Missouri in Mazury

Years ago, my mom bought a magnet that I'm able to relate to more and more. A woke me up this morning by calling my phone and having B talk to me. B came into our room, made himself comfortable on the bed next to me and was chatting away. Then he asked about the kitty. Slowly it dawned on me that B thought he was talking on the phone with my mom. Oh shit, I even sound like my mother!?

Rage (Gniew)  by Zygmunt Miloszewski is the third book in its series. I mainly read this book, because it was one of those Kindle First books offered (for May?) and the rest of the books offered looked terrible. I had also previously read  A Grain of Truth (Ziarno prawdy)  in Polish and English (recommend!) and really enjoyed it. Now all I have to do is read the first book in the series,  Entanglement ... I read this series a little backwards. I actually preferred book #2 over this one: I didn't like the ending, mainly because I found it too confusing as a reader (I don't like being left out of the loop for so long, though I had suspected something). I especially liked this book, though, because I'm familiar with Olsztyn and its 11 lakes and did enjoy reading a book set in a familiar location. As a person with a translation degree who works in the translation industry, I also have to give a shout out to the translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who totally kille...

You can actually catch them all in Warsaw! It's not sadly barren like up here in Mazury - I was very excited. You can tell I'm such a dedicated Pokémon player, looking at my level... Park Łazienki   Centrum Andrzej Duda also plays ;)

Missourians would hate these Mazurian roundabouts ;)

I was introduced to Kelley Armstrong in September 2014 with the first book in the Cainsville series, Omens . While impatiently waiting for the next books to be printed, I dove into her other series, including the Darkest Powers, Darkness Rising, and, finally, Women of the Otherworld series. While I highly recommend reading her books, I'm just finished the Otherworld series and it's fresh in my mind. I really enjoyed most of the characters, though I absolutely hated the 5th book and thought it was completely unrealistic (and I know - it's a book about ghosts, so how realistic can it be? But that was bad). I especially liked the stories about Savannah, which we got to follow to the end. The prologue to  Thirteen  describes Kelley Armstrong's own journey while writing the novels. She writes that it took her a while to figure out the direction of the series, but that when she did, it really clicked. As a reader, that's very apparent. The books ranged from amazing to...

Customer service in Poland is always something interesting to compare to that in the US. In a lot of ways, it's improved considerably, but as an instructor once quoted the French as saying, it leaves much to be desired. Two examples. My brother, his wife, and her dad were visiting last weekend and we wanted to have a good ol' American BBQ. Except for hamburgers, because beef in Poland, at least this part, isn't used that way and when it is, it doesn't taste the same. We also added in some kaszanka (blood sausage), because when in Poland, do as the Poles do. And kaszanka is delicious. But we needed corn on the cob. Luckily, we have a Tesco, which features a lot of foods that "typical" Polish stores don't have (it's a British store). Tesco had corn on the cob, A grabbed it and went to check out. Unfortunately, he couldn't actually buy it, because it wasn't in their system. No corn on the cob. Fast forward to their visit. It was HOT. For...

First of all, if you had told me 10 years ago (or even less) that I'd be excited for my little brother to visit, I'd call you a freaking lunatic. But, that's how it goes, I guess, and here we are: me, excited to have my brother and sister in law (and her dad) visit in a few days. Three sleeps and they're here. That's what I get for living in a village in the middle of nowhere. And I'm actually excited for my little shit of a brother to visit! You would be also if you lived in this village, though, trust me. As I told him, I'm mostly excited to see his reaction to my MIL speaking Polish to him and laughing at her jokes, which he won't understand, because it'll all be in Polish. My mom recalls our Polish wedding, when my MIL was chatting away for a while, and then brought my mom to "chat" with her sister (all in Polish). My mom can say "jesteś dupkiem", "dzień dobry", and "do widzenia" (kinda). This is gonn...