Wymiana w wymianie

In case it didn't come to you, titling my blog entries in a foreign language is my way of making them intriguing, enticing you to read them. Which means that if you are reading this right now, I have very well succeeded.

This time the language, unlike previous titles in French, Chinese, and German, is a language I previously had no knowledge of. Hailing from eastern Europe, the language is Polish, and it is the language that has been surrounding me this past week.
It's a hard language to describe; in fact, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Polish, Hungarian, Slovenian, and other eastern European languages if I heard them. (Well, now that I know some basic Polish, I can at least distinguish that.) But my impression of Polish is that it sounded slightly like Russian, although at times it sounded like Italian and even Chinese in certain syllables. Either way, I loved hearing it. There's nothing like listening to a language you don't understand to remind you how little you know and how much there is you can learn.
I found the Poles to be very hospitable, sweet people. Natalia, Noémie, and I ended up living alone at Natalia's house (a small apartment with 52 steps to get to the entrance) due to lack of space. Despite that, her mother was still very welcoming and happy to have us at her house, and she even made Noémie and me these pillows to commemorate our exchange. They are personalized with some inside jokes from the week and my favorite Polish words, and I know I will treasure mine forever. The Poles' ability to speak other languages is more impressive than that of the French, which is a recurring idea that I will mention more of later.

Now that that's said and done, here is a day by day account of my week!

Day 1: Friday, April 5
The day started early. I was at the high school at 4 in the morning; all 40 kids boarded the bus and it left soon after. We had lunch in eastern France, somewhere near the border between France and Germany. One of the things I did on the bus ride was play this game called 4 Pics 1 Word on my iPad (I recommend it), and just as we were about to cross the border, this set of images came up...

Wow, so hard to figure out

In the early afternoon, we entered Germany!
I had never been there before, and it amazed me how all the road signs just suddenly changed from French to German. I would brag that I understood them all, but it's not that big of a deal to understand things like "Frankfurt 65 km"...
We arrived in a city called Bad Hersfeld at around 7:30 PM, where we established ourselves in a youth hostel for the night.

Day 2: Saturday, April 6
Thankfully, the day didn't start as ungraciously early as the day before. We had lunch at a gas station restaurant (oh by the way German gas station shops are super fancy) near Dresden. I didn't prepare a picnic because I wanted something hot, and was I glad I made that decision. I even managed to muster up the courage to speak to the lady in German and place my order, and when she spoke to me back in German I understood! My heart swelled with pride and even more desire to eat the meal I had just ordered.

Currywurst mit Pommes

At some point in the afternoon, we finally entered Poland, and the landscape was entirely covered with snow, the sky an overcast gray. I didn't understand the road signs at all, nor did I have any idea how to pronounce the city names. Our English teacher announced that the city spelled "Wrocław" was pronounced along the lines of "Vrocwaf," just to give you an idea.

Yucky weather

We reached Katowice, our destination, at around 7:00 in the evening, where I was greeted by Natalia upon exiting the bus. After meeting her cousins at a family party, the three of us retired to her house, tired but excited to start the week.

Day 3: Sunday, April 7
Have you ever been to a coal mine before? Yeah, I thought not. But on Sunday, Noémie, Natalia, her uncle, her adorable cousin Szymon, and I visited the Guido mine. Part of the visit included going 320 meters under the ground! Just for a comparison, the Eiffel Tower is 324 meters tall.

Me and Szymon

It was a difficult concept, knowing how deep down under the Earth I was. I thought of the Chilean miners, having had to be trapped in such an atmosphere, and shuddered. In my quest to go everywhere, I never thought of exploring the depths of the Earth in a mine! Look at how eerie it is.

At some point, I engaged in conversation with one of the guides who spoke English very well. And then somehow we ended up speaking (broken, in my case) German. It just amazes me how being multilingual is not a big deal here in Europe, and it continued to amaze me throughout the exchange.
Later that day we took a walk around Natalia's neighborhood.

Day 4: Monday, April 8
When I heard we were going to the Beskid mountains that day, I groaned. I couldn't imagine how cold it would be. However, I was wrong, for the day was bright and the weather perfect! The sky was an endless blue, contrasting with the blankets of white that covered the ground and lined the creeks. We drove through tranquil mountain villages and alongside cliff forests overlooking similar landscapes across on the horizon. We stopped by a famous ski jump and took the lifts to take a look at the view offered to us.

