Polish is hard, y'all

Well it is the end of our 3rd full day here in Szczecin. Here is a brief recap and some observations...

Friday is a bit of a haze. I know I blogged for y'all at the end of the day, but man, most of the day I felt like a zombie. I don't remember jet lag hitting me so hard when I've been to Europe in the past. But also, the last time I was in Europe was over 10 years ago. And I did not have children.  Matthew has been up for a couple of hours every night. His poor internal clock is so screwed up. We are hoping tonight is better.

Saturday we slept in again, then went down for breakfast just before 10 am. Emmy was anxious to swim in the indoor pool, so she and Charles went down to swim after breakfast while I stayed and tried to get Matthew to nap. But he did not want to nap while they were gone, oh no, he fell asleep right before they returned. So no nap for Mommy.

Snack on a bench beside the river.

After everyone was showered and ready for the day, we finally left the room around 2 pm. We walked down to the river (the kids and I had walked that direction on a brief walk the day before, but we have to cross a major road to actually get to the water and we had Rags so I was up to do that by myself at the time). Emmy was whining about being hungry so we stopped at a stand selling pastries and bought a snack and juice and went and sat on a bench by the river to eat. That made everyone happier. We walked along the river, it was a nice day and people were out walking, biking, and riding in boats.

Same bench, facing the other direction so you can see the river!
Emmy is snapping to get Matthew's attention. Clearly it worked...

We walked up to the Basilica, which was lovely. It was interesting taking Emmy in and trying to explain the chapels, candles, etc., especially since we are not Catholic!

We kept walking and eventually came across one of the malls. I needed to go the restroom, so we decided to go and find one. We walked around a bit, then Matthew woke up so we went to change him. We eventually left the mall, then decided to go back in because we'd seen a grocery store inside (yes, all the malls apparently have grocery stores inside) and we thought getting some snacks and milk to keep in the room would be a good idea.  The grocery store was a bit overwhelming. Y'all, I don't speak Polish. I don't read Polish.  We looked around mostly, just trying to get an idea of what there is, and grabbed some cheese and crackers, etc. and checked out. Emmy had seen McDonald's in there and wanted that for supper. And we gave in.  From a 6 year old's perspective, we saw she wanted something familiar (not that she has been starving or even complaining about the food).  She was super whiny and Matthew was hungry at this point so Charles and I also got McDonald's to be easy. (There is a food court with maybe 7 or 8 choices, but at least 3 of these are U.S. chains, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's and maybe one was KFC, I cannot remember). Y'all, that was the best McDonald's food I've ever had! My friend Jocelyn lives in Germany and she said they don't eat McDonald's in the states but do in Germany because it's so much better! Do Europeans have higher standards? Who knows. But that coke was also heaven on ice. I had not had coke since we left home, but this one was amazing and on ice. A lot of Europeans do not use ice, I knew this, and Polish folks apparently never drink anything cold. And never give kids cold drinks. (I learned this tonight at dinner with new friends, more on that later). So the ice was amazing.

Midnight parties with Matthew.

Thus ended our 2nd full day. And after the late night Friday night fighting with picture uploading and Matthew waking up, we were headed to bed at 9:45 when Matthew woke up again. And then was up for 2.5 hours. Good grief. Emmy was also up crying while he was up, it was a rough evening.

So today, Sunday, began a bit groggily again. My goal was to make it down to breakfast by 9:30 and be showered before breakfast. I was showered, but Charles was not and we missed the goal by a few minutes, mostly because a certain 6 year old was being sassy. This has been the case a lot lately. Not sure if it is travel, change, a new place, tiredness, or just being a 6 year old. Probably all of the above, but she is going to have a hard time making it to 7 if she keeps this up! Seriously, we are trying to give her a lot of grace and understand where this could be coming from, but when she does things like put her hand up to stop Charles from talking/disciplining her, on my goodness.

