Today I had the wonderful experience of writing a cover letter in 5 minutes. The words flowed, the experience came together in a coherent picture of a young man who was ready to take on the world from his potential seat in a high-rise in downtown Calgary. I sold myself by identifying the right idiosyncrasies and painting them as exactly what the company needed. Lately, writing a cover letter has not been so easy.
There is something very disconcerting about not being able to write an effective cover letter about yourself. Human adults spend more of their waking hours working than engaged in any other activity (and for most of us, working surpasses sleep as well), and we define ourselves partially by our work life. So, when try you to sit down and put your good qualities on paper, and you fail, it does not feel good. You try to think of what would make you a good employee, and you come up short. What is happening is that, in essence, you have lost faith in yourself as a worker.
When you write your cover letter despite this feeling, your negativity will show through. For myself, I go through the rigmarole of stating my experience and how it ties into what the employer is looking for. Of course, this is what you are supposed to do, but it ends up looking uninspired. Instead of weaving a narrative about your experience, it ends up reading like a truncated list of unnatural connections between experience and expectations. With more and more companies using the Internet as their primary source of potential candidates, the cover letter is your first line of attack; it's the only place your personality can shine through. An uninspired cover letter doesn't exactly .. ahem.. inspire a positive response. So what happens is a self-fulfilling prophecy, where a lack of response to your jobs undermines the same confidence that you need to write a good cover letter. This is unfortunately the pattern I have been stuck in for a little while. Does anybody else know what this feels like?
Thank goodness then for the occasional flash of inspiration that allows you to rise above this. The cover letter I wrote today happened in a mere 5 minutes. I proofread it twice and then sent it off. I know it's good. I know it's good precisely because it only took 5 minutes. I had that sort of intense, pleasurable concentration you feel when you are doing something you truly enjoy. For me, that usually comes when I am wall-climbing, or reading an inspiring book, or even writing this blog right now, but today it happened when I was writing a cover letter.
That's not to say that you should write a cover letter in 5 minutes. Never underestimate the value of planning what you are going to say ahead of time, and even outlining your cover letter (or any formal correspondence) before you start writing. It only took my five minutes because I have been writing 3-6 cover letters per week for about 3 months now, and even though many of them were uninspired, I still have a good idea of what I want to say. In fact, I am sure that part of my inspiration came from all of the mundane practice I have had at writing cover letters over the past while.
The point of all of this is that even when we are caught in negative patterns, I believe there is always a way to overcome them. If the bad news is that sometimes we get trapped in these negative-feedback loops, then the good news is that chances are inspiration will come one day and help us out. But don't sit there waiting for it. Inspiration is not a flash of lightning that strikes, coming out of nowhere and changing your life forever all in one moment. Inspiration is the culmination of hard work and practice and hard work and practice. Whatever your goal is, whatever your current equivalent of my cover letters is right now, you have it in your power to succeed.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Down With Big Brother
"Down with Big Brother" by Michael Dobbs is a book about the fall of Communism in the USSR and the empire at its periphery. Anybody who has hung out with me lately will know that I have taken a considerable interest in Russia and its history. You don't, however, need to have a special interest in Russia to make this book worthwhile. Michael Dobbs was a reporter in many of the countries of which he narrates the story, making the story at times very in-depth and personal, or at least as personal as one can make a story about Communist leaders and party-members whose power was traditionally derived from their remoteness from society. The series of ideological, economic, and reformist blows that Communism took that eventually caused it to collapse make for an epic story; so much so that I found it hard to believe that a lot of this took place in my lifetime.
The story starts at the beginning of the end; in 1979, the USSR took it upon itself to invade Afghanistan to prop up an unpopular government in a country with a long tradition of repelling foreign invaders. From there the reader is taken through a chain of events which are remarkable for the very fact that if some of these links did not take place we may still be living in a world with the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries under the yoke of Communism. It makes for an epic story, and indeed Dobbs' style of writing reads at times more like a novel than a historical account. Perhaps this is because Dobbs was a foreign correspondent in many of the scenes taking place in the novel. Perhaps it is because he wanted to imbue the story with the emotion he thought it deserved. Either way, it made the book a damn sight more entertaining than your average historical account, although I did worry at times at the objectivity of what I was reading. He is given to postulating on the thoughts and emotions of the people in the story, and attempting to explain the motivations of everyone involved. No trivial task, to say the least.