Our next stop was a traditional Polish mountain house, where we got to listen to a guide describe to us how their way of life used to be. I particularly enjoyed the instruments he showed us, such as the ocarina, this kind of bagpipe composed of inflated goat skin, and a horn so large and so long I wondered how they managed to play it.
We spent the afternoon in a town called Cieszyn. This place is special because a section of it belongs to the Czech Republic, and another belongs to Poland. We had free time to eat our picnics then explore the city, and later that afternoon, we had a guided tour. To get to the Czech Republic, we had to cross a bridge, so we spent about ten minutes over there.

Poland side

Czech Republic side

As of that evening, so far on my exchange to France I have also been to Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. And I haven't even started Eurotour yet.

Day 5: Tuesday, April 9
I'm not entirely sure where it is we drove to, but we pretty much just visited a Polish dancing troupe's base. (...I think) To become more familiar with Polish traditional dance, we were shown costumes and part of a film of a dancing spectacle, and we watched a demonstration by dancers during rehearsal. What I loved most about the dance was the music. In general, I love traditional world/folk music, but Polish music is just so lively, spirited, cheerful, free, boisterous, you get the point. We had lunch in this rather fancy dining hall, and I was able to ask one of the servers IN POLISH "Excuse me, water please." (Which makes a grand total of four languages I got to use during this week)

The view from my table

During the afternoon, Natalia showed us around her city, Katowice.

That evening, a lot of us had planned a game of laser tag at the local laser tag place. There were teams of 12, and it became French versus Poles. Due to numbers, I became a Pole. We won!

Day 6: Wednesday, April 10
Starting at about 10 am, we had a guided visit of Krakow. How I love being able to discover a new major European city! They are truly magnificent, all with their own character, particularities, a plethora of different people... everything that pleases me. During the visit, we saw the castle, the center square, the old part of the city, and the Jewish quarter. We then spent the afternoon in the Schindler Museum.

That evening, Natalia had arranged a visit of the organ museum at the Academy of Music in Katowice. Our guide, one of those old wise musicians, was passionate about organs! Seriously, there was this twinkle in his eye as he spoke about them, and it made the visit really enjoyable and interesting. You wouldn't have thought there'd be so many things to say about organs... But anyway, he is a pianist by profession. I was very happy to hear that, and he reminded me of my piano teacher Don, with his kind voice and knowledge. He spoke to us in fluent French, and he told us he also speaks Polish (being a Pole), Czech, and German. I asked if he spoke English, and he said no, because it wasn't a requirement of his generation. That made me even more thankful to be fluent in French myself.

Because Noémie, Natalia, and I really took a lot from his tour, I asked if I could play the piano to thank him. He said of course, so we were able to get access to a classroom that had two baby grand pianos in it. I squealed with delight. I don't think I had had the chance to play on such a piano before then. Since it had been one of my goals once I found out I was going to Poland, I played him a polonaise. I didn't play him my signature polonaise that I learned when I was 14, but I played one I just learned (op. 44) and haven't mastered completely yet. I knew he would be forgiving though, and when I was done he asked if I studied at a conservatory. Well, not anymore, I told him. Either way, he told me to continue, and I was very satisfied being able to play a polonaise in Poland for a Polish person. (Two, counting Natalia!)

Day 7: Thursday, April 11
We had free time in Krakow in the morning, and I loved it! My friends and I spent most of our time promenading around the city, buying souvenirs and looking at shops. At some point, I wanted to find a bathroom, so I left the group and headed to where I thought the bathroom was. There was a group of French girls going up to a door that I knew was locked, so (assuming they were from my high school) I asked them, "Are you looking for the toilets?" and they turned to me in shock and exclaimed, "She speaks French!" Oops. They weren't from my school. Either way, I spoke with them and found out they were more desperate than I was to find the bathrooms, so I wished them luck and they told me "au revoir" as they went on their way. I thought about how I must have confused them... what is an Asian-looking person, who speaks French like them, doing in Poland? This is why it's fun to be me.
That afternoon, we visited Auschwitz, the World War II death camp.
It was very, very distressing.
Throughout the visit, I was in disbelief, a myriad of thoughts endlessly racing through my head. I have been long aware of the existence of such camps, having learned about them in class and seen them in films, but absolutely nothing compares to actually being there where all those atrocities occurred. Then I saw tangible proof being displayed, like suitcases, pots and pans, shoes, and, most disturbing, the hair they cut from women.

