I stood on top of the world

I stood on top of the world and I was reminded of just how beautiful this planet is. We humans can make and create and destroy beautiful things and we do all the time; but no matter what Nature will always be there, subtly changing, stubbornly remaining the same. I skied in Italy last week; it was maginficient. I forgot how majestic mountains can be. It also made me incredibly homesick. It made me miss my family, my friends,my teachers (especially Kurt, I thought of him as I skied down the mountain because he always takes about skiing in really awesome places). But the nogstalgia was quick to wear off because this trip also made me realize how increadibly blessed I am to get to see just a small window of this beauty.
My amazing host family (or, the one I had when I went...I've moved since then) took me :D We skied Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It was fantastic...and that's probably one of the great understatements of the century. We were in Moena, Italy and I fell in love...with the city ;) I ate some amazing food, met some amazing people, saw some amazing sights, and all in all it was a jem of a memory :D

Wesołych Świąt! Merry Christmas!

Hi Guys :)
So I know it's been ages, I've done a lot since my last upload, including going to Wroclaw for a week, but I'll tell you all about that in a later blog because this one is all about Christmas :D So, I ate a TON of food this holiday season (I'm not kidding I think I gained 5 lbs just these last few days). Oh and something that I thought was really fun and interesting was that we opened presents and had a big Christmas meal on Christmas Eve. Oh also, apparently when you give gifts here for Christmas its pretty standard not to write 'From:(Insert name here)'....yup guess who didn't figure that out until all the gifts were getting handed out and it was too late to take my name off of the gifts I gave...yeah, that was me. But it was still loads and loads of fun :) For Christmas day we got up and ate a really big breakfast, and then we ate some more food, and some more (seriously I didn't do much besides eat) and then we went and sang Christmas carols at someone's house. That was a lot of fun, except I can't sing and I'm not very good at pronouncing Polish words, especially when they are being sung really fast. The day after Christmas I went over to a friends house for more yummy food (the day after Christmas in Poland is pretty special too, like all the shops are closed and people just relax) and that was a lot of fun :D I'll post about Wroclaw soon!
Much Love,
-Becca

4 Months :)

Hi all!
So, first off I just want to say sorry for not posting anything the last two months, I am really, really sorry! So much has changed since October! I've changed host families, I've traveled lots, I've started going to a church here, and I've eaten more food than ever (I am coming home so fat o.O) Oh and I made Thanksgiving Dinner all by myself :)
Lets see where to begin....
I started going to Poznan International Church in mid-October and I went on a retreat the first weekend of November :) It was an amazing experience and I made some wonderful friends! I also moved host families and I am with an amazing family :) So all in all that weekend was pretty amazing :D I have gained a newfound respect for anyone who made Thanksgiving Dinner this year. It was so hard! I mean, I knew it would take some effort but I didn't realize how much it would take! It was totally worth it though, because it turned out alright! (although it was definitely different tasting...mostly because my Mom is magical when it comes to cooking whereas I'm...well, passable I guess ;) ) Later in November I went to Lodz and saw Muse (a British band) in concert and it was MINDBLOWINGLY AWESOME! The weekend after that my host family took me to Berlin, and I must say, I fell in love with Berlin. It is a beautiful city and very interesting :) We went to Checkpoint Charlie, Christmas Markets, and Alexander Plac! The weekend after that we went to Torun, the city that Nicholas Copernicus is from and that was really cool too! I made gingerbread :D (No, gingerbread and Copernicus don't have much in common except for Torun is famous for both ;) ) Anyway, that's a a very, very abridged version of what's been going on, but I promise I will be better at posting in the future!
Much love!!
-Becca

