I don’t have an address for Poland yet, but once I have it I will give it out. I want to keep in touch via email, skype and snail mail, so send your snail mail address to me at the following: jessicalynnskarda@gmail.com
My skype username is jess.skarda If you don’t have skype, get it– it’s free!
Yesterday was nothing less than terrific. Erica woke me up at ten-ish, which is early for someone who doesn’t have a job and stayed up late the night before singing songs with friends and watching Seventeen Again. The Fantastic Three (Erica, Philip, and me) went to Niffer’s, and then Erica and I went to AK’s. At AK’s coffee Amy Wrasman called me, a friend of mine whom I met while studying Linguistics this Summer at the University of North Dakota. So this, quite obviously, made my day. I was happy that she got to see one of our Anabaptist friends while in Pennsylvania, and I also talked to another fellow student (Bethany Heynen I love you) via skype. My bestfriend Adaobi and I also talked via skype about our plans to go to Turkey together over Christmas break, and we are going to confirm that later this week. Then Ben came and took me downtown, where I had locked my bike up the night before because it wouldn’t fit in anyone’s vehicle. So needless to say, I had a bike, and was downtown. So I thought about Yuto, and rode to Cambridge to see if he still lived there (check yes, he does!)
So the two of us meandered around Auburn for a few hours and got some ice cream, when we saw the sign near the Loft (Chi Alpha) that there was going to be free American food for Internationals upstairs. (I have no idea why I didn’t remember this; shame on me for not going to church on Sunday!) Anyhow, we decided we weren’t going to miss free food at seven, so we went upstairs. The food was amazing. There were so many Internationals. I had the time of my life meeting all the Turkish Students who are here to get their Masters. Counseling and Polymer Science seemed to be the hot majors. It was great! We talked about Turkey and they invited me to come visit them. It turns out Auburn lets out about the same time, so they will be home when I am coming to Turkey. It would be amazing to visit the five of them over Christmas break! Haha.
After dinner, we went and played Ultimate Frisbee out on Samford Lawn. While playing, I met this Saudi named Mana, (I wanted to call him bread from heaven from this point on), an we quickly exchanged name tags and started convincing people that I was from Saudi Arabia. This one girl actually believed it, until he asked me to dialogue with this other guy named Ibraham in Arabic, which I don’t speak! Haha. Mana is going to make Arabic food for Italia (Mateo) and me this week… I am excited. J
Anyhow, after Ultimate ended I walked up and introduced myself to the only people I hadn’t really met. All seven of them were from Nepal! How cool is that? Anyhow, we started talking about Nepal and they asked me when I will go and visit them. I said it was very expensive to go visit them in Nepal, and they quipped with “It’s very expensive for us to be here, but we are here!” Haha, good point—I hadn’t thought of that. So then, we got to talking about Nepalese and how similar it is to Hindi. I told them I didn’t know Hindi, but that I did know a little bit of Marathi, which I had learned while in North Dakota. I started telling them words and they were shocked. They were exactly the same, or almost the same. A few of the colors were different, and the verbs had slightly different endings, but all of the objects were the same. This continued for almost forty-five minutes. I was so excited. I began talking to them in Marathi. We were jumping up and down we were so happy. I even told them all that I loved them in Marathi, but it was the exact same in their language. They even use “aje” at the end of anything. We dialogued for a short while, and I was surprised that I could understand them. Meanwhile my Japanese friend, Yuto, was a little bored… and might have even thought the moment bizarre… haha. J But this latter experience—talking in a language I’ve never ever learned—made my night. Hopefully they will come visit me in Polska! Do widzenia!
