden he starts talking to two other guys. It was extremely sketchy until they all revealed their badges. But even then, they could have been fake badges... AHHH! So what happened? He told us our tickets were fake, but didn't know enough english to tell us anything else, so we called our trip leader for him to talk to her since she speaks very good german. They talked for quite a while and from our side, you could tell he was veryyy frustrated. Anyways, they get off the phone and he tells us that although they don't look like normal tickets, he will make one exception and let us go. But he had to use hand signals to tell us this since he couldn't think of the words he wanted to use! It was honestly a very interesting and memorable experience! Later, Frau Swann called me back and told me what he had said to her. I guess he basically told her that there had been a ticket machine that had been stolen and our tickets looked just like the ones coming from it! Like what?? He is a crazy story teller! hahaha but we all had a good laugh! Anyways, after our adventures that day, we had our weekly worship time, I got some pizza with Kate and then ice cream with Kaley, Bennett, Hunter, and Becca. It was a fun day!

   After a late night packing my baby-sized backpack, we left for Poland bright and early on Thursday morning. We met at the train station before 7 am and loaded the train shortly after. It was actually a very neat, but long experience. They have little "cabins" that hold 6 people in them. They have three seats across from three other seats and a sliding door that even locks. I sat with Kathryn, Marlee, Virginia, and Kaley, so we had one open seat for this ride, which was very nice.

I think it was a little over 5 hours that we were on there and we went through Czech Republic, so I can officially say I have been there! Yes! We stopped somewhere in Poland that I honestly can't even remember/spell the name of the city. Here we were supposed to get on another train to take us the rest of the way to Krakow, Poland. I had not been expecting much of Poland at all, kind of just dirty and dark and grey...So, when we got off this train and walked around, this was exactly what I saw.

      

At this point, I was honestly kind of nervous. I was thinking why in the world are we in POLAND right now?! But I have already learned from this trip not to judge a place too fast and to just kinda go with the flow. So, I did. We got on the next train, which was not as great as the first one and just had a lot of benches to sit on. It was also very slow and took longer than expected! Oh and the most interesting part was when you flushed the toilet, you could see directly onto the train tracks. It just empties onto the tracks. Gross. But, I can't say I experienced this, I just heard all about it. I kinda wish I would have gone to the bathroom just so I could talk all about it! hahah! So, after a long and bumpy couple of train rides, we finally got to Poland late that afternoon!! My initial thoughts were that the train station wasn't that different from the one before, but really Poland was only getting better and better. Little did I know at the time what I great weekend I was about to partake in! After settling in our hotel a little, we went to the main city square of Krakow! Wow! It was soooo awesome! We got some zlotys/zloties/i don't know the plural tense and then went to dinner at a Georgian restaurant! We had the best sparkling lemonade type thing, cheesy bread, and I had a pork kebab with couscous! It was great! Later, me and Kaley and Emily walked around the square and had dessert at an amazing dessert cafe! Ahhhhh! Polandddddd!!!!!

After this, we hung out, walked around, and just enjoyed the night! I felt like I was on vacation and Poland had only turned out to be a million times better than I had ever thought! I was so happy! I really do not think that I would have ever gone to Poland if it weren't for this trip and I am beyond thrilled that I was able to have such a great weekend full of great memories in a great country! Great, great, great! I will do another blog post tomorrow about the rest of the weekend, this is far too long!