By far the most terrifying part was walking through the gas chamber. There was this inexplicable coldness contained within the metal walls, and I thought of all those who walked in and never walked out, but instead ended up in the crematory ovens that were in the same haunting room.
I thought of how Primo Levi (an author whose testimony of the Holocaust we studied in class) described the dehumanization of the victims, then conjectured that it wasn't only the deported, the imprisoned, the tortured, the assassinated who were stripped of their identity as human beings. The Nazis too could no longer be considered human; they were worse. To emotionlessly make all these innocents suffer, to see one's fellow men exterminated in mass, their corpses burned in ovens, to witness the degradation of their being, all INTENDING for it to happen, indicates an utter, total, indisputable lack of humanity. Whereas the prisoners were made to be no longer human, the Nazis were no longer human themselves in doing so.

According to this memorial plate (set in many languages), the present existence of Auschwitz serves as a reminder and a warning. After that, mass executions shouldn't have happened anymore, but then I think of the Pol Pot Revolution in Cambodia and all the conflicts that have happened since. I ask myself, is the human race doomed to succumb to the manifestations of its own hatred? Are we fated to never know a peaceful world? Current events seem to make "yes" the answer. But then I think of some exemplary human beings who, despite the evil, continue to have faith that "no" can one day be the answer. People such as Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who starved to death to save another prisoner's life in Auschwitz, Mahatma Gandhi, and, of course, exchange students, who foster tolerance, open-mindedness, and, most importantly, hope in the new generation. As long as this tradition is kept alive, the human race isn't going to wipe itself out just yet.

Day 8: Friday, April 12
The last day in Poland arrived far too fast, and I didn't feel like leaving. I had made some incredible Polish friends, I was having a grand time learning Polish, and I was really in love with bigos (a traditional Polish dish that sounds like "beau gosse," French slang that roughly means "handsome devil"). For the last day, we visited Wujek mine (just the museum) then spent a few hours at the high school with the Poles. I spent most of my time talking with Natalia, and two of my new friends from the week Kasia and Ala, who became dear to me very fast. Kasia has the character of both an exchange student and a speech/debate person (consequently we got along instantly), and Ala too loves foreign languages, and I have carried conversations with her in English (mainly), French, and German. My Polish friends are all very smart and respectable, and I sincerely wish I had more time with them.

I love polonaises- the piano pieces and people!

Ala and me

Kasia and me

Natalia and me together again!

Day 9: Saturday, April 13
All the French and the Poles were gathered outside the bus at around 7:30 in the morning, the French getting ready to leave. It was extremely hard to say good bye to the girls; they told me they were happy to have met me and asked me to please come back to Poland, because I would always have a place with them. I pinky promised Ala I would, and I told them that I really loved my stay in their country, especially because they became my friends. Traveling is really about the people you meet on the journey, and they make the places you visit all the more special. I had tears in my eyes as I hugged Natalia tightly and let go of her hand to board the bus, knowing for certain I would see her again but uncertain when, and we left at around 8, bound for the country we call home, France.

Day 10: Sunday, April 14
That's today! I've been working on this blog entry throughout the bus trip, which was pleasant (except for the overnight drive, because I couldn't sleep.) Now that I've left France several times, I always feel relief and comfort whenever I make the trip back, to a language I speak and to scenery I recognize. I stopped feeling like an exchange student in France a while ago; I just feel French now. It was difficult enough to leave my mini exchange in Poland, so I can't fathom how difficult it will be to leave France.
Wait, I have to leave this place?
June 30 draws menacingly closer, though I keep it in the back of my mind.
BUUUT first, my Eurotour starts tomorrow. AW YEAH. Be right back. 

