Happy Monday

I'm too lazy to get up and walk across the room to plug in our external hard drive to upload whatever new photos are on there. I'm tired and just want to sit here in this chair with the silence around me and continue enjoying the invention of wireless access to the internet. Wow, we are spoiled.

This past weekend went by rather fast. We took the kids out to two different malls (Poznan Plaza and Galleria Pestka) that we hadn't checked out yet. They're right next to one another, kind of odd. We pretty much just walk them around for exercise and I take mental notes on stores that I'd like to come back and check out on my own. We usually sit down at the food courts and feed the kids. Saturday at Poznan Plaza we ordered some traditional Polish food (meat and potatoes) because we know the kids will eat it for sure. On Sunday we splurged and ordered lunch at KFC. They ate their chicken sandwich and french fries with apple juice. Erik and I just ate chicken wings, and they were good.

One of the "big box stores" anchoring the Galleria is Partiker. It's similiar to a Lowe's. We walked around and scanned what they had for future reference, it wasn't anything too exciting. We also did some grocery shopping, kids love doing that. So basically it was a rather mellow and not too adventurous of a weekend.

I did find that the location of the two malls were just north of us and it opened up a whole other view of our city to me. I hadn't realized that we really do live in the "heart" of the city. It's so old school and European looking around us. You drive 10min up where the malls are and it looks more what we would call normal. This city is bigger than I thought. So now we have been to a total of five malls around here and there is one major huge new one that is supposed to open up later this month as well. It's located over by Lake Malta, somewhere East of us on the other side of river. Karrie tells me there should be a Burger King and a TGIF in there. I haven't looked at the website yet. Maybe I'll do that next (www.galeriamalta.pl/en/). We just got a brand new Subway opened two weeks ago, our first one. We haven't been there yet because it's not convenient to us but I'm certain I'll make there eventually.

We had some "new friends" come over Saturday night. Eric and Ann, they're Army here doing some kind of schooling with Olmstead Scholarship? It was nice to have them come over and hang out. We just basically drank beers and yapped for four hours. I'm sure we'll be seeing them again. We tried to get a sitter last minute but that didn't work out. This turned out to be pretty fun anyway.

Karrie and I ran to the Browar (nice mall) to pick up a few things on Friday. We ran into a girl and her fiance that Karrie had met a few months ago. Karrie was talking to her now 1yr old son and Natalie overheard her speaking English. Anyhow, they chatted for a few and hadn't seen one another since. So I met Natalie and Gil (who is from San Antonio) and they're medical students here finishing up their last year. So most likely we'll be seeing them again too. There are a lot of Americans here for so many different reasons.

Okay, I need to go for now, my house cleaner just arrived and I need to do something.

-Stacie

PS. I checked out the new mall webpage and it's going to be a big one for sure. It appears as for "western restaurants" there will be a Subway, Burger King, McDonalds, TGIF and Pizza Hut. Now the Eastern Block countries can start eating unhealthy and get large like us Americans. We've seen Pizza Hut in a couple of other places but haven't indulged yet. We order delivery locally and it's pretty darn good and cheap. There is a store listed as Cartoon Planet, I'll have to check that one out. You would assume this country is so poor they dont shop and aren't current on fashion, wrong. I swear no matter what time of day the clothing stores are full of people shopping, men and women.