Decorating the Tree
Christmas Performance
Getting Ready for Christmas
Gorecki’s Third
Undoubtedly my favorite contemporary composer, Górecki often vies for "best composer of all time" in my opinion – it all depends on when you ask. It was his music, particularly his Third Symphony (subtitled"Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" – more information here) that was a major factor in my choosing Poland when I joined the Peace Corps back in 1996.
Since then, my appreciation of his music has only grown, particularly with my improved Polish and the ability to understand the texts of his vocal works.
When I was about to leave for Poland, I joked with someone that I was going to meet Mr. Górecki no matter what it took. I had my chance this weekend, in the most auspicious of occasions: Górecki conducting his Third Symphony in celebration of his seventieth birthday. In the end, I'm ashamed to say, I chickened out. I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make me sound like a babbling teen meeting some superficial movie star.
It's enough, I suppose, that I got to experience his Third Symphony, under his own baton (well, no – he didn't actually conduct with a baton), in a location that was intimately connected with the text of the second movement.
The whole adventure was blessed by luck from the beginning. Kinga and I left at 1:40 in the afternoon, not knowing when we had a bus or even how long it would take us to get there. We arrived at the bus stop just as a bus to Nowy Targ was pulling up. The chances of that happening are minuscule. We made it to Nowy Targ, waited half an hour for a bus to Zakopane, with me babbling like a little girl going to meet The Back Street Boys. Hopped off the bus in Zakopane, took a cab to the church, and arrived half an hour before the concert started. Those without invitations had to sit in the small balcony. Though we arrived only half an hour before the concert was to begin, the balcony was virtually empty. We ended up standing at the railing of the balcony to get the best view, and by the time the concert started, there was quite a crowd.
The concert itself was something of a blur. At 60+ minutes, the symphony could, I suppose, be called "moderate" by some standards, but for me, it seemed to last about ten minutes. I blinked and the first movement was over, with an outbreak of coughing and sneezing in the audience – the backlog of half an hour silent, respectful listening, I suppose. The second movement, at only nine minutes, seemed a flash. And the third moment, at about twenty minutes, seemed about a tenth that. I didn't take any pictures because the concert coordinator politely asked that we not.
After the concert, the orchestra performed "Sto Lat" ("100 Years"), the traditional Polish well-wishing song. Mid-way through, Górecki jumped onto the podium again and directed everyone, audience and orchestra alike.
After some well-wishing and chatting, the orchestra came back out and they did a playback recording session, as this is intended to be a DVD released sometime later. It was a strange thing – they were basically making a music video, playing along with their earlier performance. They played for a bit – most of the first movement – then suddenly the director stopped everything just as the music reached it's most emotional point. Strange how art can so easily succumb to commercial needs.
Nowy Targ Shopping
Sausage Making
V’s Birthday Party
Cheating in Poland
Though I was previously warned about it in Peace Corps teacher training sessions (and it was probably even mentioned in “cross cultural” sessions), I was shocked at the level of cheating among students in Polish schools. Simply put, ninety-nine percent of students here will cheat in any and all perceived opportunities. They will whisper to each other; they will attempt to peak in their books; they will write on desks before a test; they will hide cheat-sheets in more places than you can possibly imagine; they will write on their hands, arms, and legs; they will copy their homework from each other — and that’s just the stuff I’ve caught them doing.
It is, though, a cultural difference. They don’t even see it as cheating, but more as “helping.” Intellectual honesty is, in my experience here, hard to come by. Cheating begins in elementary school and continues through university and into the workplace.
Two examples show the tolerance Poles seem to have for cheating:
- A friend was working on a development project in the north of Poland some years ago. Individual cities wishing to participate in the project had to submit budget proposals. One town copied another’s proposal.
- A high-ranking minister (I believe in the Ministry of Education, if memory serves) admitted to having plagiarized his doctoral dissertation some years earlier. It was deemed “excessive” punishment to revoke his doctoral degree, though I can’t remember what ultimate punishment was.
It’s no wonder, then, that students cheat. It seems to be in the blood.But how do they do it?
To begin with, they talk. Literally, if I turn my back for one moment a murmur spreads across the classroom. But I usually watch them like a cliche hawk (no reading books whihle they’re taking a test here . . .), so they have to resort to written methods.
| The most common method (aside from writing on hands) is to make cheat sheets what are then hidden in shirt sleeves, taped to the knee (if it’s a girl wearing a skirt), taped to the inside of clothing, or numerous other places. | |
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Another place students like to use these little “aids” is in conjunction with a pen. A little unbelievable, but here’s the proof: |
There’s two methods: the cruder form is simply to take the small, virtually illegible sheet on the outside of a pen. The more sophisticated way is to put it inside a pen with a clear casing.
