Home is Where the Piast Is

The ten day escape from Olowek and it's night after night of drinking was super refreshing. It was really cool to see how you guys were living it up in another Eastern European country and how different it really is from here in Poland. This whole time I had it in mind that it must be the same, only more cold because you guys are so far north. I can't wait to come back up that way, Mandy and I still have to take the time to figure out another excursion; one that does Not go through crappy Riga. Coming back to Olowek was such a weird experience in itself too. As soon as we stepped off the plane in Wroclaw Mandy kept exclaiming, "it feels like we're home! I mean Home home!" And it did, the welcome parties came even though I really wanted to just roll over and sleep. It was nice though. We were really missed by people that we've only known a few months but now feels like a lifetime, for most of them. Now going home seems really Really close. Ah! And I haven't filled out any of those forms Tom's been sending by email.... Now I finally feel driven to jump into my classwork like I mean it. Hopefully the feeling will last but it is annoying to be a student and not be involved in your studies. I am choosing to be a student because I want to learn what I can (and get a degree saying that I did) right now in my life. What I am learning is how to manage in this crazy environment where I have to wake up at 6am to book a laundry machine and deal without a good library to write papers. I guess more of the surprise is that somehow I'm making it in this 'crazy' environment. The neatest thing is to see or more hear Polish people outside of Poland. I hear, "Tak, dobry." and my ears go, "Hey! I understood that!" This happened in London as me and a friend studying here too stayed in a hostel in the Polish district. They also had a display by the Thames about Poland's Wildlife. Of course we were cracking up and were like, "why haven't we seen any of these things?" But we took pictures and pointed to our Wroclaw on the provided map. So now Wroclaw is home more than homebase. Weird but neat.