Evgenia Ryzhkova and Ekaterina Taschilina, 3rd year students of Humanities Faculty, have studied the Polish language, literature and culture for a month at the Summer school of Silezsky University in city of Katovitz. Free of charge studying at this school was a result of the Polish representatives' invitation within the Polish Republic Senate grant.The invitation was University heads and teachers' gratitude for the attention to the Polish language and culture from Minin University philologists.
This is what the participants of the Summer school say about it:
"Quite a number of students from Humanities Faculty of Minin University choose studying Polish language and literature as an elective course. That’s why we have a unique opportunity to go to Tseshin town where the Summer school of Silez Universiry is always held. Tseshin is a wonderful town: one of its parts is situated in the Czech Republic and the other – in Poland, that’s why in evenings you can move from country to country and walk there, listen to different speech. The Polish Tseshin is a very cosy town filled with European antiquity, thus every building is a masterpiece and on Sundays you can hear lots of churches ringing bells.
The campus of Silez University is situated almost in the centre of the town, so it was a great pleasure to go there.
On the very first evening when students from 35 countries gathered together, we couldn’t even guess how close they would become to us. From the second day our studies began: we took an exam (speaking and writing) and after that we were sorted into groups. Almost every day exept Sundays we attended two seminars which made all the subjects captivating, even if it was "Cases of usage of the Subjunctive Mood” or "Comparatives of adverbs”. Each professor was ready to help and put a part of his soul in every lesson.
Also we had an opportunity to visit lectures about Polish culture and its outstanding personalities. In the evenings all the students became participants of a cultural program: they watched Polish movies, took part in linguistic games, learned how to dance national dances. Every weekend Silez University organised excursions.
On the first Sunday we went to mines of Tarnovsky Mountains, where we sailed along the mountain river and got aquainted with working conditions of Polish miners. On the same day we got to know features of the national clothing which we could also try on and learned how to dance polonaise.
On the second Sunday we visited the richest aristocratic manor called Pshchiny, after what we headed for picturesque Tatry mountains.
In the middle of the term our school organized The Evening of Nationalities, during which every country represented its culture, cuisine and other national features. That day we had a chance to try lots of interesting meals including genuine Italian pizza.
At the end of our classes the examination which set our final score for the whole period of studying was taken again. We can say that it was a success because we got 95 and 97 out of 100.
Every day and every minute of that Summer school left only warm impressions, as Tseshin had united 35 countries with studying Polish. France, Brazil, Italy, Canada, Germany, Greese, Argentina anl lots of other countries are in our hearts from then on forever.
Thanks to the Summer school in Tseshin, thanks to Minin University, thanks to everybody who took part in this journey!”