april 18th, part 5 (finale)

after their stroll, i invited chad to ride with us in michal's car. he was happy to change cars as the previous driver hit is brake very often and hard not unlike many people back home we know.

once chad hopped in the front seat, he commented on how grateful he was that this car had ac because the other car didn't. michal laughed and politely turned the air on. i grinned to myself wishing i had been able to warn chad before saying something like that. if he had only known that people around here don't use their ac as much as we do then maybe he wouldn't have blurted that out in a moment of relief. either way, we had wonderful ac during our ride back which was a nice change so maybe it was best that he didn't know after all.

i hung out in the conference room where chad was doing his training. i took my boots off and propped my wimpy tired legs and feet up in the chair next to me. this entire office building has a room where everyone takes their shoes off and walks around the office wearing socks or house slippers. it felt like home.

i was finally getting comfy when chad's co-worker/trainee, pawel (pa-vo), started talking about us leaving for krakow tomorrow. tomorrow? what about work, this was only thursday. that meant train tickets, hotel stay, bus, and metro. how could we figure out what to do and where to go. chad didn't go with me today (when i used the subway) and i don't remember what to do. i began to panic!

he basically made the arrangements and told us we were leaving tomorrow. the plan was to follow pawel to the real (re-ale), the store we had just walked a mile to yesterday, and purchase a phone card there so we could communicate with him if we needed to. we also needed more zloty to cover the train tickets and the tours they want us to go on. certain places require cash only in zloty and sometimes it needs to be exact!

i told chad that i would let him go with pawel, but that i would head back to the hotel because i needed to pack and could not travel by foot anymore today. i felt like my feet had already fallen off and i was only left with old pirate peg-legs to hobble back to the hotel with. i'm positive that's how i looked during my long walk home.

as i passed a bus stop, pawel kinda laughed. he told chad i could have taken the bus. the ticket she got earlier today was still valid.
(we didn't understand the significance of that statement until a few days later)
i, of course, didn't hear him say that and it wouldn't have mattered if i had because i was not instructed on how to use the buses just yet, since michal drove me to the subway and back earlier.

once chad finally made it back from the store, we quickly realized that we would not have enough zloty to last us for our trip. that unfortunately meant chad would have to walk all the way back to change more money because he wasn't carrying enough on him during his recent visit. before we left on our trip, people back home told us it was best to keep our money in different places while we were traveling. i guess this piece of advice sort of backfired on us today.

this was heartbreaking for me because chad had just made the trip once yesterday, once today, and now he was going to have to go back again tonight before our trip tomorrow morning. 

like a trooper, he made it there and back in no time. after entering our room, he completely stripped off all his clothes and laid out on the bed. he was one sweaty man with lots of zloty!