The McDonald Family Adventures: The House and School

In April I came to Krakow a second time with Mike to visit schools and housing options. We arrived on a Thursday, it's a very early flight from Dublin (7:30 am, which got us into Krakow around 11:30 - flight is just under 3 hours but Krakow is one hour ahead of Dublin). There were two options for English-speaking schools here, the British school right in city center (BISC), and the International (American) school about 10 miles outside of the city (ISK). I had been reading about the schools online and we were leaning towards the BISC mainly because of it's location - we didn't want to have to deal with a long drive out into the countryside to get the kids to school. We found out there was a school 'bus' (a shuttle service and each shuttle takes about 7-8 kids) to and from the ISK, but of course I was paranoid about the kids not being in car seats, and someone else driving my kids everyday, especially during the snowy winters.

Our first appointment was with the BISC that Thursday afternoon. The person we met with was nice and the school was decent, but it was in a very old building and it looked like a NYC public school. I asked about whether the kids would learn Polish and was told that they used to offer it as a language option but they stopped - which I thought was odd.

front of British school

the street

The following morning we had an appointment at the ISK. It took about 20 minutes to get there and it was a big building behind a security gate. We met with the Admissions Director along with with one of the teachers (who is also head of the Middle School) and another parent. People were really friendly and seemed very interested in us. We took a tour around the school and within 10 minutes I knew I wanted to send the kids there - it just felt more comfortable and I was really thinking of Jack and how he would feel, because for some reason I thought he would feel uncomfortable/overwhelmed/scared? at the British school. We met Ava's teacher for next year, a young guy named Mr. Morgan. I wasn't sure how Ava would take it when we told her she would have a man as a teacher - over the years she has always preferred having women, we had her in swimming lessons with a guy up at the gym and after several wasted lessons of Ava crying and refusing to get into the pool, she eventually told me she didn't want to take lessons with a boy anymore so we took her out. We stayed at the school for about an hour and then left to go see some housing options.

ISK

We first went to an apartment in city center - the building was kind of old but it was really nice and modern inside. The parking situation out front reminded me of my days in Southie, and the tram was right outside below the living room window. The woman living in the apartment was home so we talked to her a bit and eventually she told us that having the tram right outside was awful and some days she couldn't even open the window. We had decided the place was too small anyway (and of course, no closets anywhere in the place!)

The rest of the day we saw two more apartments in the city - one was HUGE but it hadn't been touched since the 70's - there were awful orange and purple shag carpets and it just felt dirty. We really liked the other apartment, it was two floors with 4 (or 5?) bedrooms and a couple of closets. We looked at a few houses in the area near the school but we decided that it was just too far away from civilization - we would definitely need two cars (Mike's temporary office is about halfway between city center and the school) and I would feel too isolated being home on my own all day (school hours are 8:30 - 3:30 - what will I do with myself?? I secretly can't wait....). We then ventured closer to the city to a neighborhood called Wola Justowska, which is supposedly one of the nicer neighborhoods and where a lot of expats live. We saw an apartment or two there, and a couple of houses. I liked one more than the others, but when I first stepped inside I thought it felt like something out of Goodfellas - lots of gold fixtures, bad gaudy wallpaper, ugly black marble in the bathrooms, and even a bidet. It was a good sized house and the backyard was really nice. By this point it was about 6pm so we were exhausted from having been out all day so the relocation guy who had been driving us around dropped us back at the hotel and we wrapped the day up with a nice dinner of Polish beer and pierogies : )

When we got back to Dublin we completed the applications for the ISK and then kept going back and forth on where to live - do we live right in the city to be near all the action, or do we live in the 'burbs so we can have a bigger house and a backyard?? It was really a tough decision (the pollution played a big part, I'll get into that later) but we eventually decided on the 'burbs and we chose the Goodfellas house in Wola J. Here are some pictures from the realtors website: