Shores of Gdańsk

June 7, 2011

(Happy Birthday, Daddy!)

Hello friends and family! Sadly, my Lowcountry Local Foodie blog will soon be coming to a close, as Doug and I are preparing to move to Washington, D.C. in August. Don't worry, you can still read the Lowcountry Local blog archives, and I hope to continue to post recipes and foodie facts from south of the Potomac in Rosslyn, Virginia.


This new blog will serve as a sort of journal as we begin our adventure and journey to Poland!


As a start, I should explain why I named this blog "Warsaw to Warsaw," as we are not going to be living in Warsaw, Poland. Doug and I do not have any Polish heritage or ancestry (that we know of), so I came up with the next best thing. My mother's German family, the Summerours, have lived near Warsaw, Georgia for the last 150+ years. Warsaw, Georgia is in northern Fulton County, formerly Milton County.


I hope that you will join me as I blog about the cultural changes and challenges that we will face going from Warsaw to Warsaw. I plan to blog about my loves and my laughs, triumphs and failures, the language training, the environment, food, and politics of Poland.


Many of you may still be asking, why Poland? What will you be doing there? What does any of this have to do with Doug being a Marine?


I hope that I can answer those questions in the blogs to follow.


Doug has been accepted as an Olmsted Scholar, class of 2012. What is that? As best stated and explained by the Olmsted Foundation's website, the Foundation serves:
"To provide outstanding young military leaders an unsurpassed opportunity to achieve fluency in a foreign language, pursue graduate study at an overseas university, and acquire an in depth understanding of foreign cultures, thereby further equipping them to serve in positions of great responsibility as senior leaders in the United States Armed Forces"

We selected 10 universities that Doug was interested in studying at, and we were placed at Gdansk, Poland, #6 on the list. Doug's new job as a Scholar is to become fluent in Polish, and pursue a Master's degree in liberal arts at the University of Gdansk. It is also mandatory for us to travel around Poland, Europe, and to visit other Scholars in their host countries. This class will be studying in places like Bolivia, China, Israel, India and...Cameroon!

We went to Washington, D.C. this past week for the Olmsted Orientation and we also went apartment-hunting. We had a great time, and it was a great success. I was able to meet and make contacts with the wives of current and past scholars. I hope that with their help, I can support Doug to the best of my ability in this new program and new land!

In September, we will start school at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Virginia. I have qualified to attend school alongside Doug to learn Polish! I am planning to set my veterinary career on the "back burner" for a little while and take advantage of this unique opportunity. My goal will be to become fluent in Polish, and pass the veterinary board examinations in Poland.

I have started learning a little Polish using DVDs and watching movies on Netflix in Polish. I'm also looking into starting a brief free online course on the Polish language, just to give me a little bit of a head-start before going to FSI. My favorite part so far has been reading about Polish history. This history buff is wanting to read more about the history of Poland than learning to speak the language!

Please check in with this blog every so often, I plan to write a couple of times a month here at the beginning. I hope that as we go along, I will also be typing this blog in English and Polish.

Thank you all so much for your love and support. This is going to be a very big change for me, but I am very excited....this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!