irony

"Leo: Has anyone told you your hair looks fab lately? Even if you don't feel like it does, you've been looking great lately. Seriously! Bask in your hotness." - my horoscope according to facebook

What's funny about this is that, since arriving in Poland, i've killed my Chi by using the wrong adaptor (the best flat iron in the WORLD!) and worn my hair up in messy buns because of the stifling heat, and pretty much looked like fashion roadkill.

Just needed to share that with everyone :]

Oh and the weekend was pretty great... friday we had the farewell to kapelanka flat party, saturday we went to kapelanka lake (documented via youtube) followed by a bbq in nowa huta (which is practically in the czech rep!) and then sunday we had a relaxing day of doing nothing and watching pirates 3 (which really sucked btw).

yesterday we were so scarred from our pirates experience we had to watch an old classic to recover - lock, stock and two smoking barrels (i highly recommend it!)

tonight is anya's going away party and i'm really bummed to see my favorite russian leaving...

polish language skills: 1.5

TGIF!

So the trip to warsaw has been cancelled... thank god! i can't wait to sleep in tomorrow and i've got a full weekend planned here in krakow.

tonight we have our farewell to kapelanka flat party. one of our aiesec flats is being sold so we're having a party to commemorate all the good times that happened there, it should be pretty funny =)

then tomorrow i'm going to find this lake/quarry i've heard about that's supposed to be pretty close to my apartment. apparently it's a quarry that's been filled with really clear blue water and you have to jump from the cliffs to get into the water... i'm pretty psyched about it! (no worries it's apparently 30 meters deep so it's perfectly safe!)

then tomorrow night we have a bbq in nowa huta, which is this area of krakow that was designed to be the ideal socialist town (this means it's going to be REALLY ugly, look forward to pictures).

just 5 more hours and it's the weekend =)

Gripes...

I love krakow so far and almost everything about it. ALMOST.

When i read that the climate here is cooler than at home, i was delighted. the 95+ degree summers of NC aren't that much fun, so an average of 75 degrees here seemed great.

unfortunately there is one BIG difference between the summers here and in char-town... it's called AIR CONDITIONING.

I'm in quite a quandary because when i try to sleep at night, i need to keep the window open to keep the room cool. but my apartment is right next to a highway, so i can't sleep with all the noise.

hmmm... any suggestions?

Interesting things to know about Poland...

Men and women wear their wedding rings on the right hand. This wasn't discovered in any embarrassing way i just thought everyone should know in case they're ever here :)

Men and Women's bathrooms are usually separated, and the signs are not that big. Be careful before rushing into any bathroom.

The president of poland and the prime minister of poland are twin brothers, weird.

Looking forward to the tram party tonight - @Krakow has rented out a tram (a train kind of thing) and they'll have a dj and a big party on it all night long while the tram goes around the city... should be pretty cool.

Me and justin have our welcome party tomorrow and thursday night is our "integration night" at work (it takes place at a pub so you can imagine the bonding that will take place), followed by a whirlwind trip to Warsaw this weekend for a workshop with a bunch of american corporations. I'll update sometime next week with some good stories :)

polish language skills: 1.2

So much to do!

Wow it has already been four days since i've arrived in Poland and i literally haven't had a moment's rest! So far everything has been amazing and i want to fill everyone in on what's been going on so far...

I arrived in Krakow wednesday afternoon and was picked up from the airport by my AIESEC buddy, Chris, my boss, Piotr, and co-worker, Kasia. My baggage was lost by the airline so Chris and i headed to the galleria to shop, and then met up with some of the other trainees at Kitch to go dancing.

So far I've met people from probably 15 different countries and my roommates are Elena (from Romania), Olenka (from Ukraine), and Anya (from Russia).

Kitch was a pretty interesting experience.... they said that it used to be a gay club, but it wasn't anymore, but i don't think that the word has gotten out yet. The average male in Kitch wears more makeup than i do :)

We left pretty early that night because i was exhausted and then next day i went in for my first day of work at Visit.pl. Piotr is possibly the coolest boss ever! i set my own hours and can even work at home if i want to! I put in about a half a days work on thursday and then i met up with Viktoria, my traineeship manager, in downtown Krakow to get my city transit card and tour around a little. That night i had my first polish dinner (which was delish) and then headed home after a short time at a posh nightclub called Ceil.

Friday was EXHAUSTING! I was on the way to meet Piotr for a meeting but i had a little problem with the buses and ended up on the opposite side of Krakow! Well i finally made it there and after my meeting i went to Tesco for the first time.Tesco is like a super wal-mart, but everything's in polish so it's super confusing... also you have to take the bus back to the apartment and walking with a bunch of groceries is a pretty funny sight!

Last night was really cool... every year Krakow has one night where all the museums in the city will stay open until 2am and they let everyone in for free! We went to about 6 museums and my feet were killing me by the end of the night. (my fave was probably the modern museum. they were showing this movie where these people chased down this guy, put an ET mask on him, and stripped him down and started chasing after him with golf clubs... seriously, i couldn't make this shit up!) Then we went to Kazimiersk (the old jewish part of the city) where i had my first Zapieneki, this polish sandwhich thing that's about a foot long and amazing!

We ended up staying out really late which was a bad idea because this morning i had to wake up early and meet my boss and agniezki (another co-worker) to head to Wroclaw, a city near krakow. Wroclaw is a beautiful old city that used to be owned by Germany, so it has a lot of influence architectually from there. We'll be here until tomorrow afternoon and then i'll be back in Krakow!

Sorry if this post was incredibly long and rambling... i'll try and keep them shorter in the future :)

random thought: if my life were a movie, my theme song as i walk through krakow would be "american woman"

Polish Language Skills (scale 1-10): 1

*i don't have internet in my apartment so i haven't been able to upload photos, but i'll put them up some time next week!

Leeeaavin on a Jet Plane!

I'm flying out today for an internship in Krakow, Poland.

TODAY.

Crap.

I should probably start packing....

Well this is my first (er, second) post and as anyone who knows me will tell you, i'm obsessed with blogs (Perez is my friend). So naturally, i feel a need to measure up to these great blogs i've been reading... we'll see how it goes.

I've been wanting to go on a traineeship since I heard some pretty amazing stories at WSC 2007 and I'm so excited to go on my first one this summer. I've been hired to work in the marketing and PR department of Visit.pl, a tourism company in Poland.

I'm trying to learn polish, it's not going too well. The only things i definitely remember how to say are, "Do you speak English" and "I want a drink now"... i think they will both come in handy (j/k Dad!)

Well I'm going to try and check out Frankfurt during my 7 hour layover tomorrow, hopefully i won't miss my connecting flight like my mom predicts (she says i'm not taking the conservative/smart attitude and staying in the airport, i say i'm experiencing EVERYTHING).

Ok well i'm going to get some sleep and I guess my next post will be from Krakow. I hope everyone has some awesome summer plans :)

random thought: am i going to look back on this blog like i do my old diary and think i was totally ridiculous??