thai, cold, partay, birthdays & definitely some incense burning

last night was fun. it was sarah's bday. i met her and erin at a thai/cantonese/japonese/sushi restaurant. i fully expected to have canned corn in whatever i ordered but to my surprise... this was actually authentic. the sign on the door did not lie. it was really thai food. i had chicken peanut curry. AMAZING! it burned the heck out of my lips but made me warm and cozy inside.

before supper, i had gone early into the city to actually buy the eyebrow ring because the store had been closed the day before. closed on a monday... that's normal... just like java cabana. i got it surprisingly quickly and then had nothing to do for about 1.5hrs in the cold. so i just walked. and walked. and walked some more. found a cool park. wandered down streets i'd never seen before and past people i'd never seen before. then realized i was going in the wrong direction. jumped a tram in the right direction. jumped another tram to get to the restaurant and went inside early to wait in the warmth instead of in the cold.

my fingers were freezing because i'd been carrying sarah's present in a bag. it was biscotti that i'd baked and i put it in a small bag i found in the office. the bag had a pretty picture on the front. i definitely carried this bag that said, "a happy world is a clean one" all around the great city of krakow.

krakow is a difficult place. every time i go into a shop or a store and i try to explain what i need in polish, the people just stare at me with a blank look. there's no attempting to understand what i might be trying to say--they just stare at me with no response. so i flop around like a fish out of water until i've tried all the phrases i know and then finally ask if they speak english. and of course they do. duh... what was i thinking? however, this doesn't really help me. sometimes when they respond to me in polish, i need them to repeat it. however, when they see that i'm not understanding, they change to english and my hopes of practicing my language skilz or lack there of are lost. needless to say, i wish for language learning purposes, that this wasn't a tourist town and that they would stop speaking to me in english.