Cultural: School's OUT!

Normally Polish elementary- high schools finish the fourth Friday of the month of June.

The children/young people then get all of July and August off.

They go back to school on September 1.

I like this calendar, though, of course, I figured a full three months off would be fine as well.

Why? Around here, even though school is officially is going on in the month of June, not much school is happening, if you get my drift. They take lots of trips, watch a lot of movies, people skip a lot and so on.

This year we just had a national holiday on Thursday (yesterday), and school would normally not resume til Monday as they throw Friday in there as a day off. This would theoretically have meant that they would have 3 or 4 more days of “school” after a 2 day holiday.

Senseless.

They decided to call it quits this year on Wed. BEFORE the holiday. It makes perfect sense to me.

I believe most of the kids are delighted.

So how does it affect my life?

At this stage of my life, the biggest way it changes it is there is a lot less traffic in the mornings. If we are headed to the grocery store early - right after breakfast, we often run into school traffic on our way to get groceries at Lidl (our favorite store.)

Now we won’t have to deal with it. They don’t really have school buses - kids have to get to school—at least in our area— on their own or on regular public transportation. This means there is always a huge mess around the schools - and anywhere even remotely close to them since parents are taking their own children to school or lots of people are walking.

“lato” means summer

What do the kids do during the summer?

A lot of kids have camps - some go to as many as 2 or 3 in the summer - each often lasting 2 weeks long.

The government tends to help the poor afford to go to camp.

This page is taken from a local magazine telling about the activities in our area - at the pool, outside, and in the library as well as cultural things in July. They will take August completely “off” from the musical things.

The towns also have day camps where kids can sign up and participate in activities to keep them busy. They call these programs “Summer in the City”.

It is also very common to send kids off to relatives who live in the villages, mountains, or lake region to get them out of the city. It seems that MOST people actually leave the area to go on vacation. They are taken quite seriously here.

Otherwise, kids are kids. They get bored. They play soccer, they go swimming. They go shopping with their mom or dad. Normal things kids do.

So, this short cultural update is just to let you know that, while in the USA most people have had summer vacation for a month or so - or almost a month - our kids’ summer vacation JUST started. Now it is “summer”. not only on the calendar, but mentally as well!

Have a good one wherever you are reading this!

Hope you get to sew today!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!

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