We’re here in Krakow for the summer to help with the the war effort and to help Ukranian refugees. I saw this protest in support of Ukraine in the big square in Old Town this evening.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hcqCMxtoA
We’ve had two really good breakfasts the past two days. My breakfast yesterday made me laugh. The menu said pancake tacos. What the hell is a pancake taco? I had to know so I ordered them. I LOL’d when they were brought to the table. They really do make tacos out of pancakes and they were heavenly. They take a pancake, put a piece of bacon on top, then some scrambled egs, then melted cheese, then tobasco sauce, then fold it up like a taco. 
Yesterday we stopped by Challenging Hope house, the shelter for refugees we had helped out at the other day, to see if they needed any help and they did. My daughter helped organize a classroom, I helped put away a delivery of donations, and my husband built a bunkbed. In addition my daughter and I helped deliver several table and chair sets to rooms. All in all we were there working about 7 hours yesterday.
You can donate to them through their website. You can also send money to me and I promise to give it directly to them if you ask me to. My Venmo is @TravelTeachRead and here is my GoFundMe.
They have it set up dorm style. There are anywhere from 3-10 people sharing a room. Families stay together, but other than that the people didn’t know each other before moving in. The room is about the size of a small hotel room. Of course, the room with ten people is bigger.
Food is delivered daily.
One person has an adorable Yorkie that really needs a haircut. I took a break to play with her.
We’re also working with Team Krakow who sends shipments of supplies across the border into Ukraine.
We took today off. I’ve done a lot of volunteer work in my life from animal shelters to rape crisis to adult literacy and more and I know burnout comes quick and easy if you don’t pace yourself. We’ll work 4-5 days a week and take the others off. We did a lot of walking around the city today.
I had a ridiculously touristy drink. Apple juice, Polish vodka, and cinnamon. And if it looks huge, that’s not angling, it was huge. I was peeing all afternoon because of that damn thing.
We also found this cute coffee shop and decided coffee just isn’t Krakow’s thing. We’ve been here a week and have yet to have even one coffee we thought was any good. I’m a coffe snob, there’s no doubt, but I can slum it. I don’t even drink coffee everyday, that’s why when I do drink coffee I want it to be good coffee. We just *cannot* find a good coffee here. We’ve been to “the best” coffee places in town and the coffee is no good. So we’ve decided Krakow simply is not where you go for good coffee. That’s okay. Istanbul is not where you go for good beer either. Anway, as I was saying, we found this really cute coffee shop. It’s all set up for knitters.
Something really cool happened. My phone rang. That never happens. It was our friend Jorge! Jorge was a Couchsurfer we hosted years ago when we lived in China and we became good friends with. He lives in Prague, he read we’re in Krakow for a month and he’s coming to see us! He’ll be here on Friday! We visited him in Prague a few years ago and he’s already supposed to visit us in Almaty in a few months.
I’m so excited about that! Some of our other good friends we’ve met through traveling live here in Krakow so they’ll get to meet each other! We met them while standing in line at a national park in China. They just happened to speak English and we speak English so we started talking, and that was that, here we are 9 years later best of friends.
If anyone else is reading this: we’re in Krakow until August 18th! Come on over! We’d love to see you! But I’m going to put you to work. I’ll drag you to a shelter or a warehouse with me.
Picture of last night’s dinner an dthe kid waiting for dinner. We had baos.
And tonight’s dinner. We had Indian. Their menu was set up like no Indian menu I had ever seen before and I loved it. They had 12 different styles of sauces to choose from and they told you the ingredients of each. You picked your sauce then picked your meat. It was great! We love Indian food in my family. We eat a lot of it.
