Willkommen in Polska: The Honeymoon

Our first morning in Kostrzyn, I looked out our window and smiled. We have a beautiful tree full of autumnal colors. I told Alexander I was so excited because I would actually get to have a honeymoon phase, which didn't happen in Jakarta.

View from our window

We arrived on a Thursday and started the official paperwork for Alex on the Friday, so we got to drive through the beautiful forests of the region we're now living in. On the Saturday, we were able to get things to cook on our stove with and bake in our oven with. It was fantastic to be able to cook a proper meal with a four-burner stove top. On the Sunday, we went with our boss to his family church and met a lot of his family, and on the Monday, we started work.

On the walk to work

We walked 3.5 kilometers to work and about one kilometer of the walk was through a forest. The students here are about the same as students anywhere else. As with most foreign language learners, they tend to revert to their native language. The first week I was able to teach English, German and Spanish to students from the age of  6 to 50+, so it hasn't been boring. It's been especially exciting to be able to use the languages that I studied and got my degree in.

One of the first things I noticed about Kostrzyn was the deutsch. Due to its closeness to Germany, Kostrzyn has German on so many signs and several people here kann ein bisschen deutsch, which has made things a little smoother when it comes to transitioning here.

The first week in Kostrzyn was truly awesome. It was great to breath fresh air, and be surrounded by fall colors, and hear leaves crunching under my feet and raining onto the rooftops. However, in our second week we started to deal with a lot of bureaucracy, such as registering me, a non-EU citizen, to live in Poland. All the bureaucracy meant my honeymoon phase was quickly over...but it was great when it lasted.