And so it begins

The Month of Madness is finally under way!
It began on Friday the 22nd with a five-hour trip on a bus and three trains from Parthenay to Mayet, where Brooke lives. We stayed there the night in order to meet the Rotary kids the next day.
On Saturday morning, we waited along a highway for the bus to arrive. Once it stopped, I eagerly boarded it to hear my name being called from my friends all over the bus. As is customary, the atmosphere was full of joy as I made my way down the bus hugging my fellow inbounds, some of which I haven't seen in over three months. There's nothing quite like being reunited!

What exactly did we do in Paris? Well, we didn't go through all the cliché stops like you might have expected us to.
First, the bus drove us straight to Montmartre and stopped in front of the street that we had to walk up to get to the Sacre-Cœur. Chatting and catching up along the way, we hiked up to the landing where we got a good view of the basilica.

We spent about 20 minutes eating our picnics and taking pictures, and then began our lovely walk down the butte.

On the way, we saw this wall with "I love you" written in many languages 

We saw the Opéra too!

Actually, scratch the "lovely."
What we all thought would be a relaxing, picture-taking stroll ended up being a mad, two-hour rush to the bateaux mouches in front of the Eiffel Tower (according to Google Maps, it's a distance of about 6 kilometers).

Nobody was too happy about the fact we had to travel all that distance using our own legs, but at least at the end, we got on a boat to take a cruise down the Seine River to see Paris from a different perspective.

The Pont des Arts and the Louvre

Under a bridge

I hadn't previously done one of those river cruises, so it was a pleasant experience. The Rotary kids, being the crazy outgoing exchange students we are, waved madly at all the boats that passed by us and at the people looking out from the bridges.

A lot of people actually waved back!

Like this kind lady

The next morning, we paid a visit to the largest cemetery within Paris' city limits, the Père Lachaise cemetery. The ambiance was very appropriate for a graveyard; the skies were overcast, everyone was solemnly silent, and best of all, a crow perched atop a leafless tree would occasionally caw, its call ominously echoing among the tombstones and mausoleums. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see Edith Piaf's grave, but I was able to see the grave of another one of my musical inspirations.

This is the grave of Frédéric Chopin.
I made sure to stand a few moments in front of it, thanking him in my head, before I continued on.
Our next stop was Fragonard. I myself didn't even know what that is, but if you're part of Rotary, you have to be prepared for anything. It's a perfume museum. We went through a tour and learned how perfume was made and how people end up in that trade, and then of course there was a gift shop, where I got real 25% concentration perfume. Hey, it was Paris, might as well, right?
After that, I left the group because, to everyone's jealousy, I stayed in Paris that night. I met up with a friend of my mom's from high school, and we were able to walk around Paris for the afternoon. We ate at a chic restaurant, meandered along the Seine, visited the Place de la Bastille at night, and as a bonus I got to see the front of Victor Hugo's house. For once, it was nice to see Paris without a set schedule or a group to stay with. I can't get enough of that city, with all that there is to explore.

The next day, I took the metro to the Gare du Nord, another very pretty train station, where I boarded a train headed for Amsterdam. The three hour trip passed by quickly, though the last twenty minutes or so before I arrived were a bit tinged with adrenaline as I knew when I would get off, I would see my family again after 7 months without them.
Or so I thought.
They weren't there when I got off, nor were they at the meeting point as I left the platform. I roamed around aimlessly the train station for about ten minutes wondering what to do, when finally, I was approached by this old guy asking me if I was who I am. I recognized one of our family friends, Gerrit, and I told him, "Yes. Finally!" He told me to wait as he fetched my parents, and at last I saw them (and not my sister) again.
Well, I saw my sister when we got to our family friend's house.

Me back with my family after 7 months!

We spent three nights in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands. Other than some fantastically cheap shopping in Primark and seeing windmills, a wooden clog factory, and Amsterdam (there's nothing like the first time in a new big city), there were two highlights to this trip.
First of all, the Kuik family has two sons named Vince (18) and Sam (17). Their parents are very good friends of my parents, and I even ended up in preschool with Vince and Sam while I still lived in the Philippines. Although we get sent their family newsletter every year at Christmas, I hadn't seen any of the boys since I was about 4 years old. Of course, I don't have very many memories of my time spent with them, but there was a picture of us that we successfully recreated (13 years later version)...