The book would have been less if he had not tried to get into the heads of his 'characters' though. Most interesting are Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the last General Secretary of the USSR and the first president of its heir, the Russian Federation. Mikhail Gorbachev is the man who opposed the effects of his own well-meaning reforms, which eventually left him without a state to be the leader of. Boris Yeltsin was, despite his later propensity for dictatorship, the first man to stand up for the Russian constitution, and the man who dissolved the USSR into the still-existing Commonwealth of Independent States, not one country but 11 which are now able to pursue their own national interests.
This piece of history is the most dramatic change in the world order since World War 2. It is a story worth telling, and more importantly worth reading. Dobbs' version is a fine account, given to such such fiction techniques as speculation, metaphor, and narrating, but because of that probably among the most entertaining. Unfortunately, the editions I saw on Amazon were out of print, but if you ever see this book in a used book store, you can pick it up. And, if you live in Saskatoon, I will gladly lend it to you.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Stranded in Bialystok and Good Times in Vilnius
This entry might be short. After all, there is not much to tell, and that in itself is part of what is to be told (?). Did that make sense? Read on, maybe it will make sense afterward.
So, we got to Bialystok, because we were planning to go to the Biewiczka (or something like that) primordial forest that straddles the border of Poland and Belarus. The first night we were there we went a-wanderin' down to the core area, where we saw a respectable church, and a palace, but nothing overly notable. We also noticed a large congregation of people in a park and ended up wandering through what turned out to be a ... household fair? There were tents devoted to furnaces, hot tubs, tools, etc. It was really just rather random, but we did get some enjoyment out of a lifesize foosball game, with people as the players tied to the poles, and the attractive girls some of the companies were using to get people to their tent. After a quick wander through there and the adjacent park, we went back to our hostel and read/putzed around until bed time.
The next morning is when we were planning to get up and go to the forest. We arrived with little time to spare, though, and could not find the bus that was supposed to be leaving to the forest. We asked about it but nothing ended up coming of it, so the entire reason we came to Bialystok was shot! Not wanting to let the time go to waste, though, we spent that day wandering Bialystok further, only to realize, a little bit to our dismay, that there is not all that much to see in Bialystok. We went to a mall that we found for a while and did some random wandering, and that night ate at a pretty good Italian place, but that was about it. You can imagine that by the next day we were pretty eager to move on with our trip. We got our train tickets to Vilnius and got onto what we thought was our train. Turns out we were wrong! So, after getting ourselves back to Bialystok from the random town we ended up in, I made some inquiries, mostly to people who did not speak English, and found out that the next opportunity we had to get to Vilnius was at 2am. The current time was approximately 11am. You can imagine how stoked we were!
Of this there is not much to tell. We spent way too long at the mall, way too long at the train station, and way too long in a park near the two. It finally got to 2am and we were pretty happy to see the bus roll around the corner. The nice thing about buses, too, is that you have someone to ask if it's going to the right place. You don't always get that on trains.
So I'm not very good at sleeping on moving things. Sometimes I can manage trains but not usually buses or airplanes. This was no exception. So after laying awake for most of the train ride I began to talk to the only other person awake, a middle-aged Latvian man. We talked for a while, and he mentioned many things about his daughters, seeing as how they were around our age and also in school. At the end of the trip, he invited us for coffee with his daughters. We thought this was a little random but accepted because he seemed like a decent fellow and we always like meeting locals. We parted ways to get some sleep and see the town a bit first, though.
Liam and I found our way to our hostel (after a little bit too much searching due to a faulty guidebook), and were happy to find out that we could check in early so that we could get to our beds for some sleep. We woke up and saw the sights in Vilnius. It's got a very pretty and extensive Old Town with more to see than many we've been too, and we also saw a massive Church made out of an old pagan temple and climbed to the top of Gediminas Hill, where we climbed further up a tower and got a fantastic view of the city. We then called the number the fellow gave us, which was his daughter's, and it was getting a little bit late now, so she told us we should come over for supper instead. They came and picked s up at our hostel a short while later and brought us to their house, where they had a veritable feast prepared, with turkey meatballs, sausage, potatoes, strawberries with creme fraiche, cake, coffee, beer and wine. We were a little surprised, but pleasantly so. They were also good people to talk to. Both of the older daughters knew four languages each, the dad knew something like six, and they had a lot to say on all kinds of subjects. I think at times I felt a little bit outclassed! Anyway, it was a great evening and the fellow dropped us off back at our hostel at the end.
