23 | Summer Has Arrived!

My spring semester is finally over!! I took my last final yesterday afternoon, so now I am just waiting to get a few grades back! I know everyone else has been out for a month now, but I'm pretty excited to have fairly few responsibilities for my last two weeks in Poland. So you know what that means? Traveling!

I have planned a trip to Zakopane for June 20-22 to get to explore the Tatras mountains! Zakopane was one of the places I identified before I even got to Poland as somewhere I really wanted to go. I was hoping to go for my birthday, but I had quite a few projects due the next week, so Eli and I just hung around Warsaw that weekend (it was great, not gonna lie). But I still needed to go before I left, so I booked two 7.5 hour bus rides to get me there and back. Worth it. 

I am also probably going to take a day trip to Łódź (haha that's right, try to pronounce it). I don't want to spend a lot of money in these next two weeks, but I also want to see as much of Poland as I can. Shout out to Macy for letting me write an article for Flixbus in exchange for a free bus ticket! 

Also, since it is literally going on as I type this, I may as well mention that there are some repairs being done on the outside of my apartment building, which for some reason includes solely drilling into the building. For reference, I took a picture from across the street. 


That's right. 1.) I live in an old commie building. 2) They have installed a way to scale the building that happens to be right in front of my balcony. 3) One of them has a neck tattoo. I know the third one, because they are constantly going up and down. Which also means I have had the curtains drawn for a large part of the past three days, which kind of sucks, because I really enjoy the sunlight. So ya, the drilling noise was a fun soundtrack for studying for my last final. 

Also back to my final - you can ask me anything about the EU's Internal Market now. -What is the most harmonized policy? Taxes -What is Poland's VAT rate? 23% -What are the three funds of the Cohesion Policy? European Social Fund, Cohesion Fund, and European Development Fund -What is the main form of financial assistance under CAP? Direct payments 

I know all. This class was honestly my most difficult and had the largest amount of just facts I had to know. I also had to write my entire open question about taxes. Not cool. I just hope I did well enough to pass. 

The most important news for the day: I pet a dog for the first time since 19 February. A sweet wire-hair doxie ran up to me on my morning walk literally begging for pets. I could not say no to such a wee fellow. Most dogs here don't really pay attention to people and are incredibly well trained, but this little guy obviously has his priorities straight.

Also just a sidenote: Eli is back in the US, but before he left he requested TWO Polish feasts. So, we went to a milk bar and I fried up a bunch of pierogi, boiled some kopytka, and heated up some barszcz. I also went to the best little Pączki place for dessert. 
Lunch: tomato soup with noodles, pancakes with apples, cold barszcz, pork neck with mashed potatoes, "salad"

Eli and the feast, which included three different drinks

Eli and the Pączki that we already started eating


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