I made it!

My dorm room... its pretty small!

Taking off from Charlotte at sundown, heading to Munich!


Just a quick post as I am about to head to bed. I made it to Krakow!! When we first arrived we were taken to our dorms and given room assignments. My roommate is Jeslynn, she is an exchange student originally from Malaysia, but she studies in Australia. I also have to suitemates who are from mexico... I am the lucky one who got all random roommates. Everyone else is roomed with other UT students, and the one guy who doesnt have a UT roomie has UT suitemates. Luckily, we are all in the same hall so while I have random room/suite mates I am till with everyone.

Once we got all our rooms figured out yesterday two Polish students showed us how to us the buses to get downtown and to our studios... the dorms are about a 20 minute bus ride from the city square. Along the way we stopped for dinner where I got pierogi ruskie- they are essentially dumplings/ravioli filled with mashed potatoes and cheese. Delicious! After that we all headed back to the dorms to unpack and hit the sack early for us...

Today, I woke up feeling well rested and a couple of us headed over to the mall (about a 15 minute walk or a 3 min bus ride plus 5ish min walk). Inside we found what is easiest described as a super walmart but a little smaller. We got all the essentials plus a few things that we needed, like towels, snacks, and water. After that we came back to the dorm and had a pretty low key afternoon. I finally got my internet setup and reconnected to the world. Around dinner Sonja, Caitlin and I headed back to the mall to find food- KFC (or as we call it, Krakow Fried Chicken) then went back into the store, which we dubbed wal-mall, to get a few things they had forgotten. Caitlin was trying to find a pre-paid phone so trying to communicate this with people working at Poland was rather amusing as there is a clear language barrier. We were able to get what we wanted across once a man who knew a little English came over and we pulled out our phrase book. We actually were able to hold a very short conversation with them, which is a start.

At this point everyone else had gone downtown for dinner and then, for those up to it, drinking. Since we decided to stay in, we decided to get a few small bottles of various Polish beers to try out. So when we got back to the dorms we hung out in Caitlin and Sonja's room and sampled the more popular (according to one of our polish guide books) beers. There weren't too bad. I will admit that one smelled like skunk, no joke, but actually tasted pretty good!

Anyway, now its bedtime as we have and orientation thing in the morning. Then some exploring of downtown. So more later. Dobranoc!