Część! This is Polish and means „Hello!” as well as „Bye!”. I’m sure you cannot pronounce it right and have to admit that after nine days in Poland, I’m still not able to say much more than ten words in Polish. But my exchange student Karolina speaks English and so we could talk to each other rather fluently. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn Russian at school, so a conversation with Karolina’s parents wasn’t possible. Nevertheless, her mother and I managed to bake a cake together. I’m very proud because I went to a small supermarket and got everything I wanted for that cake. That doesn’t seem to be a thing to be proud of but this supermarket was not like in Aurich. It was a bit like an old-fashioned corner shop. Actually I only showed the young shop assistant my list with the ingredients in Polish and she went through the shop and gave me everything I wanted.
As I told you I can’t speak Polish and because Kępno is not a huge globalized city like Wrocław or Kraków there is simply none speaking English or German. (Inform yourself about the word for „postcard” before you’re trying to buy one in Kępno without a Polish student.) The shopassistant spoke to me in Polish and wanted to explain something with the cream or milk or something I didn’t know because I couldn’t understand a single word because Polish is a language as different as it can be compared to German, English, French or Spanish, which I learned in school.
You always think as a pupil learning three foreign languages you can talk to anyone all over the world, but you just have to go to our neighbour state to learn that this conviction is simply wrong. And it’s quite embarrassing that the Polish pupils learn German in school and work very hard to talk to you in German and you don’t understand a word in Polish. Nearly all of our exchange students have private lessons in various subjects to improve their skills, which doesn’t mean that there is a person helping them with their homework. It’s really like additional school in the afternoon where the pupils have to work hard. Not only the worst students, whom are afraid of not graduating, take these lessons, but also my exchange student who is quite good at school takes these private lessons together with her twin sister. She learns English, Italian, and History in the afternoons, which are taught by teachers who are driving around the whole town to teach the pupils in their homes.
At one day I went with her and her sister to their lessons at the school to get to know the Polish way of teaching. In the first English lesson, there was a pupil who hardly could construct an English sentence without asking the teacher and that’s what I suppose is the main problem in the lessons of my host sisters that I joined: the gap between the ability of the different pupils is so big that the good pupils have to take private lessons to really learn something new.
But school life doesn’t only consist of lessons and learning. In Kępno there is a special team of pupils in the school who plans parties and discos; since unlike our town, Kepno has very few cafés, bars, and no discos. So they arrange a disco at school for example on Valentine’s Day (a big event in Poland and not only seen in the commercial way). A week or so before the February 14th they placed a post box on the stairs where everyone could see it and you could throw in your love letters which were transmitted later. Additionally, there were stickers with the shape of a heart twice on every single stair.
One evening we had a lot of fun on a friend’s 18th birthday party in a café that her parents rented. At this party, I got to know a strange custom: Kamila (the birthday-child) had to lay down forwards on two chairs and everyone who wanted to could strike her bottom with a belt until eighteen slaps occured. For all the Polish students it was normal to be treated like that on your birthday. The last big party took place on our last evening in Poland before the departure. We met in a restaurant with a big hall and celebrated the whole evening and night.
The next morning Kaminsky, the restaurant-owner, had a surprise for us: he prepared a lunchpack and came to the bus to thank us because we kept faith with him by going to his bar nearly daily even though one night it was only –21°C outside. I had real problems to squeeze this additional lunchbag into my rucksack because my host mother gave me lots of food and one liter of Coke and 3.5 liter of water with carbonic acid. After mentioning only one time and without purpose that I prefered medium water they started to buy medium water just for me and I had no chance to ensure them that I would just as well drink the silent water they normally used at home. The hospitality is astonishing and I sometimes felt bad because I thought in Germany the Polish students didn’t enjoy such great hospitality as we did at their houses.
In the end I can just thank them for this great opportunity they gave to me by admitting me in their home and getting to know all the other students. These experiences I had in Poland are unique and for that reason I can just give advice to all my fellow students: host to a Polish student in your family and visit a Polish family in return, it’s worth the few days you will miss at school. The important things are not visiting Wrocław or Kraków, which are of course interesting cities, or the cheap cigarettes or beer for which you only have to pay a few cents; but the best part is meeting students from abroad and forming international friendships.