GV is 10
Has anybody noticed?
GV is 10 this autumn!
It’s hard to believe but a joy to admit, and we’ll surely celebrate it throughout the entire year. Ten years ago this month things seemed so much simpler, we were naturally younger, riding high on enthusiasm and adrenaline. Not that we are now short of that spirit; the quality of it was different then. The summer of 1997 was probably the busiest in our lives. Yet we miraculously managed to combine the challenges of starting a business with pleasures of holiday time. How? There were three of us – three as one, and one in three different pieces of the GV puzzle.
Very few people actually knew that in August 97 there was a real threat of us failing to make it. A month before we were due to move to our present premises, the building was still in pieces, with piles of rubble inside. Lazy builders put little effort during their working day and the developer was reluctant to stop them from a habit they called `poziomka’. They would get sufficiently drunk before noon only to lie comfortably all around the site during a prolonged lunch break. There was almost no hope to get the office ready for mid-Agust. We had to act fast. A short summer visit to Britain brought a solution – our London-based friend offered to use her brand new, empty flat as a temporary office. That’s why all our first-year adds had two addresses on them – the still uncertain Nowy Świat 17, and the address of a makeshift office in a leafy street in the city centre.
All in all, the trick proved a success. Soon there was a string of potential students in front of the building. The doorbell seldom stopped ringing.
teachers’ meeting
Meanwhile we are past our first teachers’ meeting this autumn. Everybody has changed a bit – darker skin complements brighter eyes, smiles betray anticipation around new groups to teach, all annual weariness left far away (where else but Mediterranean islands). It’s strange how alert we get in August, weeks before we actually start teaching. These are the best weeks. The ebb and flow of creativity is natural, but in August there’s always a flurry of ideas to develop later on. This year’s excitement is all about the `old’ TPR, given a new lease of life here at GV.
Back from holiday
Pani Wiesia‘s back from holiday. In an instant all the plants are back to life too, summer dust’s gone and the whole place looks sparkling clean. This girl is the best we’ve ever had. Comes in the evening, silently does her routines, economical with every move she makes in the limited space, and leaves before the last buses are gone.
How many of us teachers wouldn’t mind paying some extra money to have the build-up of printed/photocopied matter regularly cleared? Instead we end up being swamped with paper overload, burying our best ideas for good.
GV website
The slightly redesigned GV website owes it’s new shape to Nassim. This is what we got when he took his eyes off the desktop, packed his Canon and tripod, and wandered across the park and nearby streets – the shots showing a striking difference to the pseudo-European visual noise of the main streets.
Credits also go to Piotr and Buba. We used one of Piotr’s 1970s photos in this year’s poster (see the real-size original at the corner of Spółdzielcza and Białówny). Buba’s is the atmospheric Palace wrapped in green mesh.
There is a little story behind the black-and-white photo. This sporty grandma from Drohiczyn in front of the camera is telling Piotr how she got her smashing sweatshirt (a rarity then) from her grandson in America. With her outstretched arm she shows how little the boy, as she remembered him, was. And she is now proudly wearing his Ohio University sweatshirt. Years later somebody recognised her in the photo and told she eventually left Poland to join her grandson in the US. It’s never too late to enter global village.
Fresh start
The holiday is over. Back to work. Back to school. Back to (ab)normal.
Zamknięcie list
W dniu dzisiejszym zakończyliśmy przyjmowanie Warunków uczestnictwa z projekcie od osób z listy podstawowej. Do dnia dzisiejszego swoje uczestnictwo w kursie potwierdziły 84 osoby. Dysponujemy 16 miejscami (8 kobiet, 8 mężczyzn) dla kandydatów z miasta, na poziomach:
- P0 9 miejsc
- P2 1 miejsce
- P3 3 miejsca
- P4 3 miejsca
Od wtorku, 22 sierpnia będziemy telefonicznie zapraszać osoby zgodnie z kolejnością na liście rezerwowej. Zajęcia w grupach rozpoczną się nie wcześniej niż 11 września 2006. Terminy pierwszych spotkań w poszczególnych grupach zamieścimy na stronie internetowej oraz dodatkowo za pośrednictwem poczty elektronicznej.
Rozkład zajęć grup w ramach projektu Europejskie Podlasie mówi po angielsku – druga edycja.
- P0a – poniedziałek i środa – 16.00-17.30
- P0b – wtorek i piątek – 19.30-21.00
- P0c — środa i piątek – 16.00-17.30
- P0d — poniedziałek i środa – 17.45-19.15
- P1 – wtorek i czwartek – 19.30-21.00
- P2a – wtorek i czwartek – 17.45-19.15
- P2b — poniedziałek i czwartek – 19.30-21.00
- P3a — wtorek i piątek – 16.00-17.30
- P3b — poniedziałek i środa – 19.30-21.00
- P4 – środa i piątek – 19.30-21.00
grupa – dni — godziny
