I woke up too early this morning and so I have been a little tired. I did walk for a bit in the morning and saw the white cranes in wheat field. I tried to go closer to get a better picture, but the flew away. I am mentoring two participants in doing their presentations. Woytek did back out today, he has not been feeling well and he also feels his English skills are at a low level. Kate, the other mentee, didn't want to present either. She practiced during our work time and did very well, so I think she present tomorrow.
As you get more comfortable with the participants and the native speakers the conversations go to different places. Today, when I was talking with Elzabiet and Julieta, they were talking about their feelings about immigration to there country. Elzabiet felt that immigrants from Syria were a problem, because they don't assimilate and there will be too many. Her fear is that they will become like France. Julieta said there was no problem with immigration. Although, many Ukrainians are in Poland neither of them saw this as a problem and welcome Ukrainians to their country. Poland had much closer ties to Ukraine. They talked about WWII and being in the middle. So much of their country was destroyed on one side by the Germans and by Russia on the other side. Of course, they are both worried that Russia will come for Poland and are hopeful of Ukraine's success. Our topics were very serious today. Elzabiet still doubts her ability to communicate, but we spent an hour talking with both contributing to the conversation and there were only a few times when the translation tool on their phones was used.
Earlier in the day Woytek also express his concerns about Poland. They continue to go about their day to day lives with a cloud of concern over their heads. They all have children that they must think about. Tomasz has even talked about taking his family to live for a time in Mallorca, Spain. He wants to find another country where he believes his family could live safely.
One of the best times of the day, continues to be after dinner. When conversations are more informal and the children play with each other using more Polish. But it is interesting to see kids using both language. Two of the girls were helping each and the one girl said "thank you" in English while other answered "proszę".
The mentors and staff working with the kids are really great. They have nicknames for some of the kids. Stan is "Stan the Man" and Olaf is "King Olaf". Olaf is amazing and wants to be a part of NASA. He has researched about space camp and told me that he may meet a former astronaut in October. I don't know the name of the astronaut, but he is of Polish decent and will be in Poland in October. He is extremely smart and talented. Last night, was the talent show and many of the kids sang, danced, or told jokes. King Olaf loves photography and has taken award winning photographs. Several of us were talking with him and he said he didn't have anything to do for the talent show. We told him he should show his photographs, so yesterday a put together a PowerPoint with an explanation of his photos. He only started taking photographs about a year ago and he has a real talent. He takes dark sky photos including time lapse of star movement across the sky. He had a photo that took through a plastic bottle of the Baltic Sea. It made the photo look as though he had a special lens. He won a photography award for that photo. He pictures of the family llamas in which he captured the most interesting expressions on their faces.
We ended once again sitting outside with candles on a table after they closed up the dining area.
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