Poland

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Places that “Made” Me — Tony Headrick (Poland)
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Christmas with Eva
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Review: TWO YEARS IN POLAND by Lawrence Biddall (Poland)

Places that “Made” Me — Tony Headrick (Poland)

    I was a Peace Corps Volunteer and was sent to PĨock, Poland, a beautiful and fascinating city located on the Vistula River, to complete my Pre-Service Training (PST), a demanding educational regime that was designed to see if I’d be up to the various challenges I’d certainly encounter once I was sent off to the town or city I’d be living and working in. A very exciting moment came in late summer, at the conclusion of the third month of PST.  It was referred to as “placement day.”  I’d already successfully survived what amounted to the Peace Corps’ version of “boot camp” and was about to be told the name of the place in Poland I was going to be sent off to do my service, which amounted to teacher training, educational consulting, among other duties. On this day, we gathered together in the “aula,” the auditorium, the . . .

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Christmas with Eva

by Peggy Raggio (Poland 1991–92) First published on the blog of PeaceCorpsWriters.org on February 14, 2006 • ON DECEMBER 22, 1991, we took a smelly bus from Suwalki to Warsaw. Marzena, another teacher and I chatted and snacked on sandwiches and hot tea as we rode south for seven hours, through the chill and snowy countryside of Northern Poland. We saw farmers guiding their furry plow horses and wagons through the streets, loaded with silver milk jugs, cabbages and crates of chickens. A long-legged stork landed on her nest on the roof of a farmhouse. After a booster shot at the Peace Corps office in Warsaw, I rode a streetcar to the Marriott Hotel in the center of town for coffee (kawa pronounced “kava”). Violins and a grand piano played on a balcony over the lobby that gleamed festively with bird of paradise in blue and gold jardinières, plush oriental . . .

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Review: TWO YEARS IN POLAND by Lawrence Biddall (Poland)

  • Two Years in Poland, and Other Stories: A Sixty-Seven-Year-Old Grandfather Joins the Peace Corps and Looks Back on His Life by Lawrence Brane Siddall (1997–99) Pelham Springs Press 2008 255 pages $16.95 Reviewed by David Gurr (Ethiopia 1962–64) • In Poland, Lawrence Brane Siddall taught English in the town of Swidnica, pronounced as shvid-NEET-sa, according to the author. He was the only PCV assigned to that city of 65,000 in southwest Poland, and replaced a Volunteer who had taught English the previous two years at the secondary school to which he was assigned. Parts I and III of his book are devoted to his experience in Swidnica, travel to major cities in Poland, one of them as part of his in-service training, as well as a six-week summer project organized by another Volunteer followed by a vacation in Russia. Sandwiched in between these two parts is Part II, . . .

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