Part of the problem is simply how much I want to write in Polish instead of English. I got a letter from England a few days ago, confirming my place to study Eastern European politics at university, and this made me start to realise how little time I have left here in Poland to learn everything that is possible to learn. Even reading constantly in Polish doesn't help too much, because there are so many things which need doing in English: looking for funding, searching for jobs, working out just how to get my books back to England... When language does come in, it's because it's a necessary tool for the job, rather than because I really want to speak it.

Thinking about this made me wonder whether the language really makes a difference to how we think, and whether speaking in a second language changes your personality. Do the words try and fit your thoughts, or do the thoughts fit the words? If I say something in Polish, do I mean exactly what I say, or is it just a simplified form that roughly fits my thoughts? And if this is the case, do people add the levels of complexity back in when they hear me, understanding what I'm saying partly from their own experiences? Is this the case even when I speak in English?

There are so many ways in which English and Polish are different, that in the end I think people must think slightly differently when they use one language or the other. If you paint two realistic pictures of an object in two different colours, then although your audience will recognise both as the same object, they will be left with different thoughts and different impressions. I suppose language must be something similar.

All this should really have a conclusion, but I don't have one. The best I can do is this: to hope that despite being horribly out-of-practice with writing in English, the picture I wanted to give of what I was thinking will come out in roughly the right colour.

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Today I finally got the internet connected to my new computer, so for the first time in months my blog is alive again. I find it very hard to believe just how much has changed in the short year and a half since it began. Starting writing again feels very much like opening a time capsule to find a pack of cards, and then sitting down with new friends to play poker. It almost feels like I should leave it hermetically-sealed, rather than continuing it. On the other hand, it's about time that I rejoined the real world, and started filling in the little details which make up my life here.

One such detail was an trip a few days ago with my girlfriend's stepmother to the small village of Przyprostynia on the shores of lake Zbaszynskie in Wielkopolska. This village consisted of one long street with cottages dotted along the edge, not just the picturesque ones in the centre but also the ugly concrete villas which straggle around the edge of any settlement in Poland. For one day a year however, Przyprostynia surprises everyone by managing to stage a festival which hangs somewhere between a carnival and a bizarre pagan rite.

The festival is based on a simple enough principle. There are two main groups of participants, the 'diably' (devils) and the horses. The 'devils' were maybe the most noticable, as they were dressed in a similar way to steriotypical burglars, only with small leather whips with which to whip the passers by on the legs. The 'horses' on the other hand were in white, but with wooden horses attached to their costumes, and (thankfully) no whips. They were joined by gypsies, a chimney-sweep, a bride and groom, a woman dressed as a tree, a bear, and a group of musicians playing something which looked (and this is no word of a lie) like a dead goat with the legs and head sawn off. As the procession moved slowly down the village, it occupied itself with painting the faces of anyone it came across, either with soot, or boot-polish (everywhere), or with lipstick (tiny hearts on both cheeks).

It's hard to work out where the origins of this procession came from, or even if it belongs to the time before there was written history, but some things about the village make you suspect that it is actually significantly old. Most oddly however, for a westerner in West Poland, is that there was no tourism attached to this festival whatsoever. It was an event that seemed solely for the village and a few chance guests. If it wasn't for the family of the sister of my girlfriend's father's second wife (and this is rather a tenuous connection), I would have been sitting in Gorzów, none the wiser, and missing a lovely day out. That, after all, has to be worth having your face painted black...

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The schedule of work is rather odd, as I normally start work at the private school at about 16.30, and continue until some time before 21.30, which seems to be the wrong way around. It's odd having the mornings off, as you have a vague feeling you should be working, followed by a hectic and exhausting evening of work. I also teach at two more schools now, which means that I am amassing hours (and hopefully, eventually money, if not free-time). Still, it hardly compares to how hard some of the Poles at the schools work. Some of them must be the hardest-working people I've ever met, and I'm really glad I don't have their schedules. Similarly, the Polish schoolchildren seem to have a day based around waking up at 6am, working until mid-afternoon, going home to do homework, going to private school in the evening, and then sleeping ready to start all over again at 6am the next day. It makes me very glad that I'm only teaching at Polish schools, rather than studying at them.