Whenever I happen to find these, I keep them — so there’s at least a minimal consequence to cheating: loss of a z?oty.
Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to stop this. I might have better luck trying to get my friends to give up smoking and drinking. It doesn’t matter than I have a zero-toleration policy, that I remind students of beforeevery test or quiz. Students know that there’s no questions asked, no arguing tolerated, and begging is ignored — they cheat in any form and I fail them for the assignment.
And still they cheat.
Usually I’m remorseless about failing them. After all, I’ve warned them repeatedly. But sometimes a usually hard-working, generally honest student (in other words, someone I really like) cheats. And that’s when it’s difficult to fail them. But I do, explaining my desire not to show favoritism and be fair at all costs.
All Saints’ Day 2003
New School
Jablonka Walk
Budapest Trip
English Camp
Camp
From 22 June to 19 July, I was at a summer English camp in Augustów, a small town in the northeastern lake district of Poland. I was there for two sessions — a rewarding experience, but not having had any break between the conclusion of the regular school year and the start of camp, it was also an exhausting experience.
My duties were simple: conduct English lessons/sessions in the morning (some of which were much more successful than others . . .) and accompany the kids during their afternoon and evening activities. Said activities included softball, kayaking, sailing, waterskiing, frisbee golf, horseshoes, Scrabble (in English, of course).
Sunsets
Water Skiing
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| Some got up on two | Some got up on one |
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| Some fell after a few moments | Some fell a bit earlier |
The concept was simple: why not use snow skiing as a model for water skiing? It would eliminate the necessity for need for a boat, thus allowing more people the pleasure of waterskiing in a shorter time.
A German thought of it, I believe.
So, engineers put four towers in a rectangular shape, ran a tow-cable through it and use that to jerk people off a dock and haul them round the lake. The result is above.
Now, it’s not an entirely bad idea. Just, for someone used to skiing behind a boat, it’s a little weird. I passed on trying. Most didn’t.
For most, I believe, the most stressful was the preparation — the waiting simply to be jerked forcefully and sometimes unexpectedly into the water.
Some got up . . . some didn’t.
Baseball (well, okay, softball)
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One of the highlights for most kids at the camp was baseball. Sort of. To make it easier and safer, we in fact played softball, but the difference for most of them would have been minimal.
One thing I learned anew is how many many rules there are that just seem commonsensical to us. For example, not having two people on base at the same time — a frequent occurrence on second base.
Paintball
| Though paintball was not one of the “offical” camp activities, some of the folks from the second camp got together and spent an evening hurling plastic, paint-filled balls at each other while running blindly through the woods, desparately trying to see through the well-worn, virtually opaque protective masks. | 
Polish paintballs: a guy shows up in a forest driving a Maluch (Fiat 126p) filled with paintball equipment… |
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The Wounds including one from a paintball that somehow got around/under the protective mask)
Polish Strings
I recently bought guitar strings. "Recently" is of course a relative word, in this case meaning a month ago.
"You bought guitar strings a month ago and you're complaining about them? They're ancient! Get new ones!" You who play guitar might be thinking along those lines.
Easier said than done, for like many things here in Poland, they're atrociously expensive. Good strings (i.e., something like D'Adario) cost more than forty zloty. As I've explained earlier, that would be the same as paying forty bucks in the States for a set of guitar strings!
Needless to say, I've taken to buying Polish-made strings because they're cheaper — in theory. But as the Polish saying goes, "What's cheap is expensive." Or as we might say, "You get what you pay for."
I did buy D'Adario strings once here — they lasted probably three months. Yes, that's a ridiculously long time for strings, but how often would you change them if they cost forty bucks? Anyway, they sounded dead as a brick by that time, but they were still intact. None of them had broken, or even frazzled.
The Polish strings I bought lasted about three weeks before the D string started to fray. A close-up reveals that it might last a few days more until it completely unravels and morphs into another E string.
Then I'll trek back to Nowy Targ, buy a new set of strings, and kick myself for not buying decent ones in the first place.
At the Shop
This afternoon it was cooler than it has been in the past, but it was still easily seventy degrees (Fahrenheit). I was at Stasiek's shop, having an afternoon beer while sitting on a bench with Stasiek in front of his store.
Along came two gentlemen, with the younger heading inside to get beer for them both. I glanced at the older man, but didn't really look at him. He struck up a conversation with me by saying, "Whew, it's sure stuffy today." Still not looking at him, I thought for a moment about disagreeing, for I thought it was rather pleasantly cool.
He continued, "We've been cleaning the cemetery, and whew, is it hot."
Finally, I looked at him and the mystery was solved: mid-May, and he was wearing heavy pants, a thick flannel shirt, a woolen sweater, and toboggan.
I just said, "Yeah, I guess it is."