I've been mulling over in my head towards the end of my stay in Poland how I should synthesize my experience in the usual blog entry. At one point, I made a list on my iPad of bullet points that I should definitely discuss in further detail. For the sake of being uncomplicated, I think I'll just preserve these bullet points and elaborate on them. Since there isn't a section on my Polish host family (the title of this entry does mean "Exchange in Poland - once again!") and how great of a time I had with them, I think that'll be for a separate entry. So for now, onwards to the first bullet point!
• the Polish language and a comparative perspective (Uwaga! Warning! Extreme language-nerding alert)
Boring linguistics section (I say boring because if I had to learn this in a class I'd actually find it rather tedious, though I actually really enjoy discovering these things on my own and writing them down for my own pleasure, so if you find it boring then skip to the second bullet point), but just some things about Polish I find interesting and felt I needed to write down somewhere. Also things about other languages that came up as I was learning it.
First of all, as Polish is also an Indo-European language, it really isn't that drastically different to English when you compare it with a non Indo-European language such as Tagalog or Japanese. For the most part, sentence order was fairly similar. No hardcore mind acrobatics needed to be performed in this aspect of the language. Things like, "(insert clause here), because (insert clause here)" and "First I get up, and then I take a shower" were pretty much the same. However, in Polish, the pronouns are optional, and different, very regular verb conjugations suffice to indicate what the subject is. It's just like Spanish in that sense. I personally find it convenient, omitting the pronoun. Languages are all quite logical and try to be as efficient as possible, oftentimes trying to convey as much meaning as possible without exerting much effort. As I have seen many a conjugation table in my life, it all came naturally to me. Incidentally, I've also been learning Spanish the same time as Polish, and these are the first two languages I've taken on whose verbs do this.
Speaking of Spanish, this makes a good segue into something else I wanted to talk about. One way languages are efficient in conveying meaning is in how specific they can be in certain ways. For instance, there are words in English that would have multiple equivalents in other languages, making distinctions that a native English speaker wouldn't necessarily be thinking about. In Polish, we learned four different words for the word "to go": iść, chodzić, jechać, and jeździć (these are all infinitives). The first two involve going somewhere not using a vehicle, and the last two involve using some kind of vehicle. Iść and jechać are used when the act is a one-time deal (like "Today I'm going to the theater") and chodzić and jeździć involve routine (like "I go by metro to Boston"). This was something new to me, but I was able to grasp the concept right away.
In my studies I've come across other interesting distinctions. In Spanish you have two words for "to be," ser and estar. Ser is a more permanent state of being and is used when saying your name, where you're from, etc. Estar is used in telling your current location, emotion, and also the conjugation "to be (doing something)" which I actually haven't come across in another language besides English. German has two words for the English "when," depending on whether you're talking about the future or the past. Wenn is used for talking about something that hasn't happened yet, such as "When I'm retired..." On the other hand, als is used when talking about something that happened in the past, liked "When I was young..." (I will now avoid talking about the ghastly German word order in sentences like this.) Finally, in a language I didn't study but just knew from my parents, in Tagalog (and I know in certain other languages as well) there is of course the inclusive "we." There is a distinction in the way Tagalog speakers say "we"/"us": Kami means the speaker is referring to a group that the listener is not a part of, whereas tayo means the speaker is including the listener when they say "we." In my opinion, more languages need to do this. It's super convenient.
Anyway, going back to to Polish, which is a notoriously difficult language. Part of it is that it just looks so hard to pronounce. However, that wasn't the main difficulty I found with it, since Polish (like Spanish and unlike English) is a very phonetic language with consistent pronunciation rules; for me, it was the mere foreignness of the words (which I will being up in a bit) and, of course, the cases.
Ahhh, the cases.
