Claire in Poland

I’ve been typing snid-bits of observations all week between doing homework, laundry and settling in. I kept trying to add on and put things into a past tense but now I realize I’m just going to have to document by day, or something of that sort. Whatever it is, it is something.  Wednesday - 8/24/16 I just plopped down into my desk chair in exhaustion and excitement. I don’t know where to start. There is too much to write, but I guess I’ll begin from the beginning:  Two days ago I attended the informal orientation for my new school, the American School of Warsaw. It takes one bus change and twenty minutes of walking to reach it on the outskirts of Warsaw where the only sights are cabbage fields, sunflower fields, expensive apartments and even more expensive condos. I met the new students entering my grade, and there was only one other American kid. I met a girl straight from south China, a boy who came from west India, a girl from Moskow, Russia, and a boy and ...

I sit on a train headed to the town of Poznań. But I am not in a regular seat, rather in a little pull-out plastic stool that folds out from the walls of the train. This setting reminds me of the scene from the first Harry Potter movie where Harry, Ron, and Herminone are on their way to Hogwarts. After jumping into Platform Nine and Three Quarters to catch the train headed for Hogwarts, the three of them meet for the first time in their seating compartment. The little rooms with three seats facing each other on both sides and space overhead for luggage appear identical to the train I am on now, except the seats look more modern. Sliding doors painted a mint color separate the passenger compartments from the consequence seating for purchasing a ticket too late after all the seats are already full. But my seat is quite comfortable, surprisingly, and I also achieve the best view if I sit sideways where I view the passing fields of yellow flowers, wheat, villages, white birch tree forests,...

It’s been more than 48 hours since we landed and I’ve learned more than 480 things. Or at least, I’ve heard them, and tried to permanentize them in my memory. From the code to enter the building to how to say tomato. It’s been a lot of habit making.  The apartment we live in is beautiful in it’s own way. An art historian lived here after her two children left for college. Just the profession of an art historian gives you a sense of what the interior is like. The wall colors resemble the deep ocean on a day with clear skies, and the furniture looks as if it’s from a 1960s movie. A chandelier drapes from the ceiling of the living room. The bathroom tiles are checkered yellow and white and the sink, toilet, and shower are turquoise. A piano stands in the left corner of the living room. There are three cupboards scattered around the apartment completely filled with books.   My room only consists of a dresser, an oval mirror in a rusted-looking silver frame, a polished woo...

        It always felt a life away.  In sixth grade, my father drove me to school most mornings. The other mornings I took the school bus from my mother’s. On this particular day, the world appeared crisp in the early hours of the spring morning with green leaves scarcely brightened by the sun overhead. That morning, the topic was the idea that I would go to Poland with him for his sabbatical that would take place during my sophomore year of high school. “You’ll be fifteen,” he reminded me.  Fifteen seemed a life away at the time. High school seemed a life away, although it was really only four years away. Still, four years determines the difference between ten and fourteen, fourteen and eighteen, and eighteen and twenty-two. All the years included and in-between remain crucial in the process of developing an identity. At the time I still believed the stereotypes of teenage life seen on TV: lots of crazy, amazing adventures, just like those on ...

        Time seems to move faster than light, sometimes.  I haven't started packing. In fact, I’ve barely begun to think about it. I depart from home in exactly ten days. All I can say is that, currently, I remain paralyzed in a sense of fear. I never wanted this blog to begin on such a depressing, fearful note, but I refuse to lie in writing. I want this blog to stay as truthful as possible for both selfish and selfless reasons.  In my eyes, the most powerful purpose of writing is how it forces the reader feel something. One sentence or word acts like a sword as it slices into a person’s heart to cause blood of boiling anger, intense frustration, foggy confusion, deep sorrow, or exhilerant joy, to pour out. It’s a silent art, besides the click of computer keys or the pen’s scratching on paper, that results in the loudest yelps. That’s why I’m sitting at my small wooden desk typing away while watching sail boats cruise by on the distant ocean with t...