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The BloG
I'm Here! 8-27-03
I'm finally in Poland. It seems like just yesterday I was going to that first rotary meeting. Up until about two days before I left I just had this feeling of "I've got all the time in the world" and then it was here and I had no time at all to do everything I needed. Then the plane ride. I got to the airport 3 hours early. In ten minutes I was all checked in and set to board (only I still had another 2 hours and 20 minutes before I could board). We sat and ate and thank god there was a place to eat that you could get to before security. I left them and went to the terminal and met about 26 other exchange students(!) who would be on the first flight with me. It was a very nice plane with each seat having a tv screen and a whole selection of movies to watch, games to play, and you could even see camera views looking forward and down from the plane. It was the most boring 8 hours of my life. I couldn't sleep or anything. Well, I take that back, at about 20 minutes till we landed, I fell fast and soundly asleep just in time for the flight atendent to wake me up and tell me to put my seat up etc. Most of my flight was spent watching a little map with a little plane that showed the progress of our flight. After we got to coppenhagen it was nothing and we were in warsaw.
All there was to customs was having my passport stamped and then claiming my bags and walking through a door under a sign saying "nothing to declare." I wasn't expecting what I saw next. There was a railing with swinging door gates, and behind them was more people checking to see if I was their kid than I've ever seen in my life. I think if I hadn't been so nervous and exited to meet my family and find out if they'd show up I would have laughed at the whole spectacle. The first person I saw was Marta! She was right up front and she brought be flowers :-D Then we looked around and I saw a sign saying "Sammi Stephans" being waved around and it was my host mother. I made my way over to them, which turned out to be harder than it looked. And I met my host mother, Olga; my host father Wlodzimierz; and my host sister, Weronika. Olga starts talking to me in polish. I understood nothing. Marta pops up and starts talking and she and Olga are jabbering on and on, how they can speak the language so fast is beyond me. My host father pulled the car around and we left and Marta went to her bus. The city reminded me a lot of chicago. Well, the projects at least. I'm glad I'm not allowed to drive here. The house it beautiful. I'll have to put up pictures because it would be very hard to describe. It's sooo gorgeous. Though not very furnished(they just moved in a few weeks ago). I live here with my host father, mother, sister and Tonya, the live-in house-keeper. They have a dog that has to have a muzzle when it's around people it doesn't know. It's a big beautiful german shepherd. But after that now he's perfectly fine around me. They also have a cat that just sorta sits being funny looking. He's on of those cats with the completely flat faces.
The only other thing there really is to say is that it's very frustrating to not know the language. :-o
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