Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku! Happy New Year...2012

Szczęśliwego

Nowego Roku! 

(New Year's Eve, Eve)

On Friday, December 30th (New Year's Eve Eve?) the YSAs (Young Single Adults) in our church put on a New Year's dance and families were all invited.  Mark and I went for 2-3 hours. We ate, danced and mingled.  They did a great job decorating and putting on a party!

Here we are with our good friend and member of the church we belong to... Alex! Mark is her home teacher and she is my visiting teacher.  Prior to the dance she announced where she will be serving a church mission...leaving March 6th for the Romania-Moldova Mission. We are thrilled for her, though we will miss her greatly!

Here we are joined by Dominik who has been called to be a missionary in the Tacoma, Washington mission (leaving May 1).  These young adults are strong members of the church and have been so kind to us since our arrival in Poland!
We are lucky to know both of them.

I've been working on saying "Happy New Year" in Polish....by the time

the night was over for us, I had it down..."Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!

On Saturday, the last day of the year, we had snow for the 2nd time.  It wasn't snowing when we left home, but when we came up from the Metro....what a surprise to see real snow falling again...

Our New Year's Eve celebration was going to see the "Sherlock Holmes" movie, eating out at a restaurant and having a "game night" at home...not a typical Polish style.  It's a big deal in Poland to be at a party, or out seeing the fireworks, and celebrating the arrival of the new year...but we opted for something more low key, different, and warmer than seeing fireworks in 24-degree weather at midnight.

Little did we know our challenge would be finding a place to eat after the movie! 

Here we are at a table in the bar of the Westin Hotel. This was the 5th place we tried before we actually could sit down and eat something. We did not get the word that most restaurants are closed on New Year's Eve afternoon! Boy were we surprised! 

After checking out 4 other locations, we had the idea that a hotel restaurant might just be open...the restaurant at The Westin was closed until the evening, but they let us order food from the bar.  

Someone asked us why we were surprised that the restaurants were closed. Why?...because on all of the other public holidays they are open, and this was not even a holiday!  It makes sense actually, so that restaurant workers can enjoy the day also.  We did not know about this Polish tradition....but now we will know for next year.

Here we are heading home just after we boarded a tram...it's was about 4:30 pm and you can see it is dark and cold...we were happy to be going to our warm home and bringing in the new year there.

Fireworks were going off constantly around our home, neighborhood and city...we saw on the news a lot of parties outside and throughout the city...here's a picture looking toward Warsaw's Centrum area...welcoming in the new year. 

  

January 1, 2012

Our new year began with attending church...there was hardly anyone there...we assume a lot of late-night celebrating the night before. 

After church we decided to go for a walk in the park across the street from our neighborhood. 

It's a beautiful park even in the winter...I can't believe I have never walked throughout this park before.

The park was filled with ducks in the ponds and a lot of people were walking about like us.  The temperature was 36F, and we thought, if it was 36F in Houston people would be home...where it is warm!
Here, on the other hand....there were many people walking, feeding ducks and strolling through the park...we think maybe since our winter has been so mild and we had some sun today, people  were just enjoying  the outdoors like us.

A few Polish people have given us "winter advice".... even if it is cold, get out each day and get some daylight since our daylight is only for about 7.5 hours.  So we  are trying to get outside sometime each day before the sun goes down...at 3:30 pm.

Above the park there is an old palace that is now an art museum. During the summer and fall  we could not really see it even thought it's on a hill.  But with the trees bare, it is quite easily seen...and at night it is lit up also. We decided we should come up to the museum some time and visit.

This little statue was on the top of the steps leading into the museum.

As we walked around the park, we noticed that the tops of the ponds were partially frozen...and here are ducks...quite smart resting on an old wooden pallet in the middle of the pond.

Most bushes and trees are brown and bare, but these bushes with small white balls caught our attention...they look almost like popcorn...and are really quite pretty!

The back of the museum, which is on a hill, overlooks our neighborhood...you cannot see our home, but it would be a little further to the right in the picture above.

After the park we went back to homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner.  Perfect for a winter day.

We enjoyed our 1st day of 2012.  So simple...yet so pleasant!

The year 2011 was quite eventful for us...never did we imagine all the changes that would take place.

We look forward to 2012....making goals, working to accomplish them, and enjoying life in the process.