Jello there! Jasmin here again. This time I’m sweating like hell. The temperatures are reaching Croatian levels and I hate(Love) it! At school all exams finished. Things chilled down. Zero pressure left. We’re all looking for a cold lake/river to cool ourselves down. Unfortunately the only thing close to Zielona Góra are swimming pools and some lakes that nobody wants to submerge their bodies in. The closest things are a small river called Bóbr and lakes that are at least 30km away. Me and some friends chose to go to lake Dąbie (engl. Oak). I’ve chosen to go there with my bike. There were several reasons to that decision. One reason being me getting back into my biking shape, other being me exploring the region. I’ve pointed the destination on my map, clicked on the route planning button and started the trip. The fastest way was using the main road which can be quite dangerous for some people. For me it was a boring choice. I went with this biking trail that went through villages and forests and oh boy was that a great choice. I saw a pretty cool military museum in Drzonów.
I also got lost! And it was the best thing that could happen to me on that trip! I took a wrong turn and I ended up in a forest with a lot of crossroads. When I checked the map I saw that I took a wrong turn right after I passed Drzonów. I saw on the map that both roads can lead to the same destination so I decided to just go for it. I ended up discovering 2 amazing places, one being a lake and the other being a huuge meadow with an oak path through the middle of it. Check it out in the pictures.
It took me around 2,5 hours to reach the lake. Not bad for a first try going long distance. I took a dip in the lake and enjoyed my prize. As the evening was coming closer I got an invitation to attend a żużel game (engl. Speedway). It will start in 3 hours. Damn! I’ve calculated it all in my head. It’ll probably take me the same time to come back. I’ll be slower because of fatigue, but still faster because I know the road now. I don’t have to stop and check if I’m on the right track. I’ve also remembered about that recommended path that I missed the first time. Maybe if I take that, I’ll be faster. So I departed, came to the intersection where the two paths diverge and took the recommended new path. Oh my days, it was horrible. It was going through the lumberjack road and that means the floor will be soft sand. I was sooooo angry with that. Tired and sweaty from pedaling, anxious because I could be late. I couldn’t find a way to bike through it, and I didn’t want to go back to take the other path. It was too late. I decided to go through. I was thinking about the proverb “If you cannot change the situation, change the way you think about it”. I was trying to stroll through the forest and enjoy the scenery, enjoy the beautiful day that was behind me. If I reach Zielona Góra before the match, cool. If not, whatever. There will be more chances. So it happens I arrived on time. We reached the stadium just as the first lap started. And I might say, it was beautiful. On TV it wasn’t that impressive but live it was something else. I could feel the vibration of the engines, the tires and the crowd cheering. I could smell the methanol in the air. I could feel the speed of them as my neck turned swiftly from looking left to looking right. I loved it. There were around 10 000 people on the grandstand. The atmosphere was beautiful.
At school we started closing up the year, cleaning the house and doing random projects. My favorite one was painting in the forest. One of the crew members used plastic stretch foil and wrapped it around the trees in the backyard. It was very lighthearted and I liked it because we spent more time being outside in nature.
Climbing classes are still going nicely. After covering their flexibility goals and what they should do to achieve them, we could turn to complementary exercises to climbing. I chose handstands as a good complement because it is a pushing exercise and it strengthens the muscles required to raise the hands up. In climbing it’s the opposite, where they try to close the arms so the body will stay closer to the wall.
Yoga had a big change. We moved outside! It became warm enough not to freeze in the last shavasanna lying dead man pose. I found a good grass field when I went to a free yoga class one Saturday as a part of “Zielony Czerwiec” where every Saturday at 10am someone else holds their class of yoga to the public. Anyone can come. It was very peaceful that Saturday. No cars passing nearby, the birds are chirping, and the sun just started properly shining. My yoga class was different in one very important aspect. It wasn’t in the morning at 10am but at 6pm. It turns out that mosquitoes wake up then and people like to fly their drones just when our yoga class happens. It was comically unfortunate. Luckily I was “raised” in that kind of yoga environment where on one side of your gym you can hear basketball players, on the other there are people playing ping pong, and on the third site you can hear angry grunts of weight lifters as they throw the bar to the ground. If I could hold my inner peace in that environment, they can do it with the drone flying around.
At the end of the month, the kids got their yearly “diplomas”. In this case they got a personalized “thank you and good luck” diploma. We all gathered around the back of the house and each of the crew members would read one by one those specialized letters. I was also one of them. At first I wanted to decline because my Polish reading skills are not as developed as speaking and listening skills but I decided to give it a go. In the end, there was nothing to worry about. I did… OK. 🙂 It was quite an emotional ceremony. A perfect closure for an intense year.
Summer starts and until September, there is no more school. There’s still work to be done, and the crew also organized several more weeks in July for kids who want to continue hanging out for a bit longer. I’m getting my vacation and I can slowly start preparing for the job hunt I’m planning in August. First stop of the vacation, visiting friends in Warsaw where I had a surprising meeting with someone I didn’t expect. Find out more about it in the next installment!