Detention

Unlike the following pictures suggest, I am not at the sea side but sitting in the school. Together with three a little bit troubled young teenagers with the most colorful ethnical roots.

The bad boys from the class disappeared for a little too long - instead of working on the project, they played football and goofed around.

But they are not all bad, they are just lazy like all 16-year-olds.

But they need to feel consequences. They got detention, all other students went home, I stayed with the boys to work after class.

I told them I can stay with them here till midnight. Which is a lie.

They told me they could stay till midnight as well which was a lie too.

They had to write a text in German which means a torture considering the colorful ethnical roots, the hormons when you are 16 and the sunny weather.

But because the work needed to be done and we had to get through it, I just sit here and look at my pictures from Denmark 2007.

When you stand on the northern edge of Germany and it feels like it's the end of the world here, you must be in Flensburg.

Just make another step and you fall to the other side of the fjord of Flensburg, which allready is Denmark.

Denmark is detention for the soul.

Go there if you are stressed...

...or overworked...

...or overfacebooked...

...or you have got too many detentions.

The three punished boys were working faster all of the sudden, as soon as they got the idea, that they will be staying till midnight here.

The text they wrote needed some improvement.

We talked about the text. We reformulated the sentences.

We didn't have an appriopriate ending.

The text was a bout a school conflict between two boys they have observed in course of the day. The story was as following:

During a school break, a boy attacked another boy and as soon as the teacher got between, the rowdy got away.

The teacher could only hear the first name of the aggressor. The name was Turkish. Every third boy in the school is named like that. That is why the rowdy has not been found in the end.

The boys from my class started arguing about teachers who are overextended and that more teachers should be hired at this school. The other boy disagreed asking whether having more teachers in the school would really change anything.

And this is how we finished the text: by asking exactly this question.

The boys went home happy for staying only one hour longer in the class.

And I am happy too, because I am having an appointment with a friend now...we are going to have a Döner!

Crazy squirrel

Is this guy really trying to scratch his nose?!

Ukrainian wedding, step 6

The march from the city hall to the church gives everybody a necessary break. There is time for the wedding couple to goof around. They are in between now - already legally married but the main act is yet to come.

Groom's father makes the necessary calls, updating people in charge of particular phases of the day.

It is a time for the photographers to make the shots of the couple, shots that are the wedding must haves. The beautiful postcard-like picture of the couple...

...and the various and obligatory family constellations.

You can easily guess what the babushkas are doing in the meantime. They are chanting and the orchestra accompanying the whole procession gives them an extra fire.

The wedding couple gets slown down by the photographer who clicks himself into the eternity with his camera. The whole procession becomes a pedestrian traffic jam. To solve the entertainment problem in the stop-and-go situation, the orchestra starts playing traditional dancing music and encourages the people to dance. Babushkas burst into the dancing modus immediately.

The coulisse to the entire scene is the Pond of Tarnopil. It is an artificial lake on the river Seret, an affluent of Dniestr.

While babushkas are doing their job to entertain the wedding procession, the bride uses the moment to disappear aside. 

It is time for the make up check. Some one has apparently distracted the wedding photographer efficiently.

It could have been the other wedding society heading into the opposite direction.

They are also wearing traditional dresses. 

After cordialities between the both processions have been exchanged, the focus returned on the wedding couple. 

The extended photo session gives the babushkas opportunity to take care of important details which need to be arranged before entering the church.

The Rutchnik needs to get folded in order to frame the holy icons. 

Both mothers help the young couple handle the task.

While the decoration of the holy pictures seems to be completed, the father still sticks to his cell phone. Temperature rising...

My friends have Great Tits...

It is not what you are thinking, people!

Honestly, I have just died when I found out how the birds are called in English.

My friends have a house outside of Cracow and there is a lot of wild and half-domesticated nature coming to their place. Because they are good people. There are many cats who regularly thank them for the delicious meals by arranging dead mice in file on the door mate. 

The great tits thank my friends by singing which is much more pleasant I guess.

According to what I was able to find out, the upper bird is the girl, you can apparently tell it from the size of the black stripe going from the beak downwards.