The next day we got up and went to the Museum to the Victims of Communism. It is a really cool museum that tells the history of Lithuania under the communist yoke. The place is contained within the actual old KGB headquarters, and the basement still has all of the original rooms, where prisoners were kept, tortured, interrogated, and killed. One especially interesting room was just a lowered floor with a raised pedestal in the middle, where they would make prisoners stand, filling the floor with ice cold water, so that the prisoner could not doze off or they would step into the water. That night we went out for dinner with the girls we had met last night, but only after they took us around some other parts of the Old Town that we had not seen before, such as the University and the Presidential Palace. We got a coffee afterward but then the girls had to go so we went back to our hostel.
The next day was and the next entry will be about Klaipeda, a coastal city of Lithuania where we spent a few days.
So, we got to Bialystok, because we were planning to go to the Biewiczka (or something like that) primordial forest that straddles the border of Poland and Belarus. The first night we were there we went a-wanderin' down to the core area, where we saw a respectable church, and a palace, but nothing overly notable. We also noticed a large congregation of people in a park and ended up wandering through what turned out to be a ... household fair? There were tents devoted to furnaces, hot tubs, tools, etc. It was really just rather random, but we did get some enjoyment out of a lifesize foosball game, with people as the players tied to the poles, and the attractive girls some of the companies were using to get people to their tent. After a quick wander through there and the adjacent park, we went back to our hostel and read/putzed around until bed time.
The next morning is when we were planning to get up and go to the forest. We arrived with little time to spare, though, and could not find the bus that was supposed to be leaving to the forest. We asked about it but nothing ended up coming of it, so the entire reason we came to Bialystok was shot! Not wanting to let the time go to waste, though, we spent that day wandering Bialystok further, only to realize, a little bit to our dismay, that there is not all that much to see in Bialystok. We went to a mall that we found for a while and did some random wandering, and that night ate at a pretty good Italian place, but that was about it. You can imagine that by the next day we were pretty eager to move on with our trip. We got our train tickets to Vilnius and got onto what we thought was our train. Turns out we were wrong! So, after getting ourselves back to Bialystok from the random town we ended up in, I made some inquiries, mostly to people who did not speak English, and found out that the next opportunity we had to get to Vilnius was at 2am. The current time was approximately 11am. You can imagine how stoked we were!
Of this there is not much to tell. We spent way too long at the mall, way too long at the train station, and way too long in a park near the two. It finally got to 2am and we were pretty happy to see the bus roll around the corner. The nice thing about buses, too, is that you have someone to ask if it's going to the right place. You don't always get that on trains.
So I'm not very good at sleeping on moving things. Sometimes I can manage trains but not usually buses or airplanes. This was no exception. So after laying awake for most of the train ride I began to talk to the only other person awake, a middle-aged Latvian man. We talked for a while, and he mentioned many things about his daughters, seeing as how they were around our age and also in school. At the end of the trip, he invited us for coffee with his daughters. We thought this was a little random but accepted because he seemed like a decent fellow and we always like meeting locals. We parted ways to get some sleep and see the town a bit first, though.
Liam and I found our way to our hostel (after a little bit too much searching due to a faulty guidebook), and were happy to find out that we could check in early so that we could get to our beds for some sleep. We woke up and saw the sights in Vilnius. It's got a very pretty and extensive Old Town with more to see than many we've been too, and we also saw a massive Church made out of an old pagan temple and climbed to the top of Gediminas Hill, where we climbed further up a tower and got a fantastic view of the city. We then called the number the fellow gave us, which was his daughter's, and it was getting a little bit late now, so she told us we should come over for supper instead. They came and picked s up at our hostel a short while later and brought us to their house, where they had a veritable feast prepared, with turkey meatballs, sausage, potatoes, strawberries with creme fraiche, cake, coffee, beer and wine. We were a little surprised, but pleasantly so. They were also good people to talk to. Both of the older daughters knew four languages each, the dad knew something like six, and they had a lot to say on all kinds of subjects. I think at times I felt a little bit outclassed! Anyway, it was a great evening and the fellow dropped us off back at our hostel at the end.