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It's possible to see Solidarnosc everywhere in Gorzow. In the streets of the old town there are polish flags everywhere with the Solidarnosc logo emblasoned across it. It would be impossible to not find a reference to it on at least one of the channels at any given time of the day. On the other hand, as with all anniversaries of important events, it doesn't seem to effect daily lives at all. Nobody is wearing ribbons, or Solidarnosc badges; and the people I've talked to seem to focus more on the difference between the ideals of the movement, and todays government. It seems doubly ironic in a way, because apparently a lot of members of Solidarnosc went into government in the end, and seemed to have become rather like the pigs in '1984'. Falling as it does in an election year, the anniversary would be expected to increase the hope for for future, but the atmosphere seems more apathetic than hopeful.

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While I was replying to an email recently, I was trying to think of the funniest part of being here, and I concluded that it had to be the polish adverts. There're two in particular that deserve special attention, and need to be alluded to in the blog, so today I'll start with 'the one about the sheep', which goes as follows:

The advert is set in an old fashioned puppet show, with a castle on the horizon, and three characters: a dragon (in the distance), a woman, and a sheep. There appears to be something unusual about the sheep, but it is hard at first to tell what it is, until the woman (at least, I think it's a woman) sets fire to its tail, for reasons best known to herself. Upon this, the sheep takes off like a fluffy firework, flies around the scene, before knocking over the puppet show, and exploding , revealing the three puppeteers who then sneak off, shamefaced.

It took me a great deal of thinking to try and work out what it was an advert for, until in the end I asked my friend Asia. She explained it to me: apparently there is a polish fairy tale about a man (?) who decides to kill dragon that has captured his girlfriend, by filling a sheep full of explosives, and getting the dragon to eat it, thus igniting the dynamite. Unfortunately, the fairy tale goes sour when the man lights a cigarette on the way to celebrate his cleverness, and obliterates both himself and the sheep. The advert, therefore, is for a mobile phone company (!), which advertises its low rates as honest- because 'we're not very good at telling you fairy-stories'. If this makes any sense to anyone, I'd be really glad to hear from them.

Anyway, in the absence of more exciting things to tell you about that will take less than four minutes, I'd better leave you to think about this one.

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There have been a few surprises over the past couple of days. First surprise was finding a massive Tesco just around the corner (not much further than the one in Oxford was from my old house). I even made a trip out there to get curry paste, for if I ever feel nostalgic for England, although for my tastes it was too big and busy and echoey. I'm much happier with the four local corner shops, where the shopkeepers are getting more used to the Anglik who speaks very bad polish and buys a lot of rice.

Gorzow is starting to grow on me even more, now that I've got more used to where things are. When people I know start getting back here from holiday, it'll be even more like home. For now though, I'm quite happy with a peaceful life gradually learning how to live here. That and enjoying the amusing adverts, of which more anon.

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Gorzow is much as I remember it, although bigger, and hotter, and somehow more real. Everything seems to have been scaled up, which is really strange as most places I revisit seem to be scaled down. Especially scaled up is the distance to the suburb where I live, which will necessitate getting a bus pass asap (maybe even today). I've found two internet cafes, my local supermarket, and my local park and bookshop, so really I'm completely sorted for a long stay (what else could one need?).

Incidentally, the most complex part of the whole journey was Berlin. Arriving by rail into Poland was lovely, but it meant a few panicky minutes as I kept on changing trains in the middle of Berlin with massive heavy bags, and wondering if I'd ever make it here. Train has to be the best way to arrive in Poland...

But now my time in the cafe is up, so I'm finishing here, and will continue writing when I'm next in town. So for now, do zobaczenia.

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Speaking of houses, today I visited one of the nicest ones I've ever seen, Haddon Hall (http://www.haddonhall.co.uk). It might not be to everyone's taste, but for me it has everything (including a Tudor garden to die for). Oh well, maybe if I become rich enough I may be able to build an exact replica to live in. Possibly if I became rich enough to do that, I'd be too busy to live in it, so its probably just as well I'm not actually that rich.

