matching tracksuits

It has been an interesting day. A brief timeline beginning with yesterday afternoon will suffice, I believe, to show how singular it was. (All times are, of course, approximate.)

2:19 PM Yesterday: As I was walking back to the teachers’ room to return 4a’s dziennik and get 3c’s, a few girls from 4c approached me asking me if I wanted to (or rather, was willing) to go on a wycieczka with them. The proposed trip included a hike up Babia Góra, the thought of which alone set my knees hurting. I told them I’d think about it and let them know the next day. “Musimy wiedzić dziejsiaj!” they said. I told them to wait while I went into the teachers’ room. There I talked to Sojka about it, and he said it wouldn’t be a problem if I went, but he also told me he wasn’t sure whether there would even be a trip. He said Bogdan was the one figuring everything out and that if we went, he’d be the kerownik. I went back outside only to discover they were going into class. I told them I’d let them know after that class.

3:07 PM I told the girls I would be willing to go with them, though I was thinking that I’d regret it. They’d promised that we wouldn’t be doing any serious climbing, so I thought my dziadek knees could handle it.

5:03 PM At the teachers’ party (courtesy the gmina), I asked Sojka what the deal was. He said he still didn’t know, but suggested I just come by the school around 7:30 or 7:45 the next morning and see.

6:45 AM I woke up a little later than usual, but I knew when I got up to go to the restroom that my dziadek knees couldn’t handle a trip up Babia.

7:43 AM I walk into the teachers’ room only to see that no one is there but the biology teacher. She asked me why I was there so early, and walking over to my little cupboard, I lied and said I just had to get a book. I really didn’t feel up to explaining everything in Polish.

8:30 AM I headed back to the school to discover that a) Mirek Smoleń was, in fact, the kerownik; b) we were going to the skansen in Zubrzyca instead of a hike up Babia (music to my knees); and, c) we were leaving in half an hour.

9:13 AM We finally leave for the skansen.

11:00 AM The tour of the skansen over, we begin walking toward Babia on the road, heading to a then-unknown destination for an ognisko.

11:20 AM We arrive at the ognisko location — the same place we had the Dzień Nauczyciela teachers’ party my first year here, five years ago.

11:35 AM Deep into roasting my kiełbasa, I’m interrupted by the elderly gentleman who’d been preparing the fire. “Czy mogę prosić pana?” he asked, motioning outside. Leaving my camera on a shelf on the wall, I walked outside with him. When I emerged alone, he asked me to go get the “inne Pan,” and my suspicions really began mounting. “We’re going to drink vodka at eleven in the morning,” I thought. When Mirek emerged, the gentleman led us to his small little hut where he kept keys to all the cabins and such and gave us tea with a healthy bit of rum in it. “This is tolerable,” I thought. Yet I also knew I’d eaten only an apple and bowl of cornflakes in the last 18 hours (I didn’t really eat anything for dinner last night), so I knew it could be deadly.

12:22 PM I’ve almost finished my rum and tea — I’ve got about a quarter of a mug left — and the gentleman, when I’m looking away, tops it off. With rum. So it’s about 80% rum and 20% tea. And it’s just a few minutes past noon. This is also roughly the time that Pani Cupiał came in — Marcin and Anna’s mother, the kindly woman who brought so much fish to C during studnióka that last year. She’s really a great woman and I enjoy talking to her a lot. She’s one of those Poles (Mirek too) who speaks in such a way that somehow I manage to understand about 70-80% of what they say.

12:40 PM Mirek and I decide that we need to eat something to get from getting completely wasted while chaperoning a school trip. Just as we’re about to head out, a couple of students bring us the sausages we were roasting, and I knew we’d be spending the whole afternoon in that little hut.

12:45 PM I’d mistakenly mentioned that I preferred beer to all other alcoholic beverages, and that I smoked (much to Mirek’s surprise) when I drank beer. Pani Cupiał left the room for a little while, returning with a couple of beers and a pack of cigarettes. So Mirek and I drank a little more, discovering, after following the gentleman’s¹ lead, that fresh honey in beer is quite tasty.

1:08 PM Tomek and Tomek come to the door and ask if they can talk to me. I walked out, saw their faces, heard Tomek Ż’s first words, “Mr. Scott, you know I really like you,” and I just knew they’d been fucking around with my camera and broken it. Much to my relief they just wanted cigarettes. “We heard you smoke and we wanted to know if you have cigarettes.” I told them no, and as they were leaving, said, “This can just be a secret, right?”

1:27 PM After finishing the beer, I was feeling woozy, but not too drunk. We were due to leave in half an hour so I thought, “Okay — I did it. I survived without getting wasted.” And then Pani Cupiał brought two more beers. In the end Mirek and I compromised and shared one of them. Still, I’d only eaten a small roll and a bit of sausage since my small breakfast, so my head was spinning fairly pleasantly.

2:00 PM We finally leave.

2:30 PM We finally arrive in Lipnica.

2:45 PM I go to the school to get some lunch, thinking, “Whew, this was close. Almost three. If I’d been a little later I wouldn’t be able to get any lunch.” Wrong. They’ve changed their schedule, and lunch is no longer available after 2:30. So I went to the store, bought some stuff for sandwiches and went back home.

3:00 PM I sit down with my sandwiches and tea to watch BBC world.

3:45 PM I wake up and realize I’d dozed off immediately after eating. I went upstairs and went to sleep.

6:30 PM I finally drag my lazy but no-longer-so-drunk ass out of bed.

And such was my wycieczka with 4c.

1 Through the whole afternoon we just called him “Pan,” so I’ve no idea what his name is.

More terror attacks in America, it seems. Since the 11 September attack there have been four cases of anthrax — three in Florida and another one at the NBC studios in New York. There was another mysterious package mailed to a New York Times writer, but so far it has tested negative. Still, like the envelop to the NBC worker, it contained a strange powder and a threatening letter. Stupid — we’re going to keep bombing Afghanistan, though. As if that will do any good.

I love the way everyone says, “This is a different kind of conflict,” but then they all go ahead and fight it the same way. “We bomb the hell out of people — that’s all we know how to do,” says the military. Of course we could do some covert CIA nonsense and perhaps create our next monster.

And that’s essentially what we’ve done. The shoulder-fired missiles that the Taliban will be firing at the helicopters that are bound to go into Afghanistan were supplied by the United States through the CIA when the Afghanis were doing something we liked: battling communism. Now they’re doing something we don’t like, so of course the logical thing is to bomb the hell out of them. And hope they don’t shoot us down with their own missiles.

I went for a walk today in the fields behind the house. I headed toward Kotcie Zamek but I didn’t make it all the way in the end. At any rate, I was sitting there, listening to the tractors working in the fields in the distance and the cows mowing at me incessantly and it struck me how utterly different my life is from the lives of those poor people in Afghanistan. They haven’t know a moment’s peace for at least twenty years, and we’re just guaranteeing even more chaos. I’m sure, since America’s “not into nation building,” we’ll just pull out and let the power vacuum that ensues engulf the nation. And then we’ll have to face a new batch of terrorists.