Sunday, October 17, 2010

A weekend off--not really

Friday afternoon we caught the 2:45 train to Sopot for a weekend full of family, friends, and unfortunately business. We're staying at P's cousins' place but P was late because he had to go pick up the key to our old apartment--we had got a call from the posters our friend put up all over town, someone wanted to see it and the owner's rep was super sick. He finally made it and we had beers and sat up until midnight chatting with the fam.

Saturday morning, P showed the apartment while I had coffee and caught up with friends. We met up and headed for his uncle's place to have dinner with his aunt, uncle, and grandpa. Dinner with this group of people always includes at least 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of something else, this time homemade fruit infused vodka, as well as a huge meal with coffee, tea, and cake. I can tell my Polish is progressing because I could participate a little more in the conversation. Bit by bit, I'm making progress. We headed back to the cousins' place and had to start taking care of business while slightly tipsy. The guys who saw the apartment would like to rent it and we have to work with the owner to come up with a satisfactory plan which meant a late night call to Canada. It's more complicated than it sounds, unfortunately, but we're working on it.

Today, Sunday, I'm meeting with a few more friends--ones who seem to be on the path to burnout with too much studying and I've been asked by other friends to try to intervene. A 19 year old isn't going to listen to anyone, but I'll give it a shot. It'd be an easier intervention if she was doing something bad, drinking too much or sleeping around, but it seems even studying too much can be bad for one's health.; everything in moderation, right?

The rest of the weekend will include: a giant party for P's aunt (where the wine will flow like water), a (perhaps drunken) phone call to Canada to arrange things with the apartment, a trip Monday morning to the old apartment hopefully to sign a lease with the new people, a trip to city hall so I can de-register that I live here in order to register in Poznan and get my visa process started. Then we'll get on a train for 5.5 hours and be home around midnight Monday night. Ugh. Here's hoping that all goes to plan.

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