Szkoła w Radoszycach

On Friday, the 11st of January, once again I went to a school to present voluntarism to pupils. I was with Ola. We met up at 9am at Kielce private busses station and headed to Radoszyce by bus. I really love taking small buses in Poland :-). And there it was nice as we went through the countryside and there still was snow. Besides it was very funny as, as we were approaching Radoszyce, there was suddenly no more snow at all... We had to know later that there is a "microclimat" on Radoszyce :-).

We were welcomed by the woman in charge of the Gymnasium's Library and, along with another teacher, they stayed with us and the pupils for the whole intervention. They are planning to create a kind of "volunteers centre" within the school, in order to develop some solidarity and citizens' behaviour amongst the pupils. That's a great idea and so they were very interested in our intervention.

Around 25 pupils were there. On the following week-end, all of them would take part to a very famous charity event in Poland: Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy which means: The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity. Founded in 1993, it takes place on the first or second Sunday of each year. On this day is the Great Final during which are organised many events with music, parties, etc, all around Poland. And some volunteers collect money of ill children. It is very poular and symbolised by this heart:

So, with these teenagers, we did some activities and had some discussions about what is voluntarism, what are their feeelings, what are their expectations, etc. They were quite very active and a nice group. Around 1pm, we had a break... They all had the choice between going back to their class or staying with us. They of course all chose to stay :-)

During this break, the Library lady served us herbata and an excellent Bigos she had cooked herself, with a lot of mushrooms and plums, and very spicy... It was delicious!! The so-suppoosed 5mn break lasted longer... :-)

After that we proposed to the pupils to write down some questions they wanted to ask me. Of course most of the questions were similar but it was very nice... Questions were in Polish, so I tried to understand them and reply in Polish too... I felt a heavy pressure as each time I was opening my mouth they were of course listenning very carefully.. It was very funny! I was even very perturbed when I had the question: "Czy pani muwi po polsku?" I understood the question which means whether I can speak Polish... but there was a mistake as it shouldn't be muwi but mówi. The sounds is the same but the spelling is different! I was happy to realise that I can even find mistakes in native Poles' writting :-).

Once finished, we came back to Kielce in the late afternoon... and on Sunday I was in Kielce streets for the Chraity event. Streets were packed of people :-)