The next day we got up and went to the Museum to the Victims of Communism. It is a really cool museum that tells the history of Lithuania under the communist yoke. The place is contained within the actual old KGB headquarters, and the basement still has all of the original rooms, where prisoners were kept, tortured, interrogated, and killed. One especially interesting room was just a lowered floor with a raised pedestal in the middle, where they would make prisoners stand, filling the floor with ice cold water, so that the prisoner could not doze off or they would step into the water. That night we went out for dinner with the girls we had met last night, but only after they took us around some other parts of the Old Town that we had not seen before, such as the University and the Presidential Palace. We got a coffee afterward but then the girls had to go so we went back to our hostel.
The next day was and the next entry will be about Klaipeda, a coastal city of Lithuania where we spent a few days.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Flickr Stream!
I got my Flickr stream web address! It was just a small option that I somehow missed a million times.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csaraka/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/csaraka/
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
In Which Liam Falls Ill And Colin Must Explore Poland Alone
So, where I left off, I had gone to Auschwitz. A very sobering experience, but that's all I will say in this entry because I want this to be positive! For due sadness, please see previous entry.
On the bus between the two sites at Auschwitz I happened to get talking with a girl there from New York, who came along with us (Me and the UK Army Girls) to our hostel where we found Liam. The three of us (Masha, Liam, and I) went and found us a milk bar to get the full Polish experience. A milk bar in short, is a cafeteria subsidized by the government, a sort of a holdover from Communist times, where you can get your fill of traditional Polish food for dirt cheap prices, as long as you can deal with people that only speak Polish, and some poor people asking if they can have your food (yes, this actually happened to us). The food was, as expected, mediocre, but it was so cheap and we left feeling satisfied, so we were not too worried about it. After that, we wandered around for a bit and stopped in for a drink at a cool little chill techno-bar thingy, but ultimately Liam and I ended up going home early, because Liam was getting sick and I was very tired from having gone out late then gotten up early to spend all day at Auschwitz. The next day, though, we all met up at Wawel Castle, a sort of quaint but ridiculously, eclectically styled castle. It's sort of a mishmash and very interesting for a morning. The best part, though, was a cave underneath the castle that opens up onto a ridiculously ugly dragon-insect statue-thing that is all sharp angles and has about 8 legs.
We wandered around Old Town for a bit after grabbing a bite to eat, until Masha went on her tour to the Krakow salt mines. By the time that came around, Liam was feeling like junk, so I tagged along with her, which I cannot say that I regretted at all. Not only were the salt mines interesting and a good way to spend an afternoon, but we also met some more people. I went out with Masha and three students studying in Sweden (but who were actually from North Carolina, Jamaica, and Australia) to supper at a quaint, cheap little place serving more traditional Polish food, at which I had more pierogies and shared some of Masha's smoked and deep fried camembert cheese with cranberry sauce. Now, that may sound odd, but it was actually delicious. Afterward, we went back and found Liam so that we could go for a drink, after which everyone headed back to their respective hostels, except for Masha and I, who were unwilling to call it a night. After a fair bit of wandering we managed to find a little house club tucked into a building south of Old Town, where we actually ran into a Kiwi fellow I met at our last hostel in Wroclaw. We all talked and had a few drinks and generally jovial good time until we were abruptly asked to leave at the stroke of 3AM.
The next day, Liam and I met Masha in the Old Town, which we hadn't actually given a proper go-round to. We went in the church there, whose name escapes me but which was beautifully gilded in a landslide of gold. We then met up with the group of girls from Sweden and explored the tower attached to the church... partially because Liam was convinced that there had to be a wizard at the top, or if not, that he should take up the post. We all got some good pictures up there. After that, we were all very tired, and made a half-baked effort to explore the city walls before the Sweden students had to go catch their flight. After that, the remaining three of us did manage to motivate ourselves to check out the Barbican, a fortification built to defend against assaults after the introduction of guns to the region. We were feeling very tired, though, and soon after split up along our merry ways, Liam and I to Warsaw, while Masha went to Berlin.
Unlike our last train ride, the way to Warsaw was very uneventful, but when we got there, we had quite a time finding the proper bus. We eventually figured out we were about 100m from the bus mall, where practically every bus in Warsaw goes, but I maintain that this was not well-signed at all. Somewhere in the 5 minutes it took to take the bus I managed to leave my coat on it. We then arrived at our hostel, which was OK but not the best, and we went to sleep slightly frustrated.
