You Can Find Me In Polska: October 2010

I thought I would get your attention with that catchy title. I decided that I am on a hunt to find a husband. Well not exactly a hunt, but my chances are so high that it's virtually impossible for me not to meet someone that could become my husband in a few years. One of my friends from my program, Wenche (pronounced Ven Kay...and you thought Ola was a weird name!) and I were talking the other day and we realized that we are so set when it comes to our love lives. Why you ask? Think about this: everyone around us is studying to be either a doctor, dentist, therapist or pharmacist. Now don't get me wrong, although I'm "surrounded" by these great candidates, I am still sporting the single life and I'm totally fine with that, but it's good to see that bigger picture sometimes.

On a different note, school is picking up so I'm becoming more and more busy. I have two presentations on Monday in kinesiology and philosophy which should be fairly easy to dominate, but we shall see. Last week in anatomy lab we got to play around with real human hearts and a cadaver (we named him Frank). So anatomy is now the class that I enjoy the most. Also, we are in the process of rearranging our class schedule for Christmas break, so I am potentially coming December 16 through January 5 which is absolutely fantastic. Speaking of people in my program, I am proud to announce that the Norwegians have finally opened up to the rest of the group. Thursdays we go out to dinner as a group after our philosophy class which has proven to be quite the bonding time.

Now for the drumrolllllllll! Mama and Tata are coming next week! Whooo! I'm very excited to see them. I will meet them in our hometown Pulawy next Friday. I am obviously very excited mostly because Mama said she's bringing me shrimp. Just kidding :) I will be posting pictures from Matat's adventures here in Poznan. It's kind of weird that I'm going to be showing them around "my" city here in Poznan. Funny how things worked out.

Also, I signed up for the Milano City Marathon which will be in April in Milan, Italy :) (pretty sure I'm using the marathon as an excuse to go to Italy) and I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon which will be in August (Katie and I are going to do it together!).

That is all for now, but my next post will include some Matat pictures so get excited. And maybe an update on my husband hunt :)

Due to the very high demand of random pictures from my school...cough! Katie! cough!...here are a few random ones from today!

Out for a walk down Kraszewskiego

At the outdoor market

This is the Colegium Anatomicum building where I have most of my classes.

When you walk into the building, you leave your jacket at the "szatnia" aka coatcheck. It's almost as if you're at a club, but then you remember that it's actually anatomy or something.

Very intense rules before entering the lecture halls.

View out the anatomy lab room.

My new comforter and decorations.

Detailed look of the shelves above my bed.

My desk :)

Pictures next to my desk.

More pictures to come! Oh and Happy Halloween everyone!

It's taken me a while to figure out how to write this post because my adventures this past week and a half have been surreal (and I found this website where I can watch all my favorite tv shows!!! whooo!). But as I started jamming to a mixture of Glee and good old fashioned Taylor Swift, I finally got the inspiration to tell you about Munich and Prague. Oh and school (almost forgot that part)!

After I finished my pre-study course on Wednesday, my two friends and I loaded up the car and exchanged our dollars to euro and embarked on quite the adventure to the historically famous city of Munich. We drove until 1:30am and since we were all tired, we decided to take a snooze in the car. Now when I say we were all tired from driving, I must remind you that I did not do much of the driving. Thanks to manual transmission and my lack of knowledge how to drive stick shift, I was able to sit back and relax. And of course yell "Deutschland!" at the top of my lungs every time a car zoomed past us going 130mph. Needless to say, after we slept for a few hours, we drove a few more hours and arrived in Munich where we quickly dropped our bags off at our friends' cousins' house and began site seeing. We also got some shopping done (I got a leather jacket and now I'm super European) and ate some authentic German food also known as sausage and sauerkraut and drank some real German beer. Later that night we went to Oktoberfest. Yes. Oktoberfest. Let me show you the formula for Oktoberfest.

People+Beer+Tents+Rollercoasters+Beer+People=Oktoberfest

In summary, I would like to say that Munich was a success and Oktoberfest was a blast :) On Saturday morning, we drove 3.5 hours to Prague (closer than Chicago to Columbus! willlddddd!) where we got a hostel for the night and illegally parked our car on the street because every Czech person told us that the police in Prague are a joke. So we risked not paying 20 euro for parking which proved to be a good risk to take because our car was still there in the morning. And here's my formula for Prague- Italian city in eastern Europe. ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! We did some site seeing and got to see a lot of the city in a short amount of time thanks to our handy maps that we found at our hostel. We also tried some authentic Czech food and naturally HAD to sip on some good old fashioned Czech beer at an adorable courtyard bar called "U Fleku." Here's the thing with the Czech people...turns out that Polish and Czech are very similar languages, however the Czech can understand the Polish, but the Polish cannot understand the Czech. So we did a lot of nodding and a lot of "ooohhhh"'s and somehow nobody noticed. We left Prague at 5:30 in the morning on Sunday because we wanted to beat weekend traffic so we were in Poznan early that afternoon.

Overall saying we had a blast is underestimating our trip- it was very much amazing. I still can't believe that we visited two countries in four days- surreal! This past week was my first week of classes and I'm actually very excited for all my classes except for Latin. I mean seriously?! Latin?! If that's not going to be nails on a chalkboard, I don't know what is. Our program has become a little bit closer and we bonded during our presentations in our ethics and deontology class. Anddd I must say that even the Norwegians are opening up- success! Wednesday we didn't have class (like I said, great first week) because we had an inauguration ceremony. Basically it was the official welcoming of all first year medical students into their respective programs- it was sort of like a graduation, but before you get your diploma. Pretty cool until the professor from Ohio University gave a lecture on nanobiochemogluto-something and completely lost me. However, I was excited that he teaches at Ohio University because it's voted the number one party school in the nation and I made sure to tell everyone about that.

This past weekend I got to finally meet (get ready for this) my grandma's sisters' daughters' daughter. Basically- family. Even though I thought it might be a little bit awkward, it was actually really good and maybe because I did most of the talking :) Surprising, I know. Also, the girl is actually an elementary school teacher and will be recommending me as an English tutor! Whooo! Hopefully that will work out and I will keep you posted!

Okay that is all for now because I need to check out the rest of the most wonderful care package in the world from my parents! Take care for now! You are all greatly missed and stay tuned for more adventures :)