Have Tefl will Travel

This week, in a bid to find out more about my city, I visited two of Bydgoshzcz's art galleries;  BWA - Municipal Art Gallery of Bydgoszcz (Galeria Miejska bwa w Bydgoszczy)   which is a fantastic modern building but this Christmas only has 1 instillation and 1 sound exhibit  (bees humming with indistinct voices in the background) so I went on to the second   District Museum Leona Wyczółkowskiego  on the corner of Gdanska Street. There were some gorgeous landscape paintings; very calm and restful by the  museums name sake  Leon Wyczółkowski, then plenty of  modern industrial pieces but my favourite were the vibrantly coloured abstracts.  The Museum of Soap and Dirt is quite a curiosity. Priyanka and I booked a tour and soap making workshop which was really fun. The tour was extremely interesting and informative if a little  stomach churning, on a lighter note history of soap and its links...

 Most of our colleagues went home, had family over or travelled during the Christmas, there were just a few of us around in Bydgoszcz and Hershey  who lives in a flat at the top of the School invited me to spend Christmas with her and in combination with CJ we planned a multicultural and  ethically varied (if that's the right term) Christmas meal together.  CJ and I had been taking about menus for a few weeks during our taxi rides to Pessa, where we both teach on Tuesday afternoons, and on our long night time walks home up the hill when we frequently talk about food and what we plan for a quick meal before bed. Hershey and I volunteered at the Wigalli meal at St Andrew's on Christmas eve and in the afternoon she made a Nanaimo bar - a delicious chocolate biscuit based cake with peanut butter filling and ganache layer with a toping of peanuts. it was also vegan to include CJ. In the evening we went to the English Mass at St Andrews and then dived into Bidronka (a more...

This afternoon my friend and I went to volunteer at the church to serve the Wigalia meal to homeless, elderly and lonely people in Bydgoszcz. We got there at 1.30 and the hall underneath the church had already been set up beautifully with tables, chairs, table cloths, plants, napkins and cutlery and 150 bowls  with pierogi in  waiting for the borsht soup.  The bishop came in leading the guests and after grace and a bible reading  wafers were passed around and everyone was breaking bits off each others' wafers and wishing each other Happy Christmas, it was very moving. bishop Christopher was in the thick of it  sharing wafers with all the guests.  The meal was a feat of organisation and precision timing with hot food arriving from restaurants around the city and 150L of borsht prepared in a gigantic pot. I could have hidden in it it was so big! Soon we had laded pre-warmed jugs with borsht and were filling bowls on the tables, which each had 2 pierogi in the...

Stary Rynek   is the name for the old market square in Bydgoszcz. It is in a traditional rectangle but without the inner circle of building the square  in Poznan  has, it was one of the first places I visited when I arrived in Bydgoszcz.  There is a beautiful traditional Christmas market at the moment starting at the corner of Gadanska Street with a Ferris wheel and a bar with a talking moose!! Then kiosks for  hot churros and hot sausage vendors stretching along the bridge with vodka, hot chocolate and  wino  grzane stalls, interspersed with places to take photos and a stage with live music every night, all leading to  Stary Rynek.   ( the mulled wine is really delicious - heavily spiced and sweetened and served piping hot with a slice of orange and a cinnamon stick) In the square are the traditional wooden booths with souvenirs, knitted goods, beautiful Christmas decorations and lots of delicious food. I still haven...

 Once a month I teach English Vocabulary in a Polish primary school.  I really enjoy theses mornings - its a change of scenery, a bus ride away, they have a state of the art bean to cup coffee machine including a milk frother !!! and I really enjoy the added variety it brings to my working week. The classes are aged 11-14, so academically it would sit closer to the secondary school system in the UK, but as children don't go to school until they are 7 they tend to be quite young for their age. The first time I taught at the school I was really shocked, it felt like a mix of St Trinian's  and Matilda's Truchbol Academy.   E ach year group has its own classroom all on the second floor of the school and the children  move freely in and out of all the classes and the landing where there is a hand football  and other games during the 10 mins between each lesson. There are only 12-16 students to a class and the tables are laid ou...

Winter has set in in Bydgoszcz and it has got steadily colder for the last 2 weeks so I have been steadily adding layers. I'm lucky fortunate to go to work in the daylight and often there are bright sunny skies as well. The trees have  a glowing frost and the snow is crunchy underfoot. Last week I was  enjoying our regular Tuesday treat  - a car journey to PESSA (usually with a shot of adrenalin depending on the taxi driver)  to teach our business classes and the view was astonishing; here was  a crystal clear blue sky, and bright sunshine, and the waste ground  along the railway where the summer grass was still standing  was  glittery pale gold in the sun. There was also a beautiful weeping willow with sparkling goldened leaves,  the tree didn't  look at all the same from the other direction when we looked back. it was a magical moment. This is the view from my balcony. (I have plans to knit the poor chilli plastic pigeon a jacket in th...