Thursday, July 12, 2007

Warszawskie Zoo

Today we went to the zoo. It was finally a nice day, partly cloudy and it DID NOT rain! Anyway, Iza REALLY wants to take the kids to the zoo and I think I will let her tomorrow but I had to take Seth today because tomorrow he and I are supposed to tour the preschool.

The pic is of Pamela and Seth waiting for the tram on the way there. Seth was in THE worst mood all day today, but the zoo did improve his mood. He wouldn't let me take many pictures of him though. He was being ornery.

I did learn why I see so few people on the tram with young children today. If they make noise, the old people stare at them like they are going to burn a hole right through them. I don't know why so many old people (women in particular) do not like children. Perhaps they think that when their children were small they didn't act like children. Memory is a funny thing...

Pamela and I have figured out the bus system like locals. We're pretty good now. A little too good, because people keep coming up and asking us for help. The locals do, I mean. We've figured out that no matter where we are we can take a bus to a stop we recognize and wind up getting back to the hotel somehow. It's not that complicated, but it can be daunting and terrifying if you don't speak the language.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

New everything...except house

I got a new haircut and color and I am proud of myself because I spoke Polish ONLY and I still got the cut I wanted. The color was a bit off, but it's not that big of a deal because it's not iridescent red like it looked in the salon. Now it's like a burgundy color, which I can live with.

New camera too, which is the only reason there is a pic in this blog. It appears to be fine for now. Ask me in a year. I will NEVER again buy a Sony though. This one's a Canon.

I do think that if we are forced to stay in the hotel past next Tuesday, I WILL kill someone:)....it's getting to be a bit much even with Iza coming every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon while I go to language class. It's too much to have so many people in just two small hotel rooms, even though we are not here most of the time. The boys are going COMPLETELY insane...it's not because they're boys...it's because they have cabin fever like the rest of us. And the last few days have been rainy so it's been too awful to go outside.
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Thursday, July 05, 2007

4th of July

Okay, so last night was the 4th of July reception. The thing I really hate about these things is that I tend to drink a lot to make it easier to talk with people and to make time pass, but then the next day I think I seemed like an idiot. Even though I know I did ABSOLUTELY nothing to be embarrassed about.

I have never been to a 4th of July reception and so I was surprised by the grandiosity of it all. But I think that could be a Ghana thing again... I was very disappointed that there was no embassy party, just the reception. So it was basically a working event all night. And because there was rain there were no fireworks.

Yesterday we bought yet another stroller. Dylan is getting agitated at the amount of strollers we have, but I wanted to get a double that I could use on public transport and that would fit through doors. I bought a Chicco side by side. It's a lot like the Maclarens of the same type. And it's a full 2 inches narrower than our jogger that we have been using. I love the jogger/walker running around on footpaths, but I just had to have something that I could use on public transport and the jogger is just too cumbersome. And the jogger BARELY fits through doorways. We're going to try to sell our single and double Gracos when they get here. We tried selling all of our strollers in Ghana, but no one needs a stroller because there's no where to walk there.

We were going to spend yesterday going out and looking at our house, but it turns out that they haven't done anything to it yet. But they still say we'll move in on the 17th (yes, it used to be the 13th, but the only person who knew that was Al and there are MANY things he has been so wrong about).

Monday, July 02, 2007

Lunatics on the tram

I took Pamela's hair out of the braids. She was getting really tired of them, partially because she looked pretty foreign here...but not that foreign really because Poles do lots of interesting things to their hair. Now I am seeing it's like they dye their hair to match their outfits, which is very possible because there is an abundance of temporary hair color in this country.

If I had the right USB cable I could post a picture of Pamela's hair right after we took out to braids, it was really cute. She looked like an 80's rock star.

Dylan does these things some times on public transportation. He'll be standing and holding on to the bar and he'll jump up and just hang from the tram. Some of the Poles think he's amusing, but most of them think he's just a lunatic. Toby sings all kinds of songs at the top of his lungs, and Seth is probably the best behaved of the lot and he's the one that unpleasant old women will make comments to.