Phenomenal day!

What a beautiful day today! Blue, blue skies and dreamy, fluffy clouds! And less humidity than normal--absolutely clear and gorgeous!!!
One thing that being in a city like Shanghai has made me appreciate is how spread out everything is here. The skyline is not all high-rises--you can actually see sky! Even on the freeways there is more room per capita. Everything has more surface area! It's really nice to feel like you can spread out--even nicer to appreciate it after being quite packed.
But back to the fantastic day!!!! It was so clear and clean and blue. Just inspiring! You really haven't seen smog and hazy days until you've been somewhere like Shanghai and then you come back and the sky is so clean here! And we certainly have our share of pollution! But not today! What a great, glorious day!

But enough rambling on. . . I guess I would get to the substance of my blog today.

I went to my first Polish lesson this afternoon. It doesn't seem as impossible as it did the first time I looked at the alphabet. I think I have more words now in Polish than I learned in a month in China. Not bad for an hour and a half! My teacher is really neat--a native Pole--and she speaks Polish, Russian, German, and French. Oh yeah, and perfect English! Very nice. We are using the series "Colloquial Polish" and so far it is very good. If you have never heard Polish spoken it's a really pretty language with lots of "sh" sounds. Very nice! Lots of consonants!!!! I kept getting hung up on words with "szcz" in them, but it's not too bad--just like the middle part of "fre*sh ch*eese". Whew! I have a lot to learn! Tak!

Well, tomorrow is my mom's birthday! Yeah, Mom! And my folks are coming over for lunch. I think I've put together a nice menu for the occasion.

Enough for now. More adventures to come. ..