Talk forty five.
Charleston, South Carolina, 19th marca
- The name of the dance comes from the city, doesn’t it?
- Yes, it does. But it wasn’t invented here. The music was created by a Broadway composer!
- We danced our Charleston dance in the car on the highway in a storm just after entering South Carolina. It was not fun because the visibility dropped to zero!
- A powerful storm which became a hurricane in an another area, destroyed several buildings. We learned about it from the TV after arriving at the hotel in Charleston,
- It was raining for a few hours, but we enjoyed our walk around the city at midnight, anyway. After returning to the hotel, it turned out that the hurricane destroyed the antenna and we didn’t have the Internet ...
- Look, how dependent on the Internet we have become!
- I think it’s you who has. You sit every day at the netbook and type in texts into our travel blog.
- I don’t do it not every day, though. Considering the pace of our itinerary, and frequent changes of the hotels, I can’t do it as regularly. But I try to be reliable and provide information about us on regular basis. The most time consuming is the loading of the pictures and that's why sometimes I do it late at night.
- I’m usually fast asleep then.
- I don’t mind it. I feel a little bit addicted to the contact with the world, and most importantly, thanks to these entries and then the feedback from the family and friends, I don’t feel so far away from home. I’m not nostalgic or anything like that.
- I don’t feel anything like that, either. The thought that just in a month we’ll be back in Poland, makes me sad. I could go on like that for another half a year…
- Don’t you have enough of that constant packing the bags, loading and unloading the car? Doing the same things day in day out?
- A little boring, but one can get used to it.
- We would’ve been more comfortable in a camper, but campers are more difficult to mover around cities.
- Some people have a second car at the back of the camper.
- The others have a few bikes at the back and a boat on the roof rack.
- Some campers are so big that they look like a three- room flat with a kitchen and bathroom.
- Because they do have them. For some retired Americans it’s a lifestyle. They have no permanent home. They live in those campers following good weather. In Florida, I saw registration plates of Alaska and vice versa.
- In Arizona, I saw many campers immobilized in the Indian villages.
- They are so-called houses on wheels, although they’re not mobile. Many people reside in such homes. Colonies of such trailers can be seen in every state and are quite often in not very interesting places. Certainly they are not wealthy people who live in them.
- Mostly the unemployed ...
- In the southern states which are often hit by hurricanes, trailers colonies are usually exposed to damage, because they can only hold to the wind!
- The elegant city of Charleston has never seen such trailers.
- Surely, they are far away from the centre, on the outskirts of the city. There also must be the poor and without work here... I must’ve read somewhere that in 1989 the hurricane Hugo caused great damage to the city.
- The number of those “mobile homes” in the U.S. is going to grow, after many Americans lost their houses in the crisis which started in August, 2008.
- You can hardly see any crisis in this beautiful and rich city of Charleston[3].
- Charleston is a good choice to start exploring the cities of the South. I really like it here.
- From now on, we’ll have a problem: which U.S. city should win our sympathy. With each place, the question arises: Is it the one? Is that the place which captivated us the most? Don’t you think that Charleston is close to winning? This is a very beautiful city and we feel fine in it!
- It’s not the end of the day yet. There’s a lot of America in front of us!
- As you know, I’m impressed with the flowered windows and small gardens well taken care of right in front of the houses, in the city centre.
- I don’t mind the flowers.
- Your exceptional sensitivity to flowers is well known.
- The colour-blind are like that!
- But you can tell the difference between the colours of those thousands of azaleas[4] bushes all over the city, can’t you?
- Yes, I can see some.
- All the guide-books say that the South of the U.S. should be explored in March. We happened to be here at the right time! We can admire those impressive azaleas whose some shrubs are of a size of small houses. They are all in bloom right now.
- I wouldn’t be able to name all these colours, but I can see that they differ from one another, and there are a lot of them.
- There aren’t as many colours in “our” Zakopane and its vicinity which we visiited in August.
- In 2000, after the trip to Zakopane our holidays were over...
- Another school year, as it at first looked like, started with a big bang. We had many students, and we had to employ more office help. Marcin and Uncle got part time jobs for a few hours a day.
- Introducing Alek’s "mafia" to PROGRESS was probably not a good idea.
- Nothing bad had happened. But I didn’t notice the moment when all my friends began to think that the only reason why PROGRESS existed was providing them with jobs and income.
- So, as usual, it was all about money!
- No, not only. As they looked at it, PROGRESS, should just be functioning so that, under no circumstances, none of them would lose their jobs.
- So my appearance in the school was a real threat to them!
- It must’ve been received that way by them, as they quite openly showed their resentment.
- What did I threaten them with?
- With your beauty.
- Don’t kid me.
- Full of enthusiasm, beginning a new life with you, I thought that my friends would also be glad to see me happy. I believed, that they understood you’d become a part of my life, and therefore a part of PROGRESS as well.
- And they disappointed you in the matter, didn’t they?
- Not right away. When you joined the school, I told Alek, the accountant, to introduce you to the intricacies of the job because you might take it over when Alek decides to look for another job, giving him a chance of professional development.
- He was overqualified for PROGRESS as he’d completed postgraduate studies and became a licensed tax consultant.
- Talking to him I emphasized that the change could happen in a year or two.
- What was his reaction?
- None. He showed understanding. Nevertheless, he attacked me only a few months later. During a difficult time for the school when we needed still more people to work, Alek approached me to let me know that he’d felt fired or threatened losing his job. So, he had to look for another job. As a result, he had to leave the position immediately, and so did his friends.
- Because he got a job in Warszawa.
- Exactly. But he felt like blaming me for his abandoning work at PROGRESS! It turned out that it was I who was disloyal taking his job and giving it to you!
- He’d never gained my confidence.
- Anyway, I have my own views on the inspiration induced by Marcin, not Alek. It was Marcin who’d bug Alek to ask me for pay rises. It was Marcin who had to leave Szczecin for Warszawa, as he’d found medical internship there as an anesthesiologist ...
- Marcin? Always smiling and seemingly friendly to everyone and a friend of so many people!?
- Seemingly!
- Did you hint Alek about it?
- I was so shocked that I didn’t say anything. Literally nothing. I only said that he was right to make his own choices.
- They left Szczecin convinced that you hurt them very much, and I was the main culprit!
- We’ve never seen them since!
- I've never missed the acquaintance.
[1] Charleston South Carolina
[2] Azalea Festival
[3] Charleston South Carolina
[4] Azalea Festival
