Missouri in Mazury

I'm not sure if it was due to the move and being in a new, unfamiliar location or if it was due to reading this book, but I had nightmares while reading this one. I woke up each night screaming, thinking someone was standing above me. So, by any standards, I'd say this book was amazing. The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey is about a little girl named Melanie, who is very special. As the official description goes, "every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau...

I'm not much of a cook - I've burned noodles in the past - but there are some recipes that I really have to try, and they usually end up turning out well. I'm a pierogi-making master, for example. For our housewarming party, my cousin-in-law brought over this awesome salad that I've been obsessed with ever since. I'm not sure where she got the recipe, but I'm going to share it here, because it's amazing. I suppose you'd categorize it under "pasta salads", so it's definitely a healthy food for every occasion. Proszę bardzo: tortellini salad! Ingredients /Składniki: Tortellini (the recipe in Polish calls for pork ones, I think any kind are fine) / 500 g makaron tortilla z szynką 2 cucumbers / 2 ogórki 2 chives / 2 szczypiorki 1 can of corn / puszka kukurydzy 150 g (5.3 oz.) ham / 15 dag szynkę 1 package of dill salad dressing / sos koperkowo ziołowy 1 or 2 spoons of mayonnaise / 1, 2 łyżka majonezu Cook the tortellini, drai...

We recently picked up and moved across the country - from Mazury to Lower Silesia. I'm not changing the blog name just yet, because "Missouri in Śląsk" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Not only was this a big move, because of distance (it's 580 km / 360 miles, or a 6.5 hour drive from our previous location), but it was a big move due to the fact that we're no longer in a tiny village. Our previous street address listed the village name as the street, because the village was too small to have street names. Now, we live in Wrocław (pronounced vrots-wahv). We went from a village of barely 100 people to a city of almost 700,000. We went from me being the one of three immigrants in the county, to being one of hundreds. Wrocław is currently the European Capital of Culture. It is also known as the "miasto spotkań" (the meeting place) and the city of bridges, as there are around 100 bridges in Wrocław (if you include footbridges in parks and bridg...

We're not in Mazury anymore, Toto.

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 ;)