One Semester in Europe

It has been almost 6 months since the day I moved my life to Poznan, Poland. It is hard to believe but I think I have settled in and I feel like tackling the next several years here might just be possible. As I have said in blogs before success here would not be possible without the fantastic network of friends I have. "I get by with a little help from my friends", truer words have never been spoken. We only have one more exam until our first semester is finally done, so right now things are pretty slow (the last couple weeks were insane though) aside from studying for this last one.

Polish has been one of the more challenging classes for me. I realized that once we began more difficult courses like histology and anatomy, polish becomes very low on the priority list. We only have polish class once a week and its tough to really get a handle on it when we only have it this often. However, the language barrier is much easier to cope with now!

Reflection on the school as a whole thus far is as follows. You have to be patient and you have to be motivated to succeed. I have had several people express interest to me in studying dentistry at this school and I hope that this blog I started will give these people a better idea of what to expect. I have no regrets whatsoever about coming here and I think it was the right decision for me in the end. If ever I feel down, upset, frustrated etc (and these feelings do come up) I give my head a shake and tell myself "I'm studying dentistry in Europe, what an incredible opportunity, get over it". You have to be able to teach yourself a lot of material, you have to maintain your moral compass, you have to remind yourself exactly why you are here and most importantly, you have to adapt to a completely new lifestyle academically and socially. The toughest thing for me so far was the realization that this is NOT Canada. How we do things in Canada is not how they do most things here, meaning that what might seem logical and rational to you is not necessarily shared by people here. This is where your patience is tested. So for you east coast folk thinking about taking the leap, keep the above in mind and also keep in mind that this is only my opinion and may not necessarily be yours. Poznan University of Medical Sciences

Dentistry Building (Many classes are here)

Collaegium Maius (Biophysics is held here)

Ok, now time to talk about the future. In approximately 2 1/2 weeks I will embark on the trip of my young life. Zermatt, Switzerland aka the picture on the Toblerone chocolate bar, will be tackled by Ben Quinn (Shout out) and myself. There is currently 81 inches of snow there, it is the highest altitude in Switzerland and is thought to be the best place in the world to ski or snowboard although many may argue Whistler to be in this conversation as well. Here are some shots:

We leave on February 17th from Poznan at 8:00pm. We get into Zurich, Switz at 10:55pm and will sleep in the Zurich airport until bright and early on the 18th at 5am when we will hop on a train to take us the 3 hour journey from Zurich to Zermatt. Once we get there we will drop our stuff off at the apartment we have for the week and immediately hit the slopes. There is approx 350km of piste (trails) and an enormous amount of back country riding (rocks and tress but the best snow exists off the trail). Zermatt is neat because it borders another small village in Italy and you can actually snowboard into the Italian resort attached to Zermatt. They are both part of the EU so we wont have to stop mid run at the border and show our passports (that was a joke...). I have been saying how excited I am to do this and as the time gets closer I get more and more anxious to do this. Cannot wait!

Lastly, Hi to everyone back home, miss you guys everyday and hope everything is A1. Shout out to Mom and Dad.

Apologies go out to certain people, I make mistakes like everyone else.

Leaving you guys with a crazy dunk from the NBA last night. Despite my hatred for basketball, this is awesome:

Bye Guys, Thank you for reading! Peace, Love and all that good stuff.