The town I live in is far from big. It has 25,000 people in it. Almost everyone has lived here for all of their lives, and everyone knows everyone. The only foreigners living here are Mary and myself, the two native speaking English teachers that the town has.

Every time I leave my flat, no matter where I go and regardless of what time of day it is, I run into at least one of my students. It doesn’t matter if I am going for a walk down by the lake, to the center of the town, or to the supermarket. I ALWAYS run into someone that I know.

I guess that here I am considered "high profile". To me, that means that I am someone everyone knows. I teach 8 different classes, of which have 15 students each. That means that there are 120 people that know me. Plus, usually their friends and family know me (a few of my students have said to me "My friend saw you at the internet café," which, normally wouldn’t have fazed me, except that I have never seen anyone that I know at the internet café). One even said to me "My dad saw you at the photocopy shop," and I have never met her dad.

I guess the clincher of how everyone knows who I am is this..Last week I had problems accessing my email from the internet terminal at the phone company office. I told the manager, who speaks decent English, about it and she translated what I said to the lady who was in charge of the internet. The next day, I received a message from Lucja, my boss, saying that the phone company had called and for me to come in on Monday to try it again, and give more them specific information on the problem. The kicker of that is that I had never given the people at the phone company any information about myself. Not that fact that I live in this town, not where I work, etc. They just knew that I was one of the teachers at this school. I couldn’t believe it when Lucja told me about the message. She said, "There are only two people in this town that don’t speak Polish, you and Mary. Everybody knows who you are."

I am not sure if I like that or not. On one had, there is the anonymity of a big city, where you can do whatever you want and not even think about running into someone that knows you. On the other hand, in a small place, there is more of a sense of community than in a bigger place. I think I like the latter better. After all, if you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t, why would you care if others see you?