Fire Safety in Poland

I love fire.

This is a love that I developed over my three summers working at Lutherlyn. I love creating fires out of chunks of trees that are probably too big for the fire pit with my closest friends (Merry and Jon are two of my favorite companions for this). I love bending down and blowing on the fire to get it burning and getting my hands and knees covered in ash doing this. I love making fire out of wet wood and knocking down tee-pees when they won't light. (Please note: I do make crappy tee-pee fires that don't light. This is me helping someone else.) And if the flames aren't at least four feet high, I am not interested and unimpressed. Fire is my friend. I love to create, nourish, and eventually destroy fire. I would like to share three incidents related to fire and its friends that have happened over the past two weeks.

Lighters: I am usually not an impulse buyer. In fact, I am so indecisive that shopping is often a struggle for me in America. This is alleviated somewhat in Poland because I cannot read labels, so I just buy whatever I need without worrying about the brand. Last week, while buying a chocolate bar at the corner store I saw a PANDA LIGHTER and fell in love and bought it instantaneously. A PANDA LIGHTER!!! Two of my all time favorite things in one: PANDA AND FIRE. I love my life.

Smoked Chicken: One of my goals for the year is to try a new recipe at least every two weeks. I had never had to feed myself before this year, so this task is somewhat daunting. So in order to develop my skills, broaden my scope, and have fun I have become a member on the Food Network website and I experiment. This week's recipe: Chicken Breasts in Foil. (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/chicken-breasts-in-foil-with-tomatoes-olives-and-parmesan-recipe/index.html) I was so excited! Everything was going swimmingly until the pan started to smoke. . .a lot. I opened the window and the door to try to air it out. No help. My poor asthmatic roommate was forced out by the smoke so she didn't have an attack. And the pan continued to smoke. . .a lot. The entire apartment was smoky for a solid hour and a half, and my roommate avoided it for the rest of the night.

All Saint's Fire Fighter: All Saint's Day is a very big deal in Poland. Poles travel as far as they need to in order to visit the graves of their family members leaving candles and flowers behind. On Sunday evening I decided to go to the graveyard to check it out. I leave my apartment at 5:30pm, and it is already dark outside-middle of the night dark. I am unsure if the graveyard will still be open or what else so expect. When the graveyard first comes into sight, I stop dead in my tracks and gasp. The sight of all the little candles lighting up the hillside is breathtaking. The graveyard was radiating love. I spent the next half an hour walking around the graveyard in silence. There were still many families still coming and going. I saw them hug, pray, and light their candles. It was so peaceful, and I was really enjoying the experience. Until I saw the candle that had caught its holder on fire.

This luminary was burning! And in my mind if I did nothing about this then the entire graveyard was going to burn down. My first plan was to just stand and watch it burn itself out. This was going well until it caught the luminary next to in on fire. I knew I had to do something more active at this point. I didn't know who to go to tell about this AND I do not have enough Polish to say, "Excuse me. Will you come with me to extinguish this burning luminary?" I rooted around in the dark and found a stick, and then proceeded to nudge the burning luminary off the top of grave and into the space in between the grave and its neighbor. The next few minutes were spent stirring it around, stepping on it, and eventually blowing it out like a big birthday candle. I would also like to add that several people walked past me while I was doing this and no one offered help or stopped me.

I felt awful! I was sure that I had committed a sin of some kind and that my behavior was completely inappropriate for All Saint's Day. I did not go to the graveyard thinking that I would need to be fire fighter! Now that I am a few days removed from the event, I have made peace with my actions. I decided that if there was a fire on top of one of my family member's graves that I would want someone to put it out. Wouldn't you?

Hopefully the coming days will be fire free!

Blessings,
Colleen