Anyways, we headed back out around 11 to walk around some more. We had been invited to dinner tonight at the home of some "new friends." M is the wife of another officer in the unit and they have been here for 2 years. She is the friend of another Facebook friend of mine who worked for Charles' battalion in Colorado, so she connected the two of us.  We have been emailing back and forth for several months and even had a Skype chat.  She is lovely and I appreciated her helping us, especially since we already had lovely sponsors giving us info., but as always it's good to have more perspectives, and to know someone here.  Anyways, we wanted to get a bottle of wine to take as a hostess gift and we forgot when we were at the store the day before. We knew there was another mall just a few more minutes down the road, so we decided to walk that direction and get that errand done and see what we could find.

At that mall, we found the other grocery store, Real, upstairs. It reminded me more of Walmart or K-mart because they also had clothes, seasonal items (pools, outdoor toys, etc.), and other home items. We grabbed 2 bottles of wine (one for our room!) and Charles found one of the "share a coke" coke bottles that said "Supermama" and decided I needed that, and we checked out. We let Emmy get some gelato as a treat at the stand downstairs and watched the big fountain while we shared that, then headed out to discover it was raining hard. So we went back up to Real and bought umbrellas! Mine had been left at school earlier in the year and Emmy's is packed somewhere in our household goods, so we needed a couple anyways.

We walked back to the hotel in the rain, which was interesting. It was not pouring, but a steady rain and about a 15-20 minute walk. We were all quite soaked, except for Matthew. I was wearing him in my wrap and he was under the umbrella so he was nice and cozy.  Clothes were changed and we tried to get him to sleep, but he'd napped in the wrap and was not having it. Of course he was ready to sleep when we needed to get ready to go. R picked us up at 3:30 in the pouring rain and drove us to their home, about 15 minutes away. It is very big and lovely, very fancy. M had invited me to bring laundry over since having it done by the hotel can get expensive, so I graciously accepted. Except laundry here takes a long time so my 2 small loads took over 4 hours and still were not totally dry when we left at 8:45!  It was nice to get to talk to them in person and R shared a lot more about the unit with Charles. They have 2 boys who are close to Emmy's age and they all played and had fun. And they have an adorable English bulldog named Malcom who thinks he is a lap dog and loves the kids so he kept licking them and almost knocking them over (unintentionally) because he wanted to play. The cooked us a delicious supper (bacon wrapped shrimp kebobs with pineapple and mushrooms, broccoli casserole, chicken legs, and garlic bread for you detail lovers, with ice cream and sorbet for dessert) and had a lovely time. We are very grateful.

Matthew dozed in the car on the way to their house and slept in my arms before supper but by the time we headed home he was exhausted. He fell asleep in the car and I carried him up asleep and got him to nurse a bit before I put him down. He just woke up but Charles got him right back down, so now we pray he stays asleep!

And thus ends our first weekend in Poland.

Some observations:

•  We walk by people smoking frequently and Emmy is not amused by the smell.  When I studied in Spain I was quite used to it, but after so many years of being around little to no smoking, it does stand out.
• I'm going to miss ice and cold beverages until we are in our own home and can make ice, and I may need someone to send me some good old fashioned ice cube trays. M told me when they asked for cold milk for their children (because here they give kids warm milk) people looked at them as if they were crazy. They don't give children cold beverages. Is this supposed to be detrimental in some way? 
• Polish is hard, y'all! Seriously, I've listened to how to say things like "good morning" and "thank you" over and over on Google translate, and I'm still not certain I could tell you now if I had to. The pronunciation looks nothing like what it sounds like, to me at least. I feel better that the people we've met have been here 1 year and 2 years and they all say the language is so hard for them. R and M both say they have hardly learned any. Gonna be super frustrated with that one, so learning to let it go and do the best I can is going to be a hard one for me.

Overall we are doing ok. No major meltdowns on my part, I kept waiting for something during the travels to break me down (Karen had warned me it would happen) but we're doing ok. I'm afraid when it does hit me, it may be ugly! Haha.

The hotel has a children's area (many businesses do, we've told and we've seen so far), which was useful when he woke up in the middle of the night and we were trying to keep him from waking Emmy up.

At least he's cute at midnight.