I'm so bad at this Blogging thing o.O

Hey Guys!
Sorry its been so long since I last posted, everything here has been pretty crazy. Lets see, quick recap. Well, two weekends ago (I think) I went to Warsaw with my class for a day, that was really fun! Umm I had my 2 month anniversary here in Poland on the 10th of October (I was going to post about that too, but I got distracted...) and my Grandmother passed away on Sunday evening. That's been the roughest thing for me, but I have had so much support from my friends and family back home and my exchange friends I've made here :) I just want to say thanks to everyone that has been helping me through this time and that I really, really appreciate and love you all. I am blessed to have you all in my life. I will post something more/interesting in the future, but for now I just want you all to know that I love you guys!!
-Becca

WARSAW :D

Hi guys :) I hope you are all doing well! I went to Warsaw two weekends ago for a large Rotary gathering with all my exchange student friends and it was AMAZING :D I am so sorry it took me this long to post about it, but I got sick, and then busy with stuff here, but here is my adventure in Warsaw!
____________________________________________________
Friday: I didn't go to school on Friday because I had to go to the train station at like 8:45 with my host father, who was nice enough to show me where my platform was and tell me which car to get on (because I pretty much guarantee I would have been completely lost and might have ended up somewhere not Warsaw if I had been left to my own devices). The train ride was rather uneventful....right up until the end. Although now that I say that, I can't honestly say that it was uneventful because I slept through most of it. In fact...I almost missed my train station because I was a sleep. Then the last like two minutes of the train ride consisted of me grabbing my stuff in a rather confused rush as I attempted to make it off the train before it left. I just barely made it :D After that I wandered around a bit before finding a group of my exchange friends :) You will always be able to tell where the Rotary kids are gathering because there will be a giant pile of luggage, a zillion blazers with a million pins, and like three people watching the bags. We all headed to the hostel after everyone was together, and we only lost like four people :) We had some time to settle in, pick beds, and grab jackets for the rest of the evening. We ended up going to the Copernicus center and watching a 3D show about...umm....well the universe and stuff I think. It was in Polish and my polish isn't very good so I only understood like .1% of what was going on....then we went back to the hostel and hung out until everyone went to bed.

Saturday: We went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum in the morning, and it was amazing. I love museums and this is a very, very nice one. The only disappointment was I don't think I read even half of the information there just because it was so big and we weren't there for very long. But if you are ever in Warsaw go see this museum because it is truly amazing what stories come out of that time period. I ended up buying a book that is like 700+ pages long all about the uprising of '44 (It's in English, so I was pretty stoked) and I've started reading it. Anyway, after that we went to a restaurant that was on the top floor of a mall (I think...it was a large building of some sort). The food was good, and being with all of my amazing exchange friends was great! After that we went to an orientation/Rotary meeting and they welcomed us to Warsaw and we all introduced ourselves in Polish. Then we went over some rules and SIGMA Travel presented the Eurotour to us which was exciting. After that we went back to the same restaurant and ate again (it was lasagna this time :) ) and then we stopped by the hostle real quick so that we could leave our blazers and grab some warm clothes because we went to the old city square for a few hours and then to a fountain show. So, funny story here ;) Guess who got moderately lost during this time...while it was raining....yup that's right, I did ;) So, what was supposed to happen is we were all supposed to stay together long enough for the chaperones to show us the meeting place because we were all meeting up before walking to this really cool fountain laser show thing. Well, four of us got a bit distracted because a kid stopped to buy something from a vendor and there was a guy in a Kindersurprise suit (A chocolate egg suit). And so we got separated and then instead of following the group (because we didn't realize we were supposed to stay with the group, we thought it was free time) we went down a different road to go look at two absolutely stunning cathedrals. Well, after that we kept wandering; we stopped in some tourists shops, got some icecream (yes, I know icecream in the rain isn't the best idea...but it tasted good :) )and then headed back to the square to meet everyone else. Except that wasn't the meeting place...we spend a good amount of time walking in circles looking for everyone. We stopped a decent amount of people to ask (in rudimentary polish) where the fountain was, or if they spoke English. Eventually we found everyone and then went to the light show, it was pretty amazing! Although, it was cold. After that we headed back to the hostel and hung out for a while before going to bed :)

Sunday- So, pretty much everyone headed home mid-morning, I ended up on the same train (in the same car) as Patrick because his city is close-ish to mine. We hung out with a friend of his that went to his school three years ago, and that was a lot of fun! And then we headed back home.

