Our first 24 hours

We had to go upstairs to an office to get our student ids and our one roll of toilet paper for the month. Yes, one roll. Toilet paper in Poland is a luxury and what they supplied us was more like crepe paper. In fact, I cut off a strip and put it into my journal. We were to carry this one roll of toilet paper each time we went to the toilets. There would be no toilet in there lest we should forget. And towards the end of the month when the rolls were gone, we would find magazines and newspapers left in the toilets. Fortunately, I never had use them.We settled in a bit and had to go to dinner. The Polish students took us to Old Town for pizza. Well, what they think pizza is. It was a dark sort of charming restaurant in the original city walls. The pizza, well, it could best be described as belgium waffle with ketchup and a spot of cheese. Pizza happens to be one of my favorite foods and this was an extreme disappointment. The next morning the Polish students brought us breakfast. Hard dry bread covered with ketchup, cheese and olives. And tonic water with the flavor of the month which happened to be lemon lime. Have I mentioned that I hate ketchup and olives?On to university where we meet our professors and more students. The Polytechnic is in a large old building with large studios full of life. Several of the students knew me by name. I guess they had been previous exchange students.Lunch time came and we were starved. We walked through the snow to a cafe. It smelled good inside and warm. We saw a man eating at the counter and we wanted what he was having. Even though the students' english was great, not everything is easy to translate. Our meals came and we happily dug in to what we thought would be pieces of chicken and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. I took one bite and knew it was not chicken meat. And if I had not been so hungry after 2 days of airline meals, Polish pizza and breakfast, I would never eat those chicken livers. But they weren't bad, the potatoes were real and the gravy was good. Lori and Teré were not so open minded and would barely touch their potatoes let alone the chicken livers. Needless to say, they bitched and moaned the rest of the day.