Pióro

I’ve known about Richard Ford’s soft spot for Canada for a long time. Years ago, when I heard him read at the International Festival of Authors, he followed two Canadian writers (Joseph Boyden and another whose name I can’t remember). As the only non-Canuck in the bunch, Ford had the host mention in the introduction [...]

Martha has already written about the free foozball (piłkarzyki in Polish) at our local bar. That feature alone makes it an awesome place. But there are many other reasons why the bar is the best ever and one of the things that makes saying good-bye to Poland so hard.
For months we didn’t know what the [...]

I’ve used more French in the last nine months in Poland than I have in the previous eight years in southern Ontario. At first, the use of French was inadvertent. As most people who’ve tried to learn a third language know, the second language does not take kindly to competition. As one starts trying to [...]

So, Lviv and Ukraine is a bust. The usual culprits, time and money, have conspired against us. It’s disappointing, but we are already planning a Black Sea tour. The mantra is, of course, “Someday… someday…”
Before I leave the topic of Ukraine, I have to talk about a reaction I’ve heard from some Poles at the [...]

Working in a small town can make you feel like the man. You know, the man who walks down the street and says “Hey what’s happening?” to every second person. Or maybe it’s more like the opening of Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast, with the main character saying hello to everyone. There’s no [...]

Yesterday was Children’s Day. The following Thursday is called God’s Body (Boże Ciało in Polish, Corpus Christi in the Latin countries). This is a good holiday because we don’t work. Somewhere around here is a holiday called “the little green holiday.” On this day, celebrants simply fry up some eggs on a barbecue because that’s [...]

This one gets my more advanced adults howling.
First, I must explain a connection between Polish and English. I promise this linguist eggheadishness is going somewhere: bear with me. This connection revolves around Latinate words like ‘valorisation,’ ‘consternation’ and ‘fermentation.’ Their Polish equivalents look and sound almost the same: ‘waloryzacja’ (remember, ‘w’ is ‘v’ in Polish [...]

With only a month left in this part of the world, I’m sent into a bit of a panic whenever I see my list of blogs to write. Some of them I planned to write months ago. So, with the resolve that comes with last-minute panic, I’m planning to get all these blogs up before [...]

Final exams are no different for teachers as they are for students; in an effort to avoid the inevitable, they scurry around getting immersed in every little distraction. Some alphabetise CD collections, while others clean. TV and computer games work too, but they are not as good as, say, organising the spice rack. Anything that [...]

Last week, with the accession of Poland and the Czech Republic into the EU, some remarked that it was finally the end of Yalta. A week later, we went bowling.
Really, I’m by no means a bowling enthusiast. I can think of dozens of other things I’d rather do, but our new found mobility drew us [...]