Jadę do Tychów

I have to go to Tychy to teach today. I've been travelling there once a week since I arrived in Poland (except for one or two weeks when the Thursday was a public holiday). I don't mind the class there, the students are interesting, friendly and definitely motivated, but I really despise the travel required. One hour on an overcrowded bus each way, with a 40min wait after my class to catch this bus. The bus only runs once per hour and is always excessively overcrowded. Logically, one would think that this would give the bus company the hint that maybe running the bus every half hour would be a wise thing to do, but no, logic hasn't prevailed. Lately the bus trip has been lengthened by roadworks occurring on the road between Gliwice and Mikołów, which has meant that the bus has had to wait for up to 10mins to be allowed to go through. This is frustrating for me because it means firstly that I have to spend extra time in the overcrowded bus, and secondly that I have to hurry at the other end in order to be on time for my class.

Oh how I long for a public transport system like those in Vienna or Berlin...

Honours Results

Congratulations to Aggie, Clare and Russell for finishing honours and being awarded 1st class!

I'm sure all three of them are happy about the result (you can't expect much better) and probably quite relieved that the horror of the honours year is over.

MIT Weblog Survey

Settings and Accented Characters

Ok, you might be able to tell, if this isn't your first visit to my blog, that I've changed some of my settings.
Well, the most obvious change is that I've changed the date stamp to Polish. I might change back to English at some point, I'll see how I feel. Any opinions on this? Whis language would you prefer?

I'm also going to use this post to test if the accented characters work: ąćęłńóśżź

Friday Night

Well, yesterday was Kasia's birthday and so she had a party to celebrate this event. There were a few people in her rather small apartment (about the same size as mine, but without a kitchen, only a kitchenette), about 10 or so. As with most gatherings involving young people the world over, there was a lot of alcohol, mostly vodka. One person, who shall remain nameless (although naming him wouldn't narrow things down - there were four guys there with his name), decided to impress us with a display of digestive pyrotechnics. This display happened in the lounge room, right in front of me (actually I moved when I saw what was going to occur and it landed right where I'd been sitting). It was only a small amount of vomit, and he then stumbled to the bathroom. Delightful.
I spoke to one of the exchange student people there who comes from Bosnia, but says that ethnically she's actually Serbian, and from what I gather, her town/village/city would like to be in Serbia rather than Bosnia, as the population of the city is mostly Serbian, and the language is Serbian, and, of course, she was born in Yugoslavia. Sounds like tensions still exist in the Balkans (is anyone really surprised?). I can't remember her name, but it could be something resembling Elena. She's studying architecture, which is probably going to be quite a useful profession in a country where a large amount of the previous architecture is no longer in its original form.

Happy Birthday Pepsi!

Happy Birthday to my dog, Pepsi. She's now 11 years old.

My new blog

Well, here is my new blog.
Technically it's my third blog ever, and the first to be set for wider public consumption. This probably means that one or two people will actually read it, until the novelty wears off, of course.