Monday, December 22, 2014

The shortest day of the year wasn't short of letters :)

Today is the shortest day of the year (I know it was yesterday for most of you, but in our time zone the December solstice was on 22nd December at 1:03 am) and it's also the first day of winter according to Polish people (Ukrainians keep things simplier and believe it's 1st of December, which starts winter season). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like winter at all - it's been rainy and gloomy all day long. Which doesn't spoil my mood at all, because I have quite a few reasons to feel happy - most of them were found in my mailbox today ;)

But let's start with the exam in subject called "Political institutions of Central and Eastern European states", which I've passed yesterday, even though I hadn't really prepared for it (I was too busy learning Hebrew) ;) My final result was 85%, but it's mainly because of our system that I honestly dislike as a procrastinator. You can gain up to 50% during the semester and up to 50% during the exam. And so I got 50% for the exam, but I only had 35% before, so no chances for "A" mark. I realise this system is actually quite fair and that it should encourage us to be active during the whole semester, but I still dislike it... Not that I really care about my marks anyway - there's plenty of more important and pleasant things in life - for example languages! :)


I guess my Hebrew cursive looks ridiculous and I really don't believe I'd ever learn to speak this difficult language fluently, but I feel really motivated to learn some basic expressions before my trip to Israel :) For this reason I'm not sticking to my "schedule" of language learning and focusing just o Hebrew for now. In case you've been wondering, why am I writing the transcription and translation in Polish - it's because my course book is in Polish. A year ago I'd surely translate everything into Ukrainian, but now I don't feel this need to make things more complicated just to prove how 200% Ukrainian I am ;)

But let me tell you about the thing which really made my day today - which was opening my mailbox and seeing how full of mail it was! 

I've received a lovely and thought-provoking letter from Tessa in the Netherlands. She has used cute washi tape with owls for both the envelope and the letter itself. :)

She has also enclosed two postcards - one with a funny reindeer and one which shows a girl very similar to me - traveling by train and reading a book! The only difference is that I don't ever wear hats. ;)

Erin in the USA has answered my intro with a really long and intriguing letter, which I want to answer as soon as possible. It seems that I've finally been lucky to find an American penpal, whom I can truly relate to.


She has also sent me a couple of unusual postcards, I really like them!

Then there was a beautiful Christmas card from Nürnberg, sent by Sandra.

One more map card from Israel, sent by my dear Stav, who knows how to make me even more excited before my journey! ;)

My Finnish friend Essi has sent me a nice postcard from her trip to Oulu, North Finland.

There was also a wonderful Christmas card from Piotr in Poland, who hosted me and my friend during our trip to Białystok in June.

And finally a Christmas card and small decoration from Lea in Hungary. We used to write letters to each other, which I truly enjoyed, but unfortunately we lost contact 1.5 year ago. I was really happy to find a piece of mail from her in my mailbox again!

I've also sent two letters lately:


This intro to Nela in Romania was sent on Saturday. She seems to be a really fascinating person, with whom I share quite a few interests, so I'm glad she agreed to write with me despite the huge age gap between us. By the way, isn't it funny that when I was looking for Romanian penpals back in August-September, I couldn't find anyone interesting, but once I gave up on this idea, I've been contacted by two interesting women of different ages and from different regions of Romania willing to correspond with me? It proves that it's not worth looking for penpals in a certain country - if they are to come to your life, they will come anyway. :)


Today I've sent a letter to my Italian friend Francesca. I just hope it won't take 2 months to arrive, which unfortunately happens with mail between our countries... As you may have noticed, the combinations of stamps on my envelope have been becoming more and more eclectic. Here we have a bit of cactuses, a bit of Christmas, a bit of Ukrainian cities, and a bit of Ukrainian traditional musical instruments, which is quite odd, but what can I do, if they don't issue special stamps with value suitable for international mail? I think that with our currency devaluating so quickly soon I'll start combining special stamps with standard ones and you'll have to forgive me - otherwise I'll have to send all my letters in huge envelopes! :)

I know that most of you will celebrate Christmas in a few days, so I hope you're having a lovely winter time and that the holidays will be really special! :)

2 comments:

  1. Ohh, you are so lucky nowadays and receive amazing mails from your penpals ^_^ I am kind of jealous as my postbox is on strike :( It is because I haven't sent many mails this month. I suppose it will improve next month though. I don't celebrate neither Xmas nor New Year stuff, but feel that many people enjoy this time of year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope you'll receive my letter by the end of this year - otherwise I'll be very disappointed with the Polish postal system ;) A good thing about not sending a lot of letters in December is that you don't have to worry, whether they will arrive and when. It's the most unreliable period for any postal service, if you ask me. I've just had a letter to England traveling for almost 3 weeks (luckily it's there now) and I'm waiting for a letter from Slovenia, which was sent more than 2 weeks ago... It's always a reason to worry. Some people don't send letters at all during the holiday period to avoid it. But I'm an addict, so I couldn't do that :D

    ReplyDelete