The next morning, we were of course perfectly content (because this is just the way you have to approach travelling I have discovered). Liam wanted to check out a vintage clothing shop, so we walked there, catching a few of the sights along the way, such as the Unknown Soldier monument. The vintage shop was super neat, and I actually got an old Puma shirt with stripes on it for pretty cheap. Not feeling very energetic, we got some supper from the grocery store, ate, and spent some time on the internet before going to bed.
The next day Liam was feeling quite sick. We had moved hostels though, because we didn't like the one we were in. We walked over to our new hostel, which was thankfully very close, and because we couldn't check in yet, we left our bags with them while Liam sat in the common room for the day and I went to check out Warsaw. I mosied down to the Old Town of Warsaw, which contains a mermaid statue way cooler then Copenhagen's, the Pope (John Paul II) on a large pole, and other small charming things. I also had the privilege to see many exhibits devoted to Poland's 20th anniversary of democracy (because this was that day) and an exhibit devoted to the idea of coexistence (among religions, races, etc). I then caught a few random buses and trams until I found my way to the Palace of Culture and Science, a huge building built by the communists that apparently matches some other ones in Russia. It towers over most of Warsaw and offers a great view of the whole city. After that, I went back to the hostel to find Liam, and we went out for some KFC. Upon our return, we convened in the common room with other travellers to have a few shots of vodka with raspberry syrup and strawberries dipped in white chocolate, and other things, all to celebrate the anniversary of democracy with the owners/operators of the hostel. After that, we all socialized for a while, until some travellers went to sleep and some went out. Liam went to bed, as he wasn't feeling 100%, and I went out with a gaggle of travellers from various places such as Spain, France, England, and Iran. As soon as we left the hostel, we were offered free drinks at a small bar nearby, so we did and found out it was another karaoke bar. We all gathered around one microphone and sang Yesterday by the Beatles then went on our merry way!
The next day, Liam was feeling even worse, so we tried to find him a Polish doctor. Our first try, the hostel receptionist phoned for us and asked ahead, confirming there was an English speaking doctor there. However, when we got there it seemed that the English doctor (and indeed, all the English speakers) were no where to be found. We went back and talked to the hostel receptionist again, who called another place who set us an appointment with an English doctor. Liam waited around for the appointment, which was right by the hostel, while I went and checked out the Warsaw Uprising museum. The Warsaw Uprising was the Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The museum had a lot of information, but I did not know a lot about the Warsaw Uprising, and I found the events laid out in the museum to be a bit confusing in chronology. That afternoon, it was a bit rainy, so I went back to the hostel to wait it out and hung out with other people who felt the same as I did. That night, I went out with another Canadian we had met, as well as an Englishman and two Aussie girls, just to a nearby pub to have a few drinks.
The next day, Liam and I were off to Bialystok! But that is another tale.
On the bus between the two sites at Auschwitz I happened to get talking with a girl there from New York, who came along with us (Me and the UK Army Girls) to our hostel where we found Liam. The three of us (Masha, Liam, and I) went and found us a milk bar to get the full Polish experience. A milk bar in short, is a cafeteria subsidized by the government, a sort of a holdover from Communist times, where you can get your fill of traditional Polish food for dirt cheap prices, as long as you can deal with people that only speak Polish, and some poor people asking if they can have your food (yes, this actually happened to us). The food was, as expected, mediocre, but it was so cheap and we left feeling satisfied, so we were not too worried about it. After that, we wandered around for a bit and stopped in for a drink at a cool little chill techno-bar thingy, but ultimately Liam and I ended up going home early, because Liam was getting sick and I was very tired from having gone out late then gotten up early to spend all day at Auschwitz. The next day, though, we all met up at Wawel Castle, a sort of quaint but ridiculously, eclectically styled castle. It's sort of a mishmash and very interesting for a morning. The best part, though, was a cave underneath the castle that opens up onto a ridiculously ugly dragon-insect statue-thing that is all sharp angles and has about 8 legs.
We wandered around Old Town for a bit after grabbing a bite to eat, until Masha went on her tour to the Krakow salt mines. By the time that came around, Liam was feeling like junk, so I tagged along with her, which I cannot say that I regretted at all. Not only were the salt mines interesting and a good way to spend an afternoon, but we also met some more people. I went out with Masha and three students studying in Sweden (but who were actually from North Carolina, Jamaica, and Australia) to supper at a quaint, cheap little place serving more traditional Polish food, at which I had more pierogies and shared some of Masha's smoked and deep fried camembert cheese with cranberry sauce. Now, that may sound odd, but it was actually delicious. Afterward, we went back and found Liam so that we could go for a drink, after which everyone headed back to their respective hostels, except for Masha and I, who were unwilling to call it a night. After a fair bit of wandering we managed to find a little house club tucked into a building south of Old Town, where we actually ran into a Kiwi fellow I met at our last hostel in Wroclaw. We all talked and had a few drinks and generally jovial good time until we were abruptly asked to leave at the stroke of 3AM.
