Warszaw and a Broken Computer
Trip Start
Aug 30, 2005
1
13
20
Trip End
Jan 04, 2006
Warszaw,
Poland
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Last Thursday I went to go turn Maia's computer on and it declared to me ..."cannot start windows, cannot find system.ini". This is obviously not good! I had a good yell at the computer. Someone had to restrain me from not throwing it out the window, (its still safe) and I got some polish guys to try to fix it for me. Unfortunately, Windows ME sucks and I am doomed till I get home to hopefully get my pictures and my work out of it. This leaves me a particular situation where I am writing my thesis on a IBM from 1994. Brett from the trip has been kind to let me use his really really old computer for my writing. Strange thing is that it can only display 4 lines of text on the screen at a time cause the screen is so small.
Life in Krakow, despite my computer is wonderful. The temperature has dropped and the snow has begun to stay on the ground. The pleasant thing is that there is now in the market square a display for Christmas. There are booths with holiday gifts and decorations for sale, as well as the Kielbasa, smoked cheese and cabbage sold on large grills throughout the stands. Posts have been set up around the square with giant wrapped presents and lights and bells which give a magical feel to the heart of heart of the heart of Europe. Residence is not as festive as I would like, but very few people in Guelph even had a Christmas tree in their house.
Aga and Me
They have been doing construction on the building for the last few weeks. Every morning we look down our ghetto hall and see cockroaches and ants dodge the falling plaster and paint. The most amazing thing is that people continue to sit and congregate in the halls despite the noise and mess. But that's living in a former communist country for you... you take what you get and cherish it. We went to Warsaw last weekend with the class. It is the second last trip we are taking as a group. I will be sad to leave the amazing duvet covers and breakfast buffets that the hotels provide. The first night I had the most amazing time. The only event they had planned for us was to visit the Canadian Embassy. It is at this time that I would like to say, I have been inspired. Here we were a group of wide-eyed Canadians hobnobbing with diplomats and the ambassador. We first went in and they had a relatively formal explanation of how the embassy works, including the various departments, but the most significant part was when we were able to ask questions. I have to note here that most people on this semester abroad are either History, Politics, or International Development student and so have a HUGE interest in international affairs. I think that night they inspired 22 people to join the foreign service. I have been thinking for a while now about applying for the foreign service, but I now know that this is what I would really like to do. When i get a steady Internet connection I am going to apply and then when I get home I'll write the exams. After the conference, they invited us down to the 'Beaver Bar' in the basement of the embassy to where we were able to talk one-on-one with the ambassador, diplomats and other staff. They gave me amazing advice for the interviews and exams, but it was really interesting to hear their stories about living in other countries. I could talk about this forever... so if you will wait till I get home I will... By the end of the evening most people were pretty drunk cause they had Canadian Beer and they diplomat serving drinks filled the glasses 3/4 full with alcohol. They were highly impressed with the group in general and we have been invited back, whenever we are in town...hee hee.
The next day we did a bus/walking tour of Warsaw and saw the 'washroom' park and the royal places. We then came home and I did a lot of work on my essays.
Sunday, Dorota, who is from Krakow invited her grandmother to talk to us about being one of the insurgents in the Warsaw Uprising. It was amazing what she had to go through.
We came home Sunday afternoon by train and ever since I have been packing up my room to move stuff to Wellingborough and home with Liz Philp.