School :)

Hi All :)
Well, I guess I'll just start this with saying that so much has happened these last two or three weeks in regards to school that I don't even know where to begin. So I guess I'll just start at the begining :) (Makes sense right?)
____________________________________
So, it turns out that on the first day of school in Poland everyone wheres white on black....guess who found that out at 10:00 the night before school started! So, I wore a bright blue top with a black skirt just to make it painfully obvious that I was a foreigner...no actually, I just didn't have any other dress shirts except the bright blue one. My host sister came with me to help me find my way around (She's in university right now, so she wasn't in school at the time). I'm really glad she came with me because I would have been terrified otherwise. I got there and met my teachers, the two that are in charge of the class I'm in are very nice to me :) The kids in my class are all very nice too :) I was put in the IB class so they all speak very good English which is nice because I can talk with them :) They have all been very welcoming, and I am so glad that I was put in class 2F.
School is very different here, all of the kids are broken up into classes (mine has 35 kids in it I think) and then each class has a different set of classes given in a schedule. You then have to look at the schedule and see what time the classes you signed up for are at. Here you don't always start at the same time, and you get to go home after your last class is done, regardless of if its noon or 5:30. I'm taking Geography, History, Math, TOK, English, Polish, French, and Computer Science. Also, they don't happen every day. I think the worst part is that on Monday I am in school from 7:30-17:30 which is a bit rough, and I have to wake up super duper early to make it to school at 7:30 on Monday, Tuesday,and Wednesday. But its a really interesting school and I really like everyone I've met there, so its ok :D
One interesting thing about the IB program is that all the material is in English so almost all of my classes are in English.Which is good, because I can participate in the class, but it also kind of stinks because its hard to try to learn Polish while I'm busy with homework and classes in English. But I'm really enjoying my school (except waking up super early).
I'll tell you of more adventures at school later, but I'm tired and there are a lot. So for now, I am off to bed. Thanks for reading :) I love you guys!

The Adventure of a Lakehouse :)

Hey guys!
So as promised, here are some stories from my time at the lake house I went to :)
____________________________________

So the Sunday I got back from Krakow I ended up meeting a new family, the family I was going to be staying with for a week while we went up to there lake house which was in a little town 20 km outside of Poznan. I was a little nervous because I was super tired from my trip and I didn't know who I was staying with, but I had nothing to worry about :) The family I stayed with was awesome :D They were so nice, and I loved hanging out with them. The house we went to was beautiful and it was so peaceful in the area that it was a pleasure just to sit and look around. We didn't end up leaving for the lake house until Monday afternoon, so before we left I went with my host-sister to go to Stary Broward (I don't know if I spelled that right). Its a big shopping center, I've never seen so many stores in one place! I ended up buying the first Harry Potter Book in Polish on a whim, almost like a promise to myself that I would be able to read it by the time I leave.
The days at the lakehouse were relaxing and wonderful; we didn't have a schedule so I woke up when I wanted to and went to bed when I was tired. It was amazing. The lake was a short bike ride away, and it was amazing. I'll put a picture in so that you can see :) My little host-brother joined us on Tuesday and he was really awesome, but hanging out with him made me miss my little brother! My host-sister had a friend stay for a few nights too and we all hung out a bunch. We taught each other card games (I now know how to say all the Polish card names) and generally just had fun :) For a few of the days my host mother and I sat at the kitchen table and she was nice enough to let me read Harry Potter to her outloud so that I could work on my pronounciation :D (I wasn't very good at it...the first day we spent probably close to an hour or an hour and a half on it...I read a grand total of 3.5 pages....). I also went on a lot of walks because they had a dog (His name was Freddy, he was adorable:) ) It was a wonderful way to spend my last few days before school started and I am so glad that they let me go with them! I really, really like them and I hope we get to hang out again this year :D

Lake :)

More lake :)

On a walk :)