If you know anything about German, there are four cases, which is difficult enough. However, Polish has seven, and what's more, I've found that there aren't really definite prepositions, and cases ("noun conjugations," if you will) used in conjunction with certain prepositions are what convey information. For instance, "z + (noun in instrumental case)" means "with (said noun)," but "z + (genitive case)" means "from (said place/noun/whatever)." I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of cases and when they are used. I only know nominative, how the instrumental is formed (and a few contexts in which it is used), and how the accusative is formed (and a few contexts in which it is used as well, and when it is not used). I guess I kinda know vocative, but I still need to study the genitive, locative, and dative cases and when they are used. When it comes to the cases (and the masculine - feminine - neutrum genders too), I'm really glad I know German so I at least am used to thinking of those. Now I'm sitting here wondering how I'm able to retain all these arbitrary rules in all these languages, so I think I'll stop boring you with this linguistic business and get to the more typical travel-writing I do.
• living in Krakow, Europe, etc.
Krakow was a city I fell in love with from the first steps I took in it with my class from my French high school in 2013. After I found out I would return, I reread my journal entries from that time and noticed that I wrote that I was sure I would find myself in that beautiful city again some time. I never would have thought it'd be this soon, and I never would have thought it'd be for this purpose. It made the city even more exciting for me, actually being an international student there rather than just a visitor. It's a nice sized city; not overwhelmingly enormous, but rather a welcoming bustling size, with buses, trams, and a really nice main train station (that I somehow found myself in many, many times). Throughout my time there, there was never a lack of things to do, not even late at night on weekdays (much to my dismay at times, because I had good friends who wanted to go around the city at night as well as classes that started at 8:30 am). It was always so magical to enter the main square and see outdoor cafés, the magnificent basilica, and horses with carriages, especially as night fell. The fountain in the square became a usual rendezvous spot, and the streets of the old town became more and more familiar. It was a really grand pleasure getting to know Krakow better than I thought I would, and it made me feel a sense of pride to say that I was actually living there, even if for very briefly.
Then there's living in Europe in general. Though there are certain comforts in the USA that I miss whenever I'm in Europe, I really do feel at home there. I love the idea of so many countries being so close, and envied my European friends whenever they talked about seeing their friends from other countries and going to visit them. I love the train stations. I love the cities, and even the countryside towns are nice to be in (for short periods of time). I've already said things like this many times over so I won't bother repeating any more of it, but I have faith that I'll end up in Europe again someday, for the long term.
• the really interesting people I met
How do I even begin to describe the fantastic people I met? When I learned that the program would have students from all over the world, I was especially excited. I wondered whom I would have the chance to meet. As I knew I would, I got to know quite a few new people from the School of Polish Language and Culture summer program who have now become good friends of mine, inviting me to see them in their home countries. I could talk about the Belgian girl who helped me hike down a mountainside. I could talk about the Egyptian girls who gave me a coin from Egypt as a gift, complete with a pharaoh on one face, to remind me to go there someday and to tell me I'll always be welcome. I could talk about the Indian boys I ran into one day after 30 minutes of walking in the heat, hopelessly lost trying to find where classes were, who led me to the right building. And of course, the French people. I knew I'd be spending a lot of time with francophones. I was practically French again, and it felt so good. Just like the last time I was in Poland, actually.
There are so many stories involving these people and more, and they were, of course, the highlight of the trip. It would take too long to go through everything I want to go through on this blog, so I guess I can just write something very brief about each of my closest friends, using pictures for reference.
The two boys and the girl in the center were also in the program with me, whereas the two other girls were Polish friends of the other girl in the program, Jacinthe. Jacinthe is from Bordeaux but now studies Polish and German at the Sorbonne in Paris. Dennis' (the boy on the right) entire family is Polish, and he was the only one born in Germany, so he grew up German. He now works and goes to school for engineering and economics. Patrick (the blond boy) was an exchange student to Berlin the same year I was in France, and speaks perfect German. Everyone in the group speaks German, actually. We made quite the quartet.
Jacinthe is in this picture as well. The blond girl on the left is Emeline, a French girl studying political science in Dijon. The girl in the middle is Agnieszka, who is an American with a Polish mom and Hungarian dad. The girl on the right is Mirna, an Egyptian studying in Cairo who wants to become a wedding planner.
