The way I remember it, I finished teaching in Golden Gate on Tuesday, flew back to Britain on Wednesday and by Monday I was a policeman. That was December 2007. On February 25th 2019, after more than ten years in the police, I’ll be a teacher at Golden Gate again. The school is very dear to my heart. Golden Gate brought me to Tarnowskie Gory, one night in TG I met the girl from Ohio who became Mrs Williams and now we have a little daughter, Zosia. I know I’m a Gorol but I feel like I’m coming home.
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There are places I'll remember
All my life,
Though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all
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In Galeria in May this year, that being 2015, current Golden Gate Native Speaker Ben Sixsmith and I performed a beautiful acoustic song by Green Day called Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life). We performed it acoustically. Did we perform it beautifully? I don’t really care. We played it as well as we could and we did so in honour of Alina Myszka – an English Native Speaker from 2005 to 2006 and, really, the last female Native Speaker who ever had an impact at Golden Gate. She unfortunately died in April but isn’t forgotten.
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Matt's Home Truths
In 2005 I wanted to teach English in Poland. I chose Poland because my grandfather was from Mazury, but really it wasn’t important which part of the country I went to. I put my CV on the international teaching website and had job offers from places I had never even heard of, like Tarnowskie Gory. I played email tennis with Golden Gate owner Rafal Drewniak for a few weeks and we spoke on the phone once or twice and, after consideration, he convinced this Gorol to come to Silesia and work for him.
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If I ask a Pole a question and they answer ‘no’ I have to think – are they answering me ‘no’ in English, which means ‘no’, or are they answering me ‘no’ in Polish…which means ‘yes’? If they answer ‘nie’ I have to make sure I have heard them correctly because ‘nie’ sounds very much like ‘yeah’. Of course ‘nie’ means ‘no’ in Polish and ‘yeah’ means ‘yeah’ in English. Are you confused? I was. The title of this piece of writing is using ’No’ in the Polish way – Is Polish difficult? Too right it is. It is an absolute nightmare.
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