Ostroleka

Hey y'all
Im finally with my host family. Exciting huh? Im really tied because i rode in a van for over 8 hours today and for the same amount of friday. Thats a lot of van riding. I have, however, mastered the art of picking the best seat in the van. See our vans are not air conditioned, so temperature control is very important. So the left side is the only one with a window, so if you sit directly next tot eh window the wind smack your face and hurts and youa re cold the whole ride. So as far as wind, the back row, behind the window is best. This is altered depending on the direction the van is going and the time of day. See you DO NOT want the front row of the van because the sun beats down on you as you ahve no protection from the other rows of passengers. Then you do not want to sit on the side of the van that the sun is on, or you will be hot. Wind or not. So basically, now you all know which seat to select if you are faced witrh an 8 hour ride in a na unairconditioned van through the Polish countryside.

I also had my first sucessful independant Polish encounter today. I was able to get the key to the bathroom from the lady at the gas station. Pretty awesome huh?

Krakow was fun. I walked like a million miles. There is a castle there which i took lots of pictures of for ashley. there are also like a million kebab stands. Kebabs are like pitas filled with mass quantities of junk. By that i mean meat and cabbage and tomatoes and cucumbers and sauce. I had one that was as big as my head and i made such a mess. I had to eat with a towel on me. I took pictures of that too.

Today I moved in with my first host family that i am with for 3 weeks. They are a mother and father and 2 daughters, one who is 15 and one who is 17. The daughters speak passable english, the mother speaks a little and the father understands a little. They also have a dog who looks just like Dolce but it is a boy. He barks a lot, but I like having a dog around. Most of what i have done since I got here is eat but that was OK because i didnt eat the whole car ride. They have current bushes and a cherry tree so you can eat cherries right off the tree which is really cool.

One of the other volunteers, Reid, lives 3 minutes away. We saw him and his host sister when my host sister and I went to get ice cream in the town center. His host sister wanted him to buy her beer because she was too young. The ice cream was really good. I had yogurt flavor with strawberries. Yesterday in Krakow i had ice cream too. There I had blueberry and strawberry. There are 2 other volunteers in this town. Julie who i am friends with is also teachinga t the same school as me ( so is reid) so she should be around here somewhere. And then the other girl, Ellen, is teaching at another school that is further away.

Everyone is all excited about the EuroCup which i guess is tonight. My host parents went to someone elses house to watch it. My host family is cheering for Spain, Reid's was cheering for Germany. Thanks to Eric, I was all prepared to know what this was. But I did not voice the idea that it just narrowly missed being a reenactment of WW2.

Last thing, my room is covered in Harry Potter stuff! isnt that awesome. Its like they knew me.

(Ostroleka is pronounced Ostrowenka)