This Day: Polska

Let's see here, what's been going on.

Well, at lot of social interactions with Germans, for sure. We have a new conversation partner, named Sandra, that has gotten us involved with other people. She is somewhat new to Dresden, and through this thing that she calls "German facebook" has access to meeting new people who want to get involved in hanging out in Dresden. On the 17th of the month, we went with her to her hometown, Leipzig, and saw some pretty cool sites. We learned that the city holds the largest train station in Europe and yes, it. was. huge. We also saw the church at which Bach consistently played and a familiar site--Starbucks. On the train ride back, an interesting conversation happened that my teammate Jennifer writes about here. She gives a nice account of the story since she was the one with whom the conversation was held. I, sadly, slept on the ride back and missed out. Trust me--I never knew my sleeping could get in the way of things! I think it worked out for the best because Sandra might've been less open if she was discussing everything with all four of us, instead of just two. We are planning on seeing her again this coming Tuesday to go for a paddle boat ride on the Elbe.

Now, more currently--through Sandra we've met a guy named Mat. He likes movies and invited us all to go to one. So, this Wednesday, I finally saw my first movie IN THEATERS since January 11. Considering I go to the movies once a week at home, I've been suffering. Seriously--I have a test that proves that I will go into stress mode when I don't exhibit my "artistic" side, which just so happens to be movies (in my case). On top of going to the movies, the movie I watched just so happened to be Slumdog Millionaire. I was very impressed. I should be writing a review about it sometime soon!

We have met with a new conversation partner, Elizabeth, but only for about 10 minutes. She needed to leave and go practice the piano. In that time, we were able to find out that she attends a local Lutheran church and hopes to start playing church hymns soon. I'm excited to get the chance to know Elizabeth! We'll see more of her tomorrow.

Lastly, Jessica, Jennifer, and I ventured outside of Dresden on Saturday to visit the easternmost town in Germany: Görlitz. Some claims were thrown out there that it is considered the most beautiful city in Germany. Well, all I have to say is that Dresden is prettier :) It is still a beautiful city, though. We even found a place called Heiliges Grab, a copy of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, with representations of the scenes of Christ's Passion. After viewing most of the city, we walked across the border into Poland. Yep, we just walked on over. The Polish city's name is Zgorzelec, and it wasn't much to see. I don't really care too much about that because I can say I've now been to Poland! It was quite a difficult thing after we realized that we dont a) know the language, b) have a map, or c) have Polish money. We made it back to Germany safely, nonetheless.

That's most of what's going on around here. We have several meetings with people this week so we hope that they will all go well! And guess what? May starts this Friday! What a great month it will be!

German word: wünschen--to wish