Saturday night we went to a show in the basement of a place called Loch Camelot. The group played Polish songs from the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, some raucous and some hauntingly beautiful. The main male singer in the group was a little bit of a ham and absolutely fantastic. He changed aspects of his costume to fit with each song, making jokes the whole time. There were two female singers with beautiful voices, very strong, who sang a few pieces throughout the show with the piano or accordion. The musicians (a guitar, electric bass, and accordion who also switched to piano for a few songs) assisted with the slight buffoonery of the main guy and definitely each had their own personality and presence on the stage. Oh, and there was a fiddler who showed up about an hour late and snuck backstage, then reappeared to play and sing. It was a really great show! All in Polish, of course, so I couldn't understand any of the words but I could definitely appreciate the musical performance. It was also funny because our group of 6 university students was the youngest group of people in the room by about 25 years, except for some of the musicians.

Shot of the stage pre-performance. Isn't this space great???

Let's see... we've met a bunch of new people, all Americans unfortunately so no branching out to non-english speakers so far although I am starting to make friends with some of the girls on the swim team. We met a guy named Jon, a Harvard grad doing phsyics research at one of the universities here who's pretty cool. We also met a huge group of American grad students doing a master's program in European Studies at the Jagiellonian University. Four of them actually live practically across the street from us, so we were over there Saturday and will probably be seeing them pretty often. Interesting and fun group of people.

Last night we went to an Irish pub downtown and it were a little surprised by the number of Irish accents in the place. It was packed of course, and it seemed like everyone was obviously Irish in speech.

Leaving for Vienna for the weekend tomorrow! We're traveling with a small bus service which is cheap and goes door-to-door. Of course, although some of the people in the company speak English, the woman that I kept getting in every call only spoke Polish and German...but I managed to reserve three spots and they're going to pick us up at 2 pm tomorrow! (I think...) I'm kind of proud of myself for managing that in Polish.

Language classes started up this week so now I'm pretty busy. Three hours of class a day (except for Fridays) and an hour-and-a-half of language three times a week. Add swim practice twice and a week and the time spent commuting on public transportation, and yay I'm pleasantly busy! I had dinner with one of the girls in my language class and some of her friends after our first class last Thursday. There are a lot of people from France in my class, maybe 4 or 5 out of the 10 people there? Also 2 from Spain, and the rest are Germans and me. I'm excited to learn more Polish!