AndrzejProkeszCAS

As the catalog is now available online, I decided to publish it here as well. Enjoy!

This weekend I went to the Ujazdowki Castle in Warsaw, where the RazemPamoja charity auction will take place. Together with the director of the foundation, Bartosz Przybył-Ołowski, we first unpacked the lots, checked if all are present and undamaged and then conceptualized how to arrange them in the space available. We settled for a ‘flat amphitheater’ arrangement - the viewers/ bidders were to sit in a semi-circle in front of the auction lots and the auctioneer, with architectural models by Maciej Siuda between them. When we agreed on the specific arrangement of all the works, Bartosz left to attend a meeting concerning the catalog and left me to supervise the works on the site. After some 6 hours spent on arranging and hanging the works, we were left with just 3 pieces still to place out of the 45 lots. With 9 days remaining to the event, I am confident that we will be able to overcome the technical problems and eventually place them as well.

Yesterday I co-hosted an event surrounding the book that I have written with my colleagues. About 70 people attended, to whom I am very thankful! We managed to sell some 55 books, contributing to a full (including housing, an allowance for food and such expenses and, mainly, the school fees) for one student in Kenya. I am very invigorated by this score - while many of the workings at the book were tiresome and quite difficult to manage with the normal school proceedings taking place, at least the organization of the meetings and subsequent fundraising seems rather effortless. Below you can see some pictures from the event, courtesy of Bartosz Przybył-Ołowski.

(from the left) Marcin Krupowicz (Thank you for helping us out!), Andrzej Prokesz, Franek Bielowicki, Agata Grzybowska, Bartosz Przybył-Ołowski

Today I went swimming again - I swam 1.5km and then went to the sauna for 3*10 minutes. While I am not a fan of swimming (in chlorine pools, at least), I absolutely love going to the sauna. Most people disregard this activity, saying that it is just a form of relaxation, but the effect on one’s circulatory system is just amazing.

Today I met up with Franek, Marta, and Iza to talk about promoting our book. Marta is already working on organizing a ‘book lunch’ in her school which will take place in early March, and I resolved with Franek that we will hold one in our school on March 11th (first date when Franek, Bartosz Przybył Ołowski, Agata Grzybowska and I are available in Warsaw). In the meantime, we will give copies of the book to two of our teachers and ask them to participate in the discussion with us - I believe that having an outside opinion on our product will be beneficial as we could ourselves get into too many details that won’t be understandable to our audience. 

Also, I received information that the project for which I was fundraising during the last school year is now almost complete - the works at the educational space in Mathare are pretty much done now (some pictures below, courtesy of Bartosz Przybył-Ołowski). I hope that now Bartosz will find some time to give the book to our Kenyan interlocutors and that we will receive some ‘feedback’.

Today I passed the skiing exam for my license. Now, I am qualified to teach skiing, both individually and in groups, both in Poland and abroad (well, I still need to get my plastic ID card certifying this, but this is just a formality). The course turned out to be easier than I expected; I scored very good marks on the parts of the exam related to this years’ part and much poorer (but still sufficient) on the ones that I studied a year ago. Certainly, the fact that this was my only skiing trip this year didn’t help me with the more technical parts - sometimes I was under the impression that it was only due to prior experiences, not my teaching at the courses, that I didn’t fail.

Now, having completed this feat, I am much less concentrated on anything related to activity and my actions related to this strand of CAS will probably get more spontaneous. As my father ran up into some problems with his left leg, I will likely start going to the swimming pool with him instead of roller skiing, as the latter requires having a car and getting to somewhere safe/ quiet.

Today was the first day back in school for me this year and I wanted to write a short update on our RazemPamoja-relate actions that we have undertaken during the Christmas break. Unfortunately, we are just receiving our book that we were sending to print almost a month ago - it turned out that our printing company was too busy in the runup to the pre-festivities sales season and they weren’t able to print our book in the time that we imagined that they need. This, unfortunately, means that we were not able to sell our product in the probably most efficient time. Regardless, we will start promoting our book shortly - we plan to first sell a couple of them to our closest colleagues and then organize some talks about them. I expect that the first ones will happen in early February.

Soon, Bartosz Przybył-Ołowski, the president of our foundation will be going to Kenya with Maciej Siuda, the aforementioned architect,  to supervise the construction of the educational space that we were fundraising for earlier on. The time that has past since our fundraiser wasn’t wasted though - after our journey to Kenya there have been some more consultations with the youth of Mathare as to their expectations regarding the design, and Maciej redesigned his initial plans to accommodate their opinion. Furthermore, the permission of the local authorities was granted for the project to start.

Today I played table tennis with Kacper, possibly for the last time this year. I have seen amazing progress in my skills - in everything ranging from my movement next to the table while playing to my coordination with some more difficult shots. Also, I am very thankful for Kacper’s patience with me - I honestly didn’t expect that we will be able to continue our training for such a long time and that he will bring me to such a level.