Starting work

I spent the better part of Sunday interviewing Polish kids to place them in language groups.  Sarah was playing games and doing puzzles with them.  The kids are mostly 11-13, with a few 14 year olds.  Sarah has been great with them and they seem to like her.  She is getting along well with the other TAs here.  So well, in fact, that she ate dinner this evening with them instead of me.  I'm going to have to find a new friend now that she is done with me.   I ate dinner with Tomek.  Our camp has a Polish director, responsible for the facilities, grounds, and travel arrangements; and we have an American director, responsible for the teachers and the curriculum.  Tomek is married to Grazyna, the Polish director.  He speaks decent English and serves as her translator and assistant.  He is 56 and spent 20 years as an officer in the Polish Army stationed near here.  He was a flight engineer responsible for about 20 MiG jets.  He said they never did anything.  They just trained and practiced repeatedly.  When the Cold War ended, he spent about 10 years teaching English before he ended up at this school.   *****   When Sarah and I watched Mamma Mia last week in London, I realized that the language would have been more of a concern for Sarah if it had been in American English instead of British English.  They used words like sodding, buggered, and bloody.  I didn't translate for Sarah.  I just saw an ad for the movie version of the movie.  It stars Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan in the lead roles.  It's about a woman in her early 40s and her 20-year-old daughter.  Meryl Streep hasn't been in her early forties for nearly two decades.  And at 55, Pierce Brosnan isn't much closer.   Daniel