From left to right (besides Agnieszka, on the far right): Pola, a half Argentinian half Polish girl who grew up in Venezuela but now studies law in Barcelona; Ania, a half Peruvian half Polish girl who lives in Sweden; me; Camille, a Belgian studying political science in Liège; and Estelle, a French girl in her 5th year of medicine in Tours.
This is Sarah, my seatmate and partner in Polish class, from Nuremberg, Germany. Incidentally, she's also going to South America right after the program.
This is Genevieve, a half French half Chinese girl from Montreal who was studying in London to get a masters degree in linguistics. She speaks the major romance languages as well as German, and is an amazing singer (so we obviously jammed with my ukulele!).
It's hard to only say brief sentences on these amazing people, but you only need to ask me and I'd be very happy to tell you stories of my time in Poland with them.
• experience of learning the language from nothing and being in the country
I mentioned earlier that the learning of new words was a challenge for me, since I've never studied a Slavic language. I had only really been exposed to Polish for a week more than two years ago, and through listening to songs, but I never really studied it. I knew a few words, but nothing of grammar or of how words were formed. Polish sounded like no language I had ever had experience with, so sometimes putting the strange syllables in the right order was a challenge. For instance, in the daily routines unit, the teacher was trying to see if anyone remembered the verb "to get dressed," (uberiać się), and I ended up guessing "uprawiać," which apparently means to grow/cultivate. I have no idea where I got that. My subconscious must have retained it from somewhere. Which is the thing about being in the country where the language is being spoken-it makes it so much more real and tangible, and all the strange words are put into context. I remember seeing signs that said "Owoce i Warzywa" (fruits and vegetables) and being so excited I understood them because we learned the names of a bunch of fruits and vegetables in class. You soak it all in, new words and new sounds and the music particular to that language. If I took Polish in the USA and learned the word "prszystanek" as bus or tram stop, there's no way I would remember it as easily as I did in Krakow, when I was often in the tram and would hear an automated voice announce, "Następny Prszystanek" (next stop) every few minutes.
What's more, the classes even at the beginner's level were taught in Polish. My classmates and I likened our prof to a kindergarten teacher, the way she spoke to us. But hey, it helped a lot, and it was a nice atmosphere for us to learn in, especially since we were all beginners and not everyone had English as their first language. Which brings me to my next bullet point...
• practicing other languages in general
On this trip, I actually got to speak a lot of German. Dennis was one of my close friends on the trip, and for about a week we had a deal: since I wanted to improve my German and he his English, we would speak German in the morning, switch in the afternoon depending on the day, and English in the evening. It was a great deal while we had it, and we learned a lot from each other. I would practice my Spanish with Pola, and she wrote her message in my notebook in Spanish (I understood, of course). Being in this multicultural environment is so great! It was nice to see many of my friends practicing languages they were learning with new friends that they met on the trip, and it was so nice to think that everyone was there to start learning, continue learning, or improve their fluency in the language I had been wanting to learn, Polish. Whatever everyone's reasons were, I'm happy with the group of people that I became friends with and happy I was able to communicate in the native language of some of my friends with them, all in such an unusual context. (Because really, most people don't even know what Polish sounds like.)
• "I've played this game before"
I have. This whole going far away from family and where I live to plop myself in a foreign place where I don't know the language seems to be a hobby of mine. This whole meeting international kids doing the same kind of thing, making new friends and incredible and hilarious memories, and then saying good-bye is all so familiar. My list of friends to visit in other countries (and list of friends who need to visit me) just keeps growing and growing, and though I dread the thought of having too many friends I want to see again that it'd be impossible to see them all in one lifetime, I wouldn't change my playing this game for a thing.
Through it all, I like to believe that everything has had a reason for happening, that I was meant to cross the paths of those friends I made. This whole trip was super sudden and unexpected, but I feel like I was definitely meant to take it. These three weeks have brought me back to a country I felt like I needed more time in, and have given me a gradually growing understanding of its fascinating language. The only thing I would change is the duration of my stay, for I really would have loved to continue learning Polish and eventually actually speak it well. But we know why that couldn't happen...
See you next week, Bolivia!
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