Sam, me, and Vince

When I was about 9 years old and still in the Philippines, May-Ann, the boys' mother, connected me with a girl my age who was in Vince's elementary school class in the Netherlands. I was to have my own pen pal! We wrote each other a few letters about who knows what, and I remember sending her a keychain, and she sent me something like that too. Either way, we didn't write that many letters; eventually we switched to email (on those nonsense addresses all kids that age seem to have), and we lost contact. However, after I planned the trip to the Netherlands, I asked May-Ann if she could find Jamie for me. She did. We became friends on Facebook, and I told her that I was going to be in her country and we should meet.
We did.

Sushi, the dinner of champions

Despite us not being in contact in years, we unknowingly ended up a lot like each other. She too ended up being a young ambassador, volunteering in Zimbabwe with a charity called World Vision. She has a lot of international friends, speaks French, loves foreign languages, and traveling. She draws well, plays the piano, sings, and plays the ukulele (and I know that when someone plays the ukulele, they are instantly a cool person). Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about and got along like we had known each other for years (which, well, we kinda did).
Jamie is one of those rare friends I feel very lucky to have, one of those people I instantly formed a tight bond with just like Natalia from Poland and Nyrika from India. She's one of those people I feel like I was meant to meet, like it was inevitable and bound to happen. We were both born on the same year, she in Hoofddorp and I on the other end of the world in Cebu City, two cities that just happen to be sister cities. I find that rather remarkable.
Of course, since we both play the ukulele and sing, we prepared a song together.

Until next time, Jamie, we'll meet again somewhere...I am certain!
After we left the Netherlands, my family and I spent three nights in Paris, renting an apartment in the 3rd arrondissement. I was only gone for three days, but I really missed France and hearing French all around me, and it was such a relief to be back. Plus, my family got to see how fluent in French I have become.
We explored Paris so much I know the city better now. We did most of our getting around by metro, and on our trip we rode lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12, and 14. Here's a map to give you an idea...

The two highlights of the trip for me were the Musée Dupuytren and the Espace Dali, my two new favorite Parisian museums out of the 200+ that exist.

The Musée Dupuytren is a room within the René Descartes medical school containing shelves and shelves of preserved anatomical anomalies. Some, though, were (extremely accurate) wax models, but most of the samples were well preserved in their jars despite their age.
Although I wasn't allowed to take photos, there are a myriad that can be found on Google Images, just to give an idea of what this obscure room within a medical university in Paris houses.

I figure that most people who visit this museum are medical students (or future medical students, wink wink). The world of medicine fascinates me so; it continually proves that reality is indeed stranger than fiction. I first read about this museum some time during sophomore year, and I made it a goal to visit it someday. Here is yet another item I crossed off my long bucket list as I wandered around the museum, contemplating the jars that held within them objects that seemed to have been fabricated by a macabre, twisted mind. If the role of museums is to inspire and awe, this one definitely did the job.  

As for the Dali Exposition, it was in Montmartre, the famous artists' quarter of Paris. This is a permanent exhibit that showcases about 300 of his works! 

"Surrealism is myself!"

Salvador Dali is my favorite artist. I love him for his intriguing pieces, many with recurring themes. Surrealism is also my favorite genre of art. Now that I think of it, Dali's mind could have easily conjured up the figures I saw in the Musée Dupuytren...

After Paris, I took my family down to Parthenay and gave them the tour of the town. They met my two host families, homeroom teacher, and class as well. It was a successful visit. They left on the morning of Wednesday, April 3. I will see them again on June 30, which I know is going to get here way too fast...

I've been putting off this blog entry a bit getting super sidetracked with my ukulele, Facebook, and packing for Poland. 

I leave tomorrow from the high school at 4 am. We spend the entire day on the bus, then spend the night somewhere in Germany, not reaching Katowice, Poland until Saturday evening. I am not looking forward to the long bus ride, but the destination makes it worth it. I figure I'll have aaall the time I would need to write about Poland on the bus ride back next week.

Ahhh, Poland...a new country to explore, the home of my favorite composer! Here we go!