Cisza!

I want to tell you about my day. Woke up at 7.15 and jumped out of bed in a panic. Joao later said he could hear me swearing under my breath. The bus left at 7.24am, miraculously our whole team made it! No one else in favela was up yet.

I took breakfast (two slices of plain bread and a mandarin) plus my toothbrush to school with me. I hadn't even attempted the bathroom line. We taught our three classes, 90 minutes each. The kids were hyper, I think we the teachers were more excited than the kids when the bell rang. I know a new word - silence! I think its spelt cisza but I could be wrong. Luckily Christine is now in our group, she's amazing and held the whole completely unplanned thing together today. The real teachers sat in on our lessons, which was distressing and put us on the spot. One of the highlights today was one teacher yelling at the class in Polish (truely terrifying) to which one student responded cheekily, 'English only!' which we had been telling him off with earlier. Also, a student tried to describe 'female' in front of the class without saying the word, 'Like male! Like transvestite! A grandmother!' Maybe you had to be there. Haha. Another kid was describing things he liked, 'speedway, drifting, volleyball...' I can't believe he knew those words with his limited english!

After school we trekked across the city for lunch. I didn't manage to order what I wanted by pointing while the chef glared at me, so I ended up with grilled cheese, grilled chicken, and coleslaw. I wanted salad and potato! We got stopped on the tram by a ticket warden. We have never seen one before, so usually don't bother to buy tickets because the machine never seems to accept our credit cards and you can't use cash. Leo pretended his English was really bad, Rachel legitimately complained her card didn't work, and I half-lied that we had only been in Wroclaw a couple of days. He let us off our 150 zloty fine! Eeek.

After lunch/dinner we went to biedronka - a popular supermarket (especially in Olkusz). I thought I had a successful coversation with an old lady but she was actually asking me to move out of her way, oops! My discussion with the cashier was in polish though! Outside I saw a man selling really nice looking tomatos. I went up to him, (in polish) 'Good day, can I have two please?' He started to give me two punnets! 'Ah, nie, nie! Two!' Turns out you can only buy by the punnet, so now I have eight tomatos next to my bed. Haha. At least they were a bargain!

Everyone is back at the favela now... its 5.25pm. We probably should plan something for tomorrows classes but the kids really don't care, they just want to play games!

Favela