Modern Art and Journalism

Today after I spoke with my mom on skype, my brother and I took a million pictures of my face because he said I looked like a ghost. I made a collage on Photoshop and this is what I came up with.

Interesting isn't it?


So, other than suddenly being an artist ;p nothing is new, except that I'm starting a project of my own since school is almost unbearably boring. I'm writing an article, "The American vs. Polish High School: How we spend the best years of our lives" , i think you understand what it is about.

Some of you might be thinking "Is she crazy!? She decided to do this on her own?!", then...yes. This was my idea, because I feel being on exchange is not just to travel, it's not just to relax for a year and party and make friends and eat great food. Of course all of these things are what make exchange great, but I think being on exchange is a great learning experience and I want to share it with everyone who reads my article. It's going to be alot of hard work, but I think it is really very important for people (especially in America) to see how others live, this is why i'm on exchange. It's so fascinating for me to see how incredibly different highschoolers lives are in Poland as opposed to the US. I think, or I hope, students back in my high school will find this interesting...

Personal Identification and IV LO Torun

So...I found my Polish ID!! Here's a picture of it :) I took this picture while waiting for Martha's bus. I think it's a nice foto.


Today I also went to school, and enjoyed it! That's a surprise. Well mostly because I took pictures :/ I need to find something to do in this school. There has to be something, maybe tomorrow i'll find the English teacher and talk to her about it. I was thinking of doing some presentations, like "Polish versus American High School: How we spend the best years of our lives". I think it's a nice idea. This way I can meet more people, and perhaps get some people interested in the exchange program, but most of all, meet people. I was even thinking, maybe they'll let me present this in school number 10? Oh, you have no idea what school number 10 is., maybe i'll explain in a later post.

Ok, pictures. So I realized on my camera I could change the size of my pictures so they aren't a massively huge 2 MB's each. Anyway, i've been taking tons of more pictures.




Here is a picture of my close friend Martha. This is the coffee machine I spend half of my money on...it's the only thing that keeps me awake in school :/










These are my closest friends, Karol and Martha :)
This was during chemistry.








Me and Martha in Chem. This is an inside joke :)
In our religion class today, I didn't know what szatan meant, but I was guessing it was satan, so I turned to Martha and made that exact face (except also with a hissing sound ;) to find out the meaning of the word. She thought is was so funny, so now we call ourselves Chrystus i Szatan. A little strange, but it's an inside joke, you could never understand ;)







Here is Karol working hard on his equations :)
(notice the pencil case, the first few weeks I was so confused as to why everyone has one, even the guys, I had the chance to go to a university lecture in warsaw, and people still had these....)










Something was interesting...This is in the computer lab.









Something very strange happened on my laptop.....all the pictures I've deleted magically reappeared in my iphoto library today...I have no idea how.

I have no space..

I need an external hard drive...stat. I have no space on this dumb mac to upload my pictures, so I had to move some to my host families desktop. The worst part is that I bought blank disks and my laptop is spitting them out....

There is one on Allegro.pl (the polish ebay) for 450 pln (149.50 usd) that has 1 TB of storage space!! That is an enormous amount of space, more than 1,020 GB! I'm not sure I need something that large, but we'll see. The problem is I have a mac, it can be a bit on the complicated side, (although I've never had any problems virus wise, or system wise)..hm. Looks like I have to start saving money.

And I lost my Polish ID.....so now I have to pay double for bustickets and i'm going broke, let's not even talk about going to Warsaw (or anywhere else by train), anytime soon.. :/

German Brazilians and Higher Education

This is a picture of the last standing part of the Teutonic Knights castle in Toruń. I took my friend, Beatriz from Brazil, and her friend who is also on Exchange, but in Germany, for a tour around Toruń. I don't know how I know so much about the history of this city, I surprised myself actually, I even knew a legend about how the teutonic knights killed people by throwing them down a hole in the tower you see in the picture (which was also the bathroom by the way). Hm, jeez, I never thought I was so nerdy until today :D. Anyway, here is also a picture of Copernicus's house. In case you are wondering, "Who the heck is Copernicus?!?", shame on you, he was the scientist who came up with the Heliocentric model of our Galaxy. He was born as Mikołaj Kopernik (Nicolas Copernicus) here in Toruń, Poland. His house is now a museum, and he is very loved in Toruń, he even has gingerbread named after him, and the main meeting spot is under his statue in the center of the Old Town.


I'm having a very hard time deciding where I want to study for university. In fact, now i'm having a hard time deciding what i want to study, let alone in which country. I know that I really want to study outside the United States, but whether that's Poland or London or even Paris (but I don't think so).
I'll tell you about Poland and London in a bit more detail:

Uniwersytet Warszawski (Universtiy of Warsaw)
-best university in Poland
-only 4,000 euro a year
-cheap student dorms
-very high, world recognized education
-very nice location (old city of Warsaw)
-beautiful city
-250,000 students
-Psychology Masters Program in English

Minus point
-Polish is extremely hard, studying in Polish would be very hard.

