Forks in the Trail

Situation Update - Konin, Poland

Royce:
I finished up my work in London in late October and we headed to the Middle East for a month. We toured Egypt extensively and then spent a week in Jordan and a few days in Israel before coming back to Europe to meet our friends for Thanksgiving in Milan. We spent about 10 days traveling northern Italy, Switzerland, and southern France with Tyler, Nicki and Nicki's brother, Ben. We had a great time and really enjoyed the chance to hang out with friends for a while. During this time I accepted a job as a construction engineer on a new coal fired power plant in central Poland, but did not have to start until after New Year's.

After we parted ways with the Millers, we took a quick trip to London to ship our belongings to Poland and then returned to Milan to begin a long ski trip in the Alps. We skied for 5 weeks in France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria before heading to Poland. After a few days in the company offices in Warsaw we moved to Konin, Poland where the actual construction is taking place.

Now, we have a nice townhouse in Konin and have settled in for a long term assignment. I expect that we will be here for at least 2 years. My job is somewhat strange compared to what I would normally do, but living in a small town like Konin and dealing with the difficulty of working in a high pressure environment like power plant construction while not speaking the native language is actually very interesting. The approach to construction is quite different than in the US so I think this is really going to be a learning experience for me.

April is getting us settled in better and better everyday and is learning the ins and outs of Konin while I am working. She is heading home to the US for a month to organize our lives a bit better, visit our families, and retrieve some belongings for work and hiking. We are considering purchasing a small condo in the US so that we have some sort of home and April is also going to handle some of this research while she is home.

Taking this job has certainly put our travel plans on hold but I do not see it as an end to the trip, but just an opportunity to extend the overall length of our travels and exposure to foreign culture. I have said this before and I will probably say it again - two of our four goals for this trip were to find work overseas and live in a foreign land for a significant amount of time at least twice so that we could learn a bit more about the culture and become "locals". Well, this time in Poland seems to fulfill those two goals and will give us a good chance to visit eastern Europe slowly over the next 2 years.