2009

Making the Christmas Pizza (Snopek Family Christmas - 2009-12-24)

My parents and sister came to visit us in Kraków for Christmas and we made pizza together as a family on Christmas Eve.

Our NEW apartment in Kraków

Our apartment where we will be living until atleast June (because that's when our rental contract is up), if not longer!! Its a really nice place, it came fully furnished.

Job search complete!

Sorry there haven't been any updates for awhile! We've been extremely busy.

Since our last post, we spent another few weeks looking for work. We eventually found jobs in a village just outside of Kraków (more info later). Our commute takes 18 minutes on the train.

After that we found an apartment (videos forth coming!), moved in last Monday (Sept 28th) and started buying the extra things we needed -- the apartment was fully furnished (it even came with shot glasses!) but not everything one needs to live.

We started our job this Monday (Oct 5th). We both have 6 classes, but at different times of the week. I have mine towards the beginning and Carrie towards the end. I've already taught 5 of mine.

And our internet just got hooked up about 20 minutes ago!

There are pictures and videos of Poland that we still need to put up. And even stuff from Santorini we haven't had a chance to post either. Hopefully, now that we have a permanent residence, regular schedules and internet, we'll be able to update the blog more frequently.

See ya!

Deep in the job search

Hello, everyone! Sorry we haven't posted in a while.

We finished the CELTA course on August 21st (about 2 weeks ago) and passed with flying colors! It was an extremely challenging course but I'd recommend it to anyone thinking about going into TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).

The passed two weeks have been spent looking for work in Kraków. We've already had two interviews, have two more this coming week and hopefully more down the road. Looking for work is just as time-consuming as a full-time job. When things quite down, we'll start posting more.

The TEFL hiring season in Poland just started, sometime around August 31st and will continue until mid/late September. We expect to be hearing back about offers around the 15th - 18th. So wish us luck!

If the interview situation here in Kraków dries up, we'll likely travel to Warszawa and try our luck there.

For very curious souls, I've attached our resumes to this post. We've already sent them to something like 30 schools!

After 2 weeks of the CELTA course at IH Kraków

Sorry there hasn't been an update in awhile! We've been really, really busy taking the CELTA course at International House in Kraków.

The course is really intensive and heavily focused on practice teaching real students of English. Not unlike Fight Club, on the first day of CELTA, everyone must teach! But its only for 20 minutes (6 trainee-teachers share a 2 hour lesson). Besides the teaching practice, we also have input sessions to attend and written assignments to write.

On days that I have to teach, I arrive at the school at 8:00am to make materials for my class: handouts, posters, word blocks, overhead transparencies, etc. It frequently involves scissors and a glue stick. We have input sessions from 10:45am until 2:15pm. Then there is a lunch break until 3:15pm where everyone teaching meets with their tutor about the lesson they are about to teach. At 4:15pm the students begin to arrive. The lesson starts at 4:30pm and goes until 6:40pm. Afterwards, there is feedback with the other trainee-teachers and your tutor. That can last until 7:30 - 8:00pm.

Thats a 12-hour day at the school. If you have to teach the following the day, you will up another couple hours planning. Since we are in training, you have to produce extensive documentation about your lesson plan. Oh yeah, and there are written assignments mixed in there too! ;-)

Yesterday, I did my first 60 minute lesson. It took me about 6 hours to plan, produce all the required documentation and make my materials. Which, believe it or not, it quite a bit faster than it took me during my lessons for the first week! Of course, this is building us up for when we work real jobs where we will be teaching 3 - 5 hours per day.

Anyway, I'm done teaching for the week. Carrie has her 60 minute lesson today. And then we intend to have a relaxing weekend -- when we aren't writing the assignment due on Monday or planning our lessons for Monday (David) or Tuesday (Carrie)! ;-)

There's a couple cool videos/pictures waiting to be posted, including a review of a Bloody Mary done Polish-style, which we hope to put up soon.

See ya!

Arrival at "Mill Houses" hotel in Santorini, Greece (re-enacted July 18th, 2009)

This is a re-enactment of our arrival at "Mill Houses" hotel in Santorini, Greece. The audio wasn't very good so I tried to add some sub-titles. That also aren't very good. When we're heading down the stairs you get a glimpse of Andreas, the guy who worked the pool bar. We lead you all the way to our room.

Andreas (July 18th, 2009)

After we finished our re-enactment of our arrival, we had some drinks and ended up hanging out with Andreas who ran the pool bar. He kept giving us free shots. Lots of free shots.

Our apartment in Kraków, Poland (July 25th, 2009)

Our apartment in Kraków, Poland where we will be living for the next 4 weeks (the duration of our CELTA program). After filming this, I decided to switch to staying in the small bedroom. So, the room described as "David's bedroom" is really where the Swedish roommate lives..

Honeymoon in Review (July 16-20, 2009)

On Monday, we arrived in Krakow, Poland, ending our honeymoon.

Here is a quick review of events, some which will be expanded on later, possibly with videos!

Day 1

Day 2

  • Baggage arrives! Yay!
  • Walk to Fira for the first time
  • Do a wine tasting at some random shop -- leads to purchase of wine
  • Some more shopping
  • Massage at "Spa of the Gods" (provided in package from travel agency)
  • Full course dinner at "Sphynx" (provided in package from travel agency)

Day 3

  • A rental car was dropped off at the hotel (provided in package from travel agency) but we opted to refuse it because people drive insanely in Santorini
  • Walk to Fira and buy some Greek looking cloths
  • Some more shopping, eating and drinking
  • Post lots in blog
  • Skype with some people back home
  • Get really, really drunk with Andreas, the hotel empolyee who works the pool bar, who kept giving us free shots

Day 4

  • Tried to recover from severe hang over as best we could
  • Went on a 6 hour boat cruise around the islands (provided in package from travel agency) which ended in watching the sunset

Day 5

  • Packed
  • Waited for transfer to airport that never came -- but then we were miraculously saved by a taxi that drove by (taxis without fairs are relatively rare in Santorini)
  • Flew to Kraków via Vienna

Getting to our honeymoon (July 15-16th, 2009)

On Wednesday, July 15th at 11:00 am, we left for O'hare Airport in Chicago and made it with enough time to do some posting while we waited for boarding. It was an 8hr 45min flight on Alitalia to Rome. Pretty uneventful.

We arrived in Rome the next day and had to transfer to another Alitalia flight to Athens. It was about 2hrs. Here's a little video as we waited for boarding.

After arriving to Athens, we had to leave terminal in order to switch to Aegean Air for our flight to Santorini. Here's another video where we stepped out of the airport for some fresh air. When we finally got on our plane, it was only 45mins to get to Santorini.

On arriving to Santorini, we discovered that in switching airlines our baggage was lost! The Alitalia woman assured us that we wouldn't need to transfer our luggage ourselves and the baggage ticket even noted a transfer to Santorini. But apparently this wasn't heeded and the bags remained in Athens.

However, Ms. Rosa from Kivitos (the travel agency that setup our honeymoon), who came to meet us at the airport, helped figure everything out with the airline. They said they'd have the bags to us by the next day and they did! Around 9am on the 17th, the bags arrived at the hotel. We were so excited we took pictures of the suitcases (below).

It was an exhausting trip, but we were so happy to have made it! And our hotel room was awesome, complete with a pool bar.

Getting to the hotel from where we were dropped off was pretty interesting too. Hopefully we'll make a video about it later. (UPDATE: Here is the afformentioned video.)

More to come!

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