Richmond University
The American International University in London
-A semi-American University experience, yet still in a European atmosphere.
-Perfect middle of what i've been deciding on
-Great School, people have graduated to work for UNICEF or the UN, which is the type of job I would like.
-An international student body from over 120 countries
-In the heart of London
-All the majors are in English
-Beautiful Campus, easy access to public transportation
-I could still practice my Polish
-I can work anywhere as an International Student (the pound is higher than the Dollar)
Minus point:
-14,000 pounds a year + 7,500 pounds for room and board.

So if anyone has any advice or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Amen!!

Today, I was a NACer again :). Except this time, in Poland.

I haven't been to a service in almost two months, and I was really getting bothered, not to mention sad. So one day while I was talking to my NAC friend, Armin, from Warsaw, he told me about a youth service in Ostroda. Unfortunately I can't travel by train alone in Poland while i'm under the wings of Rotary, and Ostroda is 200 km away from Torun, about 3 hours by train, so obviously my host mom said no.

But! Then I spoke to Daniela, the daughter of Bishop Starosta, and magically (well, i wouldn't say magically ;), everything worked out, perfectly. The rector from my closest congregation had to travel to Ostroda on Sat. morning for a brothers meeting. He offered to bring me with him. Then it just so happened that on Sunday, the

Bishop had to hold an afternoon service in Wabrzezno, the nearest congregation to Torun, so he gave me a ride home after this service. So after not being in one single service for 2 months, I was in 2 services in one day! Funny how things work out when you pray ,huh? Bishop Starosta is great, here he is during the opening prayer in Wabrzezno, which will be my home congregation. The Rector of my congregation is the other brother in the picture. He doesn't speak English, so during the 2 1/2 hour car ride to Ostroda we spoke in Polish about everything from NAC to Russian Communism :) I love Polish people. Anyway, the youth group is great in Poland, although I haven't had the chance to really spend time with the youth.

But I just spoke with my entire congregation, so now i'm going to bed. I will continue this later.

To be or not to be!

"Być, albo nie być! To jest pytania!" I just got home from the premier of "Hamlet" at the theatr in Toruń. Here is a picture of the scene where Hamlet is fighting with his mother after he kills Ophelia's father. It was...different, but very enjoyable. Of course I didn't understand any jokes or hit lines, but I knew what was going on thanks to Brit. Lit. last year ;). The play had a sort of Cabaret mix to it. There was this joker looking guy with four...raunchy women, for a lack of a better word, who appeared throughout the play and sang. The joker man appeared in almost every scene...and he gave a sort of creepy, psychotic feel to the play, while the women loosened up the drama, and made it funny. Since today was the premier of the play, I couldn't find any good pictures of the joker with his women, but here is one with half the makeup (joker doesn't have his face), during what I'm guessing is the dress rehearsal.




I went to this play with a writer who is friends with my host mom since they were seven years old. He's a pretty well-known writer in Poland, he was born in Toruń, but now he lives in Bydgoszcz. It was so nice, it felt so...european, haha. I was in a fancy theatre (of course dressed well ;) watching a premier of a Shakespeare play with a famous writer. Anyway, this is the only picture I could find.

Fun!

Finally :) My friend Marta, send me an SMS (or text for you americans ;), saying she was in the city if I wanted to hang out for a little :) So we did! Here's proof that I have a life!

Well I have to go make an omelet before the Roteract meeting!


Here's proof of how bored i was before, one day I actually put all of my ski gear on and took pictures...i'm not kidding either :/
sad isn't it...

bored.....

This is a picture of my class :)

I'm so bored...Today I went to french class. I thought we had two lectures of french, but it turns out we only had one, so I went an hour early, but we had free time, so it was alright. I reviewed a few english projects, haha, had french class, and that's where it leads me now...

Grr. My friend is supposed to take me to the gym, but I haven't heard from her. And everyone has plans, except me. I need to find something to do. There's a Roteract meeting tonight, so I'll go to that. but it's at 6.30. hm..

More Pictures

Here are the links to the pictures on my old site, if you're lazy :)

My first two weeks:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001257&l=44435&id=1468320138

Pictures of Toruń:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001256&l=22e20&id=1468320138

New President!

Today, Barack Obama was named the first black American President. I'm happy he was chosen, I think he will bring the changes the US needs to get out of this..rut. And hopefully he can change the view of Americans.

Anyway, Today was pretty much a waste of a day..I woke up to go to school and remembered that Biology was cancelled, so I didn't go. I slept till 11.30 and i'm still in my flat...I hate days like this. I'm waiting for my friend to call me and tell me if we're going to the gym or not. Yesterday she said she would call me at 3...it's 6. Hmm looks like i'm not going to the gym.

But! It's not completely wasted. I updated my picture albums, here you go :)

This one is my pictures from Kemping and the last few days of the language course.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001486&l=24726&id=1468320138

This album is pictures of things i've been doing and the Toruń Meeting with Rotary.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001488&l=0d909&id=1468320138

Enjoy :)

Woops

I had to start a new blog because something happened with fabianawpolsce.blogspot.com.

To see everything from the beginning please go to my old blog.

Sorry :)