Ok, so I'm busy travelling

As you know, i haven't been keeping this up to date. Instead i have been keeping busy having a wonderful time traveling Europe (Richard don't know how you kept your blog reasonably up to date). After leaving Lithuania i went to Latvia on Estonia. Caught a plane to Rome and met up with mum and dad. Also in Rome i met up with three other GAPpers. after Rome i headed to the mafia town and birthplace of pizza - Naples. Amazing scenery and rubbish on the streets everywhere. Saw Pompei. Then off to Florence. Went to the Uffizi museum but didn't get to see David, well the real one anyway. Continued on to Lucca which is a lovely town of Puccini fame and is surrounded by its old walls. Saw Pisa quickly, it only really has the tower and what you see walking there from the train station. Caught a train to Milan which traveled along through the cinque terre along the coastline - about three metres from - and was the most picturesque train ride i have been on. Milan was nice. You could tell it was a fashion capital - there were men wearing red pants everywhere. Did a day trip to Verona. Next stop was Venice. Not a cheap place unless you drink wine out of a box. Met alot of people while i was here. Then on to Slovenia. While catching an international mini bus - it was a quick bus across a border between stations - i met some English blokes who i stayed with for three nights. In SLovenia we went to Bled. Tried to swim to the island which was over 1.5km away (further than the longest olympic distance) didn't make but spent about 50 minutes swimming (much longer than any time recorded for olympic swimming). Amazing here. A lake, with an island with a church and there is a castle perched on a cliff above the lake. Went on to Ljubljana. Small for a capital city, not much to do but enough for a night. After that to Zagreb where i slept at the airport to catch a 5:55 plane to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik city still has its walls and is right on the Adriatic. Beautiful place and great to spend some time on the coast. Was here with two other GAPpers. Swam in the Adriatic which is really salty and full of urchins. Flew back to Zagreb, checked it out a bit more then headed onto Budapest. Went in the thermal baths before making my way to Bratislava where I am now. So, that is an extremely brief overview of what I have been doing. If i were to go into detail, it would leave me with less details to write about. I'm writing some stuff down while on trains so i'll have plenty of stories when i get back.

The Baltics part 1

After leaving Poland I went with Gem, another gapper, to Vilnius, Lithuania. We were walking down a small street and saw some police blocking an area off. There was also a small crowd of people. We hung around a bit and weren't disapointed. Suddenly a motorcade drove up headed by several motorbikes, then some pretty flash cars and a few more motorbikes for good measure. Some people jumped out wearing military uniforms and some well dressed women. We didnt recognise anyone but they looked important, we thought they had something to do with a government. Turns out it was the Dutch Queen visiting. Some Dutch tourists who were there told us, they were petty excited. After Vilnius we went to a place called the Hill of Crosses. It is just that. A hill covered in millions of crosses. It isnt a very big hill so it is amazing to see all the crosses crammed onto the hill. When crossing the border to Latvia we got checked. Sofar I had already crossed many borders and not been checked so I didnt think it would even happen. My passport was therefore underneath the bus, but luckily easily accessible. At the moment im in Italy so I havent really got too much spare time but ill try to get this updated.

Last weekends

Well my placement has finished now but I have been a bit slack updating so i'll try to fill in some gaps. The last few weekends of my placement were fairly busy. The GAP group had a big farewell weekend in Zywiec. ALmost everyone attended and it was good to see some of the people i hadn't seen since o-week. The next weekend I went to Warsaw to surprise mum and dad. They thought I was going to be in Poznan. I got to see some of the GAPpers I had become good friends with and say goodbye to the ones I wouldn't be seeing again untill arriving back in Aussie. At the train station I surprised mum and dad. Mum and dad spent a couple of days in Poznan. I showed them around a bit and watched Poland get kicked out of the Euro 2008. There was also a rowing regata in Poznan and I watched the Aussie fours row to gold, they were the only aussies I saw. Later I said hi to them but they didnt look keen on having a chat. There was a last day assembly that we (Martin and I) went to. Then we said bye to the people we had become friends with. I then jumped on a train togo to Warsaw to catch up one last time with some of the other GAPpers and so say bye to Poland. On Monday I jumped on a train to Vilnius.

School Trip

At about 11 on monday night we were informed that we could go on camp with the junior kids, for free, but that they were leaving at 8 next. So we packed quickly and got some sleep. The camp was on the border of Czech in the hills, really great scenery, no snow, however snow not uncommon in that area for that time of the year. A nearby church is called snowy Maria because it snowed there in the middle of the hottest period of the year. First day we went on a walk, saw a fairytale garden, it was alright and then went and visited a waterful before trekking home. Next day we went to a gold town and into a mine, also went to check out Snowy Maria - that night had a humerous lesson in polish grammar. The teacher trying to explain to me why there were three different versions of the word snow on the map- turns out polish words have up to seven forms. Throughout the lesson the non-english speaking polish teacher was trying to add valuable (confusing) contributions. Next day we checked out a church, moving nativity scene and guided the blind music teacher Henry through a rock labrinth. i managed not to get his head hit despite having to crawl through many areas. Got to see a part of Poland i wouldn't have otherwise seen thanks to the trip, despite being a little last minute.

