damp

A small and unexpected trickle of emails from my students in Poland has found its way to my inbox; they're all very sincere messages, and rather reassuringly, it seems that many of us are of one mind in wanting to go back next year. I wish that I could commit to the idea, but it is something that can only be addressed at a later juncture.

I've had the chance to sort through most of my pictures now, as well as the dozen or so mpeg bursts I took at various points ("Stairs Travelogue"!), and in all, they seem to have captured all of the things that I remember most fondly about my stay. I'm not going to post them here, though they are all online elsewhere for those involved to find. For an idea of the weather we were dealing with much of the time, here is a picture of myself with another volunteer, Julia, following a four hour hike to the border with Slovakia, where we are pictured (click to enlarge). We crossed the fence that marked the border, of course, just for the "been there done that" experience, and then continued on our way toward Kasprowy Wierch, where an antique cable-car affording a fantastic view of nothing but cloud ferried us quickly back down the mountainside in next to no time at all.
An upside of the constant wet is that it makes you look years younger; this picture puts me at about eighteen all over again! Nonetheless, I'm happier dry and wrinkly in the longer term, much as I love hiking, whatever the weather.
I did come away with one downer, however, a case of iliotibial band friction syndrome; it was just setting in before I left for Poland and was exacerbated by the hours of steep downhill walking. Excruciating, but the worst has subsided and I'm on anti-inflammatories and forced rest, so hopefully back to normal soon.

There are so many things I'm going to miss :)