As the season changes, not wanting to get too Dawsons Creek-esque or faux-poetic, but I do feel as though my luck or life is changing a bit too. As if i'm finally on to a good thing. After too many false dawns over the last two years though, I am not counting not counting my chickens, but the signs are good.
The turd-polishing of our building has nearly finshed. Say what you will about communist regimes, but one thing that they knew about was town planning. Each locale has a pre-school, local maket, local shops, senior school, playground etc. It does make for absolute uniformity across Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia etc but it kind of works. The problem is that in places the last time these buildings were re-decorated was roughly 1956. Each block of flats (30 apartments on 5 floors) was previously coloured a nice shade of dirt. But one-by-one money is being spent on sprucing them up. These guys are quick though, they painted on side of the block in a day (about 300sqm). Our's is now in three tones of yellow, peach and orange. It looks marginally better than it sounds but still reminds of a hospital block. We might even get a functioning front door, but then again...
The ciy in general is at once cleaner and dirtier than the UK. Cleaner in the sense that there is less litter but dirtier because of, well, dirt: Grit, soil, sand, leaves. The residential area are all just a little less polished. If it was all tidied up and given a sand-blast or lick of paint it would probably look like a Scandanavian town or Germany. I'm just not sure if that's a good thing.
I don't mean that in sarky way I just really don't know if it would be any nicer.
Our egg-stealing German/Polish lodger is still searching for his own lebensraum. By my estimates, all we need is a Russian in the kitchen and we'll have a historal re-enactment of the 1939 Non-Agression Pact. Its not like he is really busting his ass to find anywhere either. I mean I've been here three weeks now and he's not been to view one flat. And the man shaves his armpits. It's not right I tell you.
My classes started last Monday at a Secondary School in Winogrady to the North-East of the city. Having had a number of first days at work under my belt now I am convinced that, a) You need the confidence to be able to bullshit your way through a lot of things and that b) Never, ever, expect to get full training. The early starts will likely kill me. I seriously have no idea the last time had to see 6:15am. It's almost alright at the moment because it is just light and I like the watching the stall-holders set up at the market whilst I wait for the bendy-bus to hurtle down the pot-holed road. 0ld Mercs will stop up outside and the owners will unpack a stuffed boot full of clothes that only need to see a safety match to catch fire. The Fruit and Veg stall-holders will spend 15minutes lining up and balancing hundreds of tomatoes.
Classes are fine, I have six different classes aged between 13 and 18 and most of them are really good fun. It is a technical high school and most of the students are boys. Although their language proficiency is not wonderful, they are cheeky and confident enough to use what they have. As an ice-breaker I asked them what they would save from their houses if it was on fire. Most picked their computer over parents and, in another exercise exploring differences and similarities between the UK and Poland, nearly all agreed that Polish girls were prettier. I couldn't possible comment....
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