Berlin

Berlin is absolutely fantastic and at some point i would love to live there. It was more expensive but only proved how cheap Poland is. I arrived on Thursday, immeadiately you could tell you were in Germany because the stations were properly marked, in poland they basically only have one sign at each station so when you fall asleep its hard to tell where abouts you are. However Germanys public transport system was fanatastic, if a little pricey. checked into the hostel and waited around a bit until Ryan and Kate arrived, the other GAPpers coming. Stumbled across a parade/protest as i was just walking around, however as i was walking towards a dead end (i didnt realise when i entered the street) i was unable to get close enough to see exactly what the group of people were doing. We went and found Ryan's hostel, it had 900 beds and to qoute Ryan "was big and scary" and also ironically hard to meet people. So we spent more time at ours, plus ours was closer to the city centre. Saw plenty of people with shaved heads drinking beer in the streets and plenty of police around, didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

Friday
Thought we ahd better do something today so we went on a tour of the city. Got to see Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, holocaust memorial, hitler's bunker, checkpoint charle, the wall and much more stuff. After the tour we went back to check out charlie a bit more and to read some of the stuff we couldnt while on the tour. However now it was starting to get cold and i had only a t-shirt so we decided to head back to the hostel, it was getting late-ish as well. The weather was fantastic apart from this couple hour period of showers and cold. The rest of the time it was fantastic and the sun was out in full and there were no clouds, plus i wore t-shirt and shorts for the first time. That night we went on a pub crawl, kinda like the one we went on at schoolies. met heaps of people and at leastfour oher Australians, one of whom was from Perth - this impressed kate as this was the first person she has met from her home city while over here. anyway we headed home about 3 so we could be up at 10 to go to Potsdam.

Saturday
No sign of Ryan, when we left he was still at the club. Turns out he headed home about 5 but fell asleep on his tram - he only got home at 9 so was probably asleep when we were messaging him. Potsdam was a favourite place for Prussian rulers to get away from the city life and also a current getaway for Germans who want to shed their worries and clothes. There were fantastic palaces everywhere - one of which held the Potsdam conference and we saw the room were it took place, we weren't allowed to go in though. We got to see Frederick the Greats palace and we were listening to what he had done to earn his title when i was phoned by my parents (quick note, that used up all my credit so thats why it cut out and why you probably couldn't call back), so i don't know why he was called frederick the great but it has something to do with winning the seven years war. That night we decided to have a quite one and went out to try a couple of local brews.

Sunday
Went to climb the dome in the Reichstag - got some fantastic views of the city and then went to Tiergarten which is a big park in the middle of the city. We were warned to be wary of more nudists but we were unable to find any. That night Ryan did another pub crawl while Kate and i went out with a Canadian from our hostel.During the night we ran into Ryan and his group which was a disgracful 15 down five fold from friday night. so we hung out with them for a bit, including 3 more peole from Perth, then went home.

Monday
Today i spent by myself. Firstly went to the Pergamon museum which contains a recreation of the Ishtar gates from Babylon and also alot of antiquities from ancient greece so i found that pretty awesome. Then went for a stroll around to check out more of Berlin. Went to see the exhibition Topography of terrors which is located on the previous site of the SS offices. After which i realised i should be heading back. The school had given me a heap of food so i had hardly eaten anything local so i got a currywurst and i thought it appropiate to eat a donut. Got back to the hostel and collected our bags and we headed off for our train.

Earlier blogs may have unfairly portayed the food as not being very good, however i have come to my sense and realised that the food at the school is fantastic, including amazing soups, and has been for most of my time here, the first two weeks took a bit of adapting.

Hockey

The English teacher I am working with organised for my to train with one of the local Poznan teams. Thanks to a package from mum I had shorts and a mouthguard but no stick, no proper shoes (which only resulted in one embarrasing fall), no shin pads and no idea what the quality of the hockey would be. The training session was at the Poznan institute of P.E. or something like that. Poznan is the centre of hockey in Poland, it has 3 grounds compared to Warsaws none. The team consisted mainly of students and mainly of people who have represented Poland in some way. 5 for the U21 team and 2 for the national side. The coach is the excoach of the Poland team. They train 4 times a week with gym sessions afterwards - there may be more training that is part of their Uni course, plus they play two games a weekend. I have not touched a stick in half a year. Could not keep up - my fitness bardzo mawe - very small, compared to theirs, also they were much better considering i was entirely puffed and could hardly do anything. I am going back again - hopefully with more luck.

Work

People have been asking exactly what I have been doing, so instead of answering individually i'll answer here. I'm with one teacher, Martin is with the other. We basically to go their classes and help with stuff they want us to. Sometimes it's reading a passage or writing something in English on the board. We do a bit of correction as well. Also we type up a fair bit of stuff. Some texts need to be printed in braille and we need electronic versions of them, other stuff we can photocopy. I am slowly learning how to read braille, not with my fingers because that would be impossible, just visually. Every now and then we are asked to produce a text, sometimes it's a short conversation or a text about Australia or a text with words removed. We have a fair bit of spare time on our hands because the stuff we do isn't very time consuming even though my folder is swelling with word documents.