Nadzieja( Polish for Hope)

Chapter 28:2008

   The new year 2008, kicked off with January in which the children come back to school on the 3rd of January, Charles also gave everyone a calendar for the new year. Nothing to special happened there except for the fact that Viraj and Hannah Freeman got interested by Harry Potter.

In early February, Fabina, Alejandra and Tomek celebrated their birthdays, Tomek even got a new laptop for his birthday.

On the 29th of February, something very special happened that day, As Przemysław and his friends were entering the bus, Przemysław saw that his friend Chris was wearing his black coat and but also special blue trousers with yellow stripes and was carrying a bucket, he then wondered what is Chris hiding in the bucket. Things would soon, be revealed once they got class as Chris took of his coat revealing an elegant blue blazer with yellow stripes and handing, he then opened the bucket he was holding and started handing sweets to everyone and shouting in cheerful voice "Happy leap year everyone" to everyone. Tomek then ask what is the occasion and Chris then says "Did any of you grew up with leap day William like I did" everyone replies by either shanking their head or simply saying "No". "You are all missing out, leap day William is a being that shows up once every 4 years to trade human tears into sweets and give everyone an extra day in February. An extra day to do fun things like going to the cinema, eating special foods or go swimming. I mean this day only appears once every 4 years and events like Christmas, birthdays and Halloween are every year, so why can't this day be special". After some time to think everyone agreed that it is nice to have a special extra day. After Chris finished handing the sweets everyone got back to learning, however Tomek and Viraj decided find out extra facts about leap years. So, when the children finished their lesson and started their journey home everyone was talking back and forth about the facts of leap years like "did you know you are more likely to be born with an extra figure than you are to be born on a leap day" or "Did you know that years divisible by 100 like 1900 and 1800 are not leap years but years divisible by 400 like 2000 and 1600 are". Back at home the Nadzieja group celebrated the leap year at the cinema of the mansion and later in the mansion's jacuzzi located in its waterpark.

As Przemysław sat in the jacuzzi, he wondered how will his and his friends' lives look like when the next leap year which was going to be 2012 arrives. As a lot can happen in just one year let alone 4. He even asked his friends about it and even they also began wondering about, as they were asking each other this question, Przemysław who was sitting in the jacuzzi with Chris, Viraj, and his cousin, closed he his eyes as he was deep in thought and concentration, but then he suddenly felt those strong surges of energy just like he did in the September 2007 dinner, surges of energy were emanating from many directions but Przemysław before opening eyes his managed to find out one of the strong surges of energy was emanating from Chris, the other from Viraj another was from Tomek. After that everyone went to bed still wondering about the whole question and the 2 recent energy surges that have happened to him.

In early March, Przemysław, Tomek and Sabin started watching the cartoon Spectacular Spiderman which, as the name suggest it was, absolutely spectacular as words just couldn't describe it. Unfortunately, the series was cancelled after just 2 seasons. Also on the 24th of March, Sabin celebrated her seventh birthday.

On the 24th of July, the orphans started their summer holiday and Charles announces to everyone that they are going to Paris, France tomorrow, everyone was excited about. Everyone was preparing their clothes and things they were going to need for the trip. The next day everyone was ready to go to Luton, airport. It took them 45 minutes to get past the security but by that time it was now 11:45 am. The gang had to wait around 20 minutes for the gate to be revealed so during that time some of the group including Przemysław decided to use the toilet. Once Przemysław came out of the toilet, a few second later he noticed that Sabin came out of the same toilet, seeing her friend's confusion Sabin pointed to a sign on the, which showed it was the women's bathroom, both Przemysław and Sabin had a right laugh at the whole situation.

Finally, after a few minutes the gate was revealