(upbeat music)
- Good morning (indistinct) from Warsaw, Poland.
It's eight o'clock here and it's still pretty dark out.
My name is Daria.
I'm 25 years old.
I'm from Staten Island, New York.
And I've been living and teaching here
for about four months now.
So back in June of 2020,
I started my online classes with ITA.
To get my TEFL certificate, I finished in August,
that following May of 21, I graduated with my bachelor's
and then in August of 21,
I was on a flight to Warsaw
with a job and apartment already secured.
So really fast, I feel like.
So now I'm just gonna talk about like the boring stuff
kind of get that out of the way in the morning.
So I came here on a tourist visa.
I know that's a question that's asked a lot
and I'm in the process of getting my residency card now,
I'll know if I'm approved or not by March.
But I really recommend not doing it this way,
it's very stressful.
You only have like a week window to like mail
all of these documents in and I mean,
you can do it, I'm doing it but,
if you can, just get your work visa at home,
I feel like the stress here while you're working and stuff
like it's just not necessary.
And if you can avoid it, I would do so.
Also in the next slide,
I'm gonna have a breakdown of what everything costs
plus my salary.
And I'm gonna do that with both PLN and U.S. dollars.
So you can kind of see like what I'm talking about.
So before the apartment tour,
I wanna talk about like the rest of the day and stuff,
but first a little bit about my kids.
I teach 13, three-year-olds.
It's a very fun job.
Days fly by, I don't feel like I'm at work.
You know, like you're working an eight, nine hour shift
and by halfway through it, you're like, oh my God,
I feel like I've been here all day,
I can't wait to go home.
I don't get that feeling.
Days fly, it's fun.
I love them.
They're all really cute.
And it's, the best part is having them like come in, right?
'Cause I started at the beginning of the school year.
So they come in, not speaking any English and very shy
and like scared of me almost
because they're like, what is this lady?
What is she saying?
Like, what's going on?
And now they're like communicating with me
and having full blown conversations with me.
And it's really rewarding.
And it happens really fast and I'm very proud of them.
Unfortunately, I can't show anything about my school,
but I can show the work that we're doing.
So I will show you guys like the craft we do today.
We're working on like a winter show.
So maybe I'll record them singing for you, if you guys care,
I can do that.
Not them, but like, so you can hear them.
What else?
After the apartment tour is gonna be a questions box.
So you could ask questions throughout the day.
I won't get back to them until way later.
Probably not until like nine, 10 o'clock at night
because I gotta work at six, then I have a date
and then I'll come home and answer the questions.
So, or maybe even on my walk to the decks,
it's like a half hour walk.
So we'll see, we'll see what the day breaks, but yeah,
I will get to them eventually,
just probably not until way later.
But yeah, it will get to them eventually.
Just probably not until way later.
Okay, now for the fun part.
So I'm standing at my front door across is the bathroom,
we'll get to that in a minute.
To our right, we have my very messy drying station.
'cause Europe doesn't have dryers as we know.
Then even more to the right is my kitchen,
not a ton of storage,
but a decent amount of counter space
to like prep and everything.
Vitamin C, sorry, I should have put that away.
Then we have the table,
the chair that I throw all my stuff on.
And the chair that I sit in because I barely use the table
to be honest with you,
I'll show you what outside looks like too.
So yeah.
Then we come obviously to the bathroom, which I really like.
I have a stand-in shower, a towel warmer bathtub,
washing machine with a mop pad on it.
A lot of counter space, me, and then you come in here
and this is the bedroom, okay.
Let's talk about these two dressers.
The other day, I had all my clothes in them,
I'm making dinner and I hear a loud crash
and both dressers collapsed at the same time.
It was so weird.
So ignore that, I can't push the drawers in.
I'm not this messy usually.
And the landlord is replacing them.
So then I have another drying rack, big lamp,
my bed, my nightstand.
And then these two giant closets
that all my clothes are in now.
And there's so much space in here,
in this one I have like three suitcases and a vacuum.
And in this one is all my clothes.
Then we come this way and here's the balcony.
So the balcony is a mess, it's raining.
It needs to be mopped.
Yeah.
And the furniture is old, need new furniture,
but I won't do that until it starts getting warm again.
But this is where I sat like all day pretty much
when I first got here.
Okay, I really hope that you can hear me.
So I did not find my job on my own.
I'm actually employed through a company called
English Wizards and they pretty much everything for me.
They found my job,
they helped me find my apartment and everything like that.
The interview process was relatively easy.
I interviewed twice with English Wizards
and then twice with the school that I work at.
I did demo teach for English Wizards,
no introduction, video or anything like that though.
And the demo teaching was easy, it was like a (indistinct).
They're not friendly,
But I prefer that because I'm not either
to be honest with you.
So yeah,
but it's easy to make friends
with like your coworkers and stuff,
but strangers are not gonna talk to you
if they don't have to.
- So I have a bachelor's degree.
I majored in English and I minored in writing.
So not related to ESL really.
And my understanding is you could have a bachelor's
in anything as long as you have one
and you'll get hired with the TEFL certificate.
The transition was pretty easy.
Every culture shock I've experienced has been positive.
The biggest one that comes to mind is that women jog alone
at night all the time.
When I first saw that, I was like, oh, like, are they okay?
But they are, they're safe, it's fine.
This was my biggest concern as well.
When I was ready to leave, for me, it's been work.
I don't know if I just got lucky,
but every single one of my coworkers are fantastic.
And I go out with them almost every weekend.
Like I love.
This question made me laugh.
It's the same, men are men anywhere you go, unfortunately,
but these men get offended
when you try to pay for half the date,
they're like, what do you think, I can't afford it?
They get insulted so,
good news is every date you go on will be free.
Okay, that's all from me.
This has been fun.
I switched shifts with my coworker.
So now I have to open the preschool,
so I gotta be up at five.
So I'm gonna make dinner, take a shower, have some wine
and go to sleep.
I'm gonna leave my Instagram tag here
if you have any more questions or whatever,
I'll always answer, that was corny, but yeah.
Okay, have a happy weekend.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah,
happy, very, very early Eid, all that good stuff.
Okay, bye.
(upbeat music)