Posts

New Volunteer!

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Cześć and halløj! I’m Nora, the new volunteer at the library of Pomiechówek. “New” should be emphasized here, considering I’ve only been in town for a week and a half. And yet, I’ve already fallen in love with this place that I’m to call home for the next year. While Copenhagen truly is wonderful, there is a unique charm to Pomiechówek that can’t be found where I come from. I first stumbled upon it after my 18-hour bus ride (or rather, 17 hours and 50 minutes. But you’ll have to forgive my sleep-addled mind for not keeping better track). Here I was, brand new to Warsaw, and a volunteer from Stowarzyszenie Promocji Wolontariatu (SPW) was ready to help me with getting on the right train, actually buying the ticket and not just select it in the app, and—bravest of all—carrying my oversized luggage.  This kindness was not just a nice beginning, but seemingly the most positive of omens for what life in Poland has been like so far. My mentors have taught me about the village and how eve...
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Tips to be sustainable in Poland

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I am approaching the end of my volunteering experience and I wanted to come back to something that is really important to me: how to be sustainable and careful of our carbon footprint while traveling, more specifically here in Poland.  It goes without saying that we are facing a challenge that is far bigger than any of us, that is impacting absolutely everyone and yet not in an equal way. The fight against climate change is an absolute necessity if we want to remain under the 2°C of rise in temperature and therefore limit the effects of it. So here are a few tips for future volunteers interested in sustainability but also for anyone reading this.  Reduce your meat consumption or how to eat vegetarian/vegan One of the biggest positive impact you can have is by reducing your meat consumption or even stopping it altogether. Being myself a vegetarian, I was nicely surprised to discover how easy it was to be a vegetarian in Poland. You can find vegetarian options almost everywhere,...
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Happy Women's Day !

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 For  International Women's Day (or rather International Day for Women's Rights), I have created posters for the library to put the spotlight on the work of female writers. Indeed, when talking about the literature of different countries, we are usually more familiar with male writers rather than female writers when their works are as significant as their male counterparts'.  For this reason, I chose female writers from around the world and from different times. Some of them need no introduction, as is the case for Agatha Christie also known as the "Queen of Crime" but also Jane Austen, whose books have been adapted in films and series a large number of times.  Others are reknown for their feminist writings, sharing a glimpse of what it means to be a woman. With their strong political opinions, they fought in their own times against prejudices and for women's rights. For this, I could name Simone de Beauvoir, George Sand and Olympe de Gouges.  However, the fem...
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Could the English language actually be French?

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  If some of you are familiar with the English and French language, you might have discovered some ressemblance between the two, most likely in our vocabulary. You might have guessed that this is not a coincidence and you would be right: the ressemblances between those two languages did not happen by accident but are the results of their common history and the meeting of different tribes and people.  Just as every language, the English language has been shaped by the combination of different dialects throughout History, the main ones being Latin and Germanic languages, spoken in the British isles after German tribes decided to settle there. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes invaded Britain in the 5th century [1]. The Angles gave their name to England (in French  Angleterre - literally land of the Angle) and together with the Saxons, gave a name to the "anglo-saxon" people. With the Jutes, they participated in shaping what is now called Old English. However, in 1066, En...
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Alert: new volunteer at the library

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 Bonjour ! Hi, I am Adèle, the new volunteer working in the library. I am from France, from a small village in Brittany next to Fougères. Fougères is a very nice medieval city with one of the largest medieval fortress in Europe. I have lived there for 18 years before moving for my studies, first in Caen in Normandy and then in Lyon, the third biggest city in France. I have studied political sciences for three years there and started a master in international affairs. I am currently taking a gap year before going back to finish my studies, when I will specialise myself in development, project management and international cooperation. Apart from my studies, I am also a musician: I have played clarinet for many years, taking part to different orchestras but also choirs, as I started singing when I was 9. For me, nothing beats the feeling I get when I start playing my instrument after a long time. I just love feeling the air going through the clarinet while playing and the instrument v...
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Polish and the Origin of European Languages

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     Polish and the Origin of European Languages Have you ever wondered where does your language come from? Why do we speak so many different languages in Europe? Why are European languages so similar to one another, but at the same time W hy are others too different from the rest? And most importantly, who were the first ones to start speaking? Well, the answers to these questions were already solved in the eighteenth century by the British linguist and researcher William Jones, who during a visit to India noticed similarities between Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and other European languages such as the Celtic varieties spoken in Great Britain and Ireland. He collected his research in the edited volume The Sanskrit Language , in which he developed a comparative analysis that led him to find a common root in almost all European languages. This is how the term Indo-European was born, which designates a primitive language that was the origin of modern languages that goes from ...
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New volunteer in Pomiechówek!

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Hi, it's Sara! ¡Hola! I'm Sara, the Spanish volunteer working in Pomiechówek's library this year. I come from a little city in the south of Spain called Badajoz. My town is on the border with Portugal so it is common to see Portuguese people in my city. Actually, you can cross the border walking haha. However, for the last five years, I moved to another town in the North, called Salamanca, where I studied English literature and linguistics and recently finished my master's in English culture and literature. Since I was little I've always had a passion for good stories. I especially enjoyed reading about myths and legends from different cultures. One of my favourite books as a child was a collection of volumes about Greek mythology. I think that was the beginning of all.  I like to think that my passion for folklore comes from the fact that I was born on the 31st of October, the night of Halloween. That is why I usually refer to myself as a Scorpio by soul because I...
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