Friday, July 11, 2008

Adventures with "Short Cuts"

My room mate wanted to go back to the John Paul Church here in Zakopane to take photos. She looked at the topographical map and said we could take a short cut by using foot paths. So we wandered through town streets, across meadows, probably through a couple of residents' backyards, got help from a man to show us the right path to the forest (rather than deadending at his yard fence), through the forest, and finally across another meadow. While it wasn't a short cut, it was a marvelous afternoon. I've not got the knees to go mountain climbing, but now I can show anyone pictures from "meadow climbing." We took a bus part of the way back to the town center and enjoyed, really enjoyed, an ice cream cone.

In the evening we had the final program -- made up of heartfelt thanks and some presentations in English by students. Then we saw a marvelous collection of pictures that captured our time year and were given a CD with all the photos.

My students found me with a gift. It is an immense coffee cup with a painting of Zakopane and all their names added to the cup. What a wonderful keepsake!

We are off now this morning, Saturday July 12, at 8:00 for Krakow. All the volunteers except me will leave there. I'll continue on the bus back to Siedlce. Looking forward to sleeping late tomorrow morning!

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