Which leads me to think about my new house, and what it'll be like. I've finally located it, far in the north of Gorzow, even further out than Ul.Pilsudski, and the parks. Maybe I should consider getting a scooter... Apart from these few small details, my mind has been left to fill in the blanks, imagining thousands of different ways in which the rooms could be combined, hundreds of different types of flat (from a flat in a traditional townhouse, to a modern development, to the top floor of a Stalinistesque tower block), along with an infinite variety of room sizes. It'll all be an exiting surprise, especially seeing it for the first time.

Thinking about first times, my mind finds so many different things to worry about. I've worried about getting through Berlin by train while only speaking minimal German, about whether I'll look unteacherlike when I get picked up by the headteacher from Gorzow station, about whether I'll be able to improve my Polish quickly enough, or whether I'll arrive in Gorzow asleep after thirty hours awake. And then at the end of all that I have to become really good at teaching. Both my parents, and two of my Grandparents, were teachers, so maybe I've got teaching genes? I hope so, even if I'm only intending to use them for a year.. Although having said that, I wonder: does belief in 'teaching genes' automatically make me too stupid to be a teacher?

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In the meantime it's still not quite sunk in that I'm moving to a completely different country for my first real job. There're plenty of distractions at the moment, not the least of which has been my discovery of the 'sit-on-mower', which promises to provide up to six days of quality entertainment. Providing I don't fall off and get chopped into very small pieces, I might even find time to blog a bit as well... (Dobranoc!)

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How I got to this stage is a different matter entirely. From trying to carry six seperate (very heavy) bags, to discovering that a balalaika doesn't fit in a National Express coach overhead locker, to accidently getting sat next to for three hours by someone who, in an ideal world, I would never have met, it was quite an challenging journey. On the other hand there were some fun moments, such as when everyone in the que (sp?) for the bus at Leeds took one of my bags each so that the bus driver wouldn't notice how much stuff I had (thank you Leeds!). Almost as good was when my Gran bought me a shirt with a ragged patches and a picture of a vomiting demon on the front but told me that I had to save it for best (even now that I'm grown-up I don't understand her sometimes). I don't know if anyone else has the same experience with grandparents, but she kept on retelling the story of how many bags I'd arrived with to everyone she talked to (without any exceptions), and added a bag and a new character each time. All the same, I'm really glad I went up to see her, and she's one of the people I'll miss most when I move.

So now I'm back in Leek (Staffordshire) with not a lot of days left. I've put on about a stone since going to Yorkshire, and done almost no Polish, so this may have to be a week of solid work if I'm going to be ready by 6am on the 16th. Its probably going to be a difficult week, but I'm back in the hills where I come from, so if I can't lose weight and study hard here then I won't be able to do it anywhere (Oh dear..).

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The itinery for the weeks leading up to Poland is as follows: firstly a visit to Lazy's grandparents in Birmingham (Lazy is my Lithuanian/Welsh girlfriend). After the tornado the other day Birmingham actually sounds quite dangerous, but its a necessary stop on the way up north. Then a visit to my Grandma, who doesn't have the internet, but makes up for it by being a great cook, dedicated to inflating my family one by one until we all float away (or sink into the ground). Then, finally, back to Staffordshire to spend my last week in England with my parents. It'll probably be the last ever visit to my childhood home, a tiny cottage on the side of a hill, down a long narrow track with daffodills down both sides. I'm not sure how I'll feel about leaving it, but there is a slight compensation. Now that I've bought my Dad (Wielki ojciec?) a Polish phrase book, neither he nor my Mum (Mala matka?) have any excuse not to visit me.. at least not until they try pronouncing the phrases.

So thats a fairly fitting end, talking about things you can't possibly express, And since I'll probably be in the wilderness for a week or so, this blog will be just as expressionless as WO and MM when they get their new book (ksiazka). So for now, do zobaczenia!

