Day 4: It's Quiet, Too Quiet

Amigos:

Today was the second day of working with the kids. So far, shit has been very chill and interesting. As Splye noted, we are working outside of Krakow at this youth club for at risk chidrenz. As soon as you get a half mile outside of Krakow, the scenery completely changes. Krakow is essentially a medieval city with a bunch of old, pastel buildings that are bunched up on half asphalt half cobblestone streets. Yet as soon as you leave the city limits, low lying buildings and churches turn into rolling hills, marshes and open pasture. It's very green there, a lot like the American Northwest. There are a few houses here and there, but by and large it's just farmland.

The kids that we are working with are pretty fucking hilarious. Our job is essentially to show these kids what the rest of the world is like. Because they are generally poor, most of them will apparently never leave an area within five square miles of the place they were born. Definitely weird to think about when I just travelled like 7,000 miles--I'm a lucky SOB. None the less, the kids are high spirited. The philosophy of the youth center is to let them basically do whatever they want, as long as they're not blowing lines, beating their wives, drinking antifreeze, etc. It makes sense, these kids don't want to be regulated with an orderly schedule, it makes them feel like they're in school. Like SP said, they spend most of their time playing this weird online game called Tibia. The best way I can describe it is a mix of Zelda and Oregon Trail, vs other people. I tried to explain that the Tibia is a bone in your leg, but the kids just kept saying "ladybomb" or some shit back to me in Polish. None of them speak English, and the few that do can only say shit like, "I like a sport, you american, I am grandpa." So basically, I have a license to say whatever I want to them, because frankly, they cant understand me. Today, one of the bully kids pulled my chair out from under me when I sat down. I got punked, and since I'm ultra competitive and fairly childish, I told him that I could steal his lunch money and throw him down a well and he wouldn't be able to get me because I would simply go back to the US and they would not extradite me. He smiled and high fived me. USA 1, Gypsy Polak 0.

The kids are great though, they love us. We shoot the shit with them all day, barely understanding each other but we are def communicating in a weird way. We also play this crude form of Rugby, where MoneSplye basically runs down a field with a small football, tossing it back and forth while these little polaks try to tackle us. It's tight cuz they make me feel like Godzilla, reigning down a fiery terror of athletic dominance. I learned that the ball fake is strictly an American phenomenon--more on this later. Some of them are stupidly athletic--as SP said there's this one kid who we call Ocho Cinco who was crazy hands and probably a 40" vertical....he's only 12. I want to get him on a workout routine and nutrition plan and bring him back to the US, rename him Hancock Shuttlesworth and get him signed in the NFL or NBA. He would def fit in my suitcase--I never have to work again (ladies--this means I will be loaded and able to supply you with caviar, diamond studded Fiji Water Bottles, and paintings for our house like that Monet water lillies and the Mona Lisa).

We went out last night to some sketchy bar that is frequented by Polaks and drank weak beer. We warmed up with some $9/ a handle Polish vodka which went down smooth and didn't quit. After that we hit this bar where beer was 90 cents and they were blaring 80s music I never heard before. Suddenly, this song came on. Think about the combination of cheap beer, polish vodka, and this song from Scarface. Needless to say, I was told I could be doing the shopping cart dance, which looks something like this. Anyway--shit is going down in krakow.

I've started rushing all these young, poor polish kids into aepi. They said they heard it was a sick frat. I asked if they liked Carnival or Anything But Clothes more, and they just high fived me. word.

lakers in 6, Magic in 7 --> lakers in 5....
peace out, keep checkin every two days for updates, pics comin soon....

B