The next day, Liam and I met Masha in the Old Town, which we hadn't actually given a proper go-round to. We went in the church there, whose name escapes me but which was beautifully gilded in a landslide of gold. We then met up with the group of girls from Sweden and explored the tower attached to the church... partially because Liam was convinced that there had to be a wizard at the top, or if not, that he should take up the post. We all got some good pictures up there. After that, we were all very tired, and made a half-baked effort to explore the city walls before the Sweden students had to go catch their flight. After that, the remaining three of us did manage to motivate ourselves to check out the Barbican, a fortification built to defend against assaults after the introduction of guns to the region. We were feeling very tired, though, and soon after split up along our merry ways, Liam and I to Warsaw, while Masha went to Berlin.
Unlike our last train ride, the way to Warsaw was very uneventful, but when we got there, we had quite a time finding the proper bus. We eventually figured out we were about 100m from the bus mall, where practically every bus in Warsaw goes, but I maintain that this was not well-signed at all. Somewhere in the 5 minutes it took to take the bus I managed to leave my coat on it. We then arrived at our hostel, which was OK but not the best, and we went to sleep slightly frustrated.
The next morning, we were of course perfectly content (because this is just the way you have to approach travelling I have discovered). Liam wanted to check out a vintage clothing shop, so we walked there, catching a few of the sights along the way, such as the Unknown Soldier monument. The vintage shop was super neat, and I actually got an old Puma shirt with stripes on it for pretty cheap. Not feeling very energetic, we got some supper from the grocery store, ate, and spent some time on the internet before going to bed.
The next day Liam was feeling quite sick. We had moved hostels though, because we didn't like the one we were in. We walked over to our new hostel, which was thankfully very close, and because we couldn't check in yet, we left our bags with them while Liam sat in the common room for the day and I went to check out Warsaw. I mosied down to the Old Town of Warsaw, which contains a mermaid statue way cooler then Copenhagen's, the Pope (John Paul II) on a large pole, and other small charming things. I also had the privilege to see many exhibits devoted to Poland's 20th anniversary of democracy (because this was that day) and an exhibit devoted to the idea of coexistence (among religions, races, etc). I then caught a few random buses and trams until I found my way to the Palace of Culture and Science, a huge building built by the communists that apparently matches some other ones in Russia. It towers over most of Warsaw and offers a great view of the whole city. After that, I went back to the hostel to find Liam, and we went out for some KFC. Upon our return, we convened in the common room with other travellers to have a few shots of vodka with raspberry syrup and strawberries dipped in white chocolate, and other things, all to celebrate the anniversary of democracy with the owners/operators of the hostel. After that, we all socialized for a while, until some travellers went to sleep and some went out. Liam went to bed, as he wasn't feeling 100%, and I went out with a gaggle of travellers from various places such as Spain, France, England, and Iran. As soon as we left the hostel, we were offered free drinks at a small bar nearby, so we did and found out it was another karaoke bar. We all gathered around one microphone and sang Yesterday by the Beatles then went on our merry way!
The next day, Liam was feeling even worse, so we tried to find him a Polish doctor. Our first try, the hostel receptionist phoned for us and asked ahead, confirming there was an English speaking doctor there. However, when we got there it seemed that the English doctor (and indeed, all the English speakers) were no where to be found. We went back and talked to the hostel receptionist again, who called another place who set us an appointment with an English doctor. Liam waited around for the appointment, which was right by the hostel, while I went and checked out the Warsaw Uprising museum. The Warsaw Uprising was the Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The museum had a lot of information, but I did not know a lot about the Warsaw Uprising, and I found the events laid out in the museum to be a bit confusing in chronology. That afternoon, it was a bit rainy, so I went back to the hostel to wait it out and hung out with other people who felt the same as I did. That night, I went out with another Canadian we had met, as well as an Englishman and two Aussie girls, just to a nearby pub to have a few drinks.
The next day, Liam and I were off to Bialystok! But that is another tale.
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