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There isn't enough space to do justice to our landlord in a few short lines, so perhaps the best place to start is the chess. He is a Serbian immigrant of immense but uncertain age, and appears to have played chess for his entire life. Over the course of his life, it appears that his wife has become somewhat disillusioned with chess, so for many years he has been playing chess in the middle of the back garden of our house. It doesn't really matter what the weather is (we've seen him there sitting in the snow with a blanket over his head), as he plays there every day that he doesn't spend at a chess tournament. It's a shame really, because his house is probably the only one in our town that has grape vines growing around a carved wooden porch, and would make a perfect chess-playing spot, and he would be much more comfortable there. Still, it means that he has been able to escape from his wife in other ways, as small piles of loose change on a mattress in our shed bear witness.

The other thing about Anton (I will call him Anton, because I like him too much to use his real name) is that he has a bit of a soft spot for damaged furniture and variegated paints. Our whole house is populated by oddly-coloured bits of furniture with drawers that don't draw, springs that have sprung, and wheels that don't wheel. This is part of the reason why today's inventory-taking was more fun than expected, as most of the notes said things like 'bathrom dor, glas, pain ted wiv leperd spots an purpul stars, very durty an peint steined.' It would've given us all a little more confidence if our inventorier could spell even his own name, our furniture wasn't in a terminal state of decay, and our landlord wasn't stark raving mad.

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I think the real moment of falling for Poland came when I started to find out about its history. Like falling in love with a person because they represent things that you would love to do, Poland embodied a lot of things that I wanted to find in myself. To start with, it was somewhere that I had once known nothing about, and to start learning about it was like being a child again, who knows nothing about the world around them and wants to fill that gap. As well as that, Poland was North Eastern Europe in minature. Once it was not only part of that region: it actually was the region. Since then it had been the largest country in Europe, and the smallest; a country that had occupied Moscow and Kiev, and had become a proverb for a non-existant place; a country famous for tolerating any religion and race, and a country now best known for crimes against race and religion committed on its soil. For someone with an love of learning, there was evidently a lot to learn.

Even that wasn't entirely the reason. Just as you don't fall in love with a person solely for their past, I fell in love with Poland before I knew much about it. I fell in love with the forests first, as I was driven across Lubuskie, and then I fell in love with the towns, as I was taken to Gorzow and Poznan. Living in Poland will change how I feel about it, but considering that I have not visited Malopolski, Pomorskie, Mazowieckie, or Podkarpackie yet, its a love thats probably got its best days still to come.

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The main surprise for me, when I heard about the flat, was how much bigger it sounds than what I had been thinking of. Having spent the past two years in an attic in a student house, and the year before that in a broom cupboard, it came as a massive shock to me to hear that I will have two bedrooms, a living room, bathroom, kitchen and a hall, all to myself. I'm not sure what I expected (maybe another broomcupboard?) but it's reminding me very insistantly that I'm now in the real world and I'd better be very good at teaching. Almost as exciting as having two bedrooms and an address is that I've got satellite tv and all furniture and utensils. For someone moving out of a house where the bath plug empties down the electric light of the room below, this has come as something of a shock.

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Since then I've been at university for three years, read a lot of Polish history, studied a lot of Polish grammar, learnt the names of three kings (including Wladyslaw Lokietek) and have probably got about three words firmly nailed down in my memory. I no longer think Poland is on the flip-side of a flat world, and I've spent time even further east, in Wilno, but Poland is still the country I fell in love with, and is now going to be my home for the next twelve months.

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Used tins of food I'd long forgotten.
Found things I'd long since lost.
The corners of my room looked naked now
And strangely new, unwrapped from bags of dust.

And then the mask that hung over the window
Was taken down. The house stopped breathing.

A spark of life lives on, its violet tongue
Gasps roofwards from its sad, distorted frown.

Like me, with dug-up memories,
Old tins of thought, brown sugar in the bowl.
And finally, a face I used to wear
Came down, was packed up neatly in a bag.

I'm packing up my house and putting it into a very large and bloated bag. In just over twenty days I'm moving to Gorzow Wielkopolski in western Poland to work as a teacher. Its going to be my first real job, and my first time living outside England, and three weeks ago I wasn't planning to go anywhere further than the local Tesco.

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