This past weekend, I spent over twelve hours in the car driving through the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Most people are all about the destination, but I think the journey is just as fun. Especially when the journey involves two little boys who can’t sit still for twenty minutes, let alone a six and a half hour car ride. So in between videos of The Lion King and Shrek, we enjoyed some of the gorgeous scenery and were able to take in a quick Polish vocabulary lesson. With it so beautifully colorful outside, the lesson choice was easy – kolory (colors)!

Without a doubt, the two most predominant colors we saw during our drive were niebieski (blue) and zielony (green). With cold winters that leave our surroundings a dismal canvas of szary (grey), seeing lush green vegetation was a blessing! My five year old noticed right away that there were different greens, some jasne (light) and some that are ciemne (dark). Even the trawa (grass) had gradations from city to city. The sky was thankfully niebieski (blue) most of our drive out, but we did have patches where my youngest picked out each puffy biały (white) cloud in the sky. Sometimes those clouds came in a szary (grey) variety, although we were fortunate enough to avoid the rain that they threatened.

The most beautiful parts of the long stretches of freeway are the wildflowers that grow in the medians. The colors vary, ranging from soft różowy (pink) to deep fioletowy (purple). The flowers were small, but so plentiful that they seemed to fill the median in waves of color. We did see some in żółty (yellow) and a few in pomarańczowy (orange), but most of the wildflowers we saw were varying shades of różowy (pink). And they were beautiful. Looking out, and hearing my almost three year old say, “Oooooooooo, pretttttty”, you couldn’t help but be thankful for these simple things.

While we were away for a long weekend, we went to a park near Washington DC called Dinosaur Park. There, we saw many things, but from a color spectrum, most of the things we came across were shades of brązowy (brown). The park is actually a live excavation site for fossils, and we were allowed to sift through the dirt in search of our own fossil finds. We did not come across any bones, however, we did find a lot of czarny (black) lignite, which are the remnants of ancient trees that are millions of years old. So did we find any fossils? You’ll have to tune in to a future post on dinosaurs and discovery.

So, for dinner that night, with the temperatures in the upper eighties and low nineties Fahrenheit (thirty-one to thirty-three degrees Celsius), we had some homemade salsa to start. We used fresh tomatoes, which were a ripe shade of czerwony (red). To keep the colors flowing, I used zielony (green) cilantro, a zielony (green) jalapeno pepper, a fioletowy (purple) onion (purple in color but it’s called red onion in English), a żółty (yellow) pepper, biały (white) sea salt, a pinch of czarny (black) pepper and the juice and some pulp from a zielony (green) lime. On a żółty (yellow) corn chip, it was delicious!

So there’s the colorful part of my long weekend road trip. I hope the lesson was a good one for you.

Do następnego czytania…