For three summers, I traveled to Poland as a volunteer in an organization that holds English camps for middle school and high school level students. My primary role as a native English speaker was to just converse with the students so that they could practice the English they had learned in school. Apart from the few trips I took to Krakow and Katowice, I spent most of my time in cities, towns, and villages in the Silesian Voivodeship.
Rynek (market place) in Żory.
I will always cherish the friends I made there, the families who shared their homes with me, and the few Polish words and phrases I picked up along the way.
Me (on the left) in Krakow with Saint Mary's Basilica in the background.
(personal photo from July 2016)
Hi again, Baylor! Like I said in the email this morning, I was so excited when I saw Silesia as a favorite places post. There's a book of Silesian folktales, free to read online, that I wanted to make sure to share with you in case you are interested in learning about Silesian traditional stories:
ReplyDeleteSilesian Folk Tales (the Book of Rübezahl)... even if you don't do a Silesian Storybook as a class project, you could still use that book as extra credit reading if you want; you'll find out how all that works later this week :-)
Honestly, when I saw that one of your favorite places was Krakow and that you were a Polish major, I got kind of excited too. After looking at others' storybooks, I knocked around some early ideas of my own but I hadn't thought about doing a Silesian storybook. I love the idea. I know its pretty early to be thinking about it, considering I know nothing of the details, but given that I'm studying Latin, and love it, I thought about combining two of my favorite things and basing my project off some of Klemens Janicki's poems about the Polish kings or Jan Kochanowski's "Odprawa posłow greckich."
DeleteWow, Baylor, just wow: Janicki. Kochanowski. I actually did my M.Phil. on Polish Latin poetry. Mostly Kochanowski, but I was really into all kinds of neo-Latin back in the day. I'm not sure how many people you will find in the United States who are fans of Polish Latin poetry. Odprawa posłow greckich: that really brings back memories. Anyway, I am a huge fan of all things Latin. Before there were growth mindset cats there were... Latin LOLCats: Latin LOLCats. And I have some free Latin books here to download as PDFs if you are interested: Latin Textbooks. The distich book is a really fun ones: tons of eccentric sources, most of them neo-Latin. I originally came to OU in Classics, but left to explore the possibilities of online teaching (which I love)... so I haven't taught Latin in almost 20 years, but I still miss it. :-)
DeleteHello again!
ReplyDeleteWow, travelling to Poland must've been really fun! It's really cool that you also volunteered on your trip. I bet you have some good stories from conversing with the students and travelling in Poland.
I've never been to Poland, but I got to visit Germany for two weeks after high school. I think travelling to another country is one of those things that really gives you a new perspective and changes you a little as a person!