Osada Danków...

Osada Danków

We got up this morning, ate breakfast, packed and headed to the Science Centre to meet our group.  It was so nice to see Ruby's familiar face when we arrived at our meeting point.  She was talking with John from Ireland.  He did not make it on the tour yesterday.  Karly and Roz were across the street at Starbucks getting a morning cup of coffee.  We waited for additional English speakers and Polish participants to arrive.  This session is different from sessions that we have done in the past.  This is a family session.  We will work with the parents, while younger English speakers will work with the children.  Once everyone arrives, we load up our things and get on the bus for the 3 hour ride.

There is a Polish mother and daughter sitting nearby.  The daughter is around 10 and her English is better than her mom's.  She does not have a problem answering our questions.  Our English speaker coordinator is Dan from the UK.  He a law student.  He has finished his law degree and will be interning with a law firm starting in December. 

The main venue

The lunch room

We arrived at Osada Danków in time for lunch.  The vegan lunch is vegetable noodle soup. potatoes, cauliflower zucchini cutlet, and cole slaw.  After lunch, we get the keys to our room and we have an hour until we meet information and rules of the program.  We hike to another building to find our rooms and get unpacked.

English speakers rooms

The program started at 3 pm with a version of speed dating to help us get to know the participants and the level of English ability.  Most are able to hold a conversation.  Only a couple struggle with English.  This is a 50 minute session and then we have two conversational sessions, each 50 minutes long.  The schedule for this week is easier than previous years.  We seem to have more free time.  Lunch was our bigger meal, while dinner is a sandwich and salad buffet.  After dinner, we taught John (Ireland) and Nusrat (UK) to play Euchre.  The participants are really interesting and kids seem to be have fun.  Most of the kids started learning English in kindergarten.  We got kicked out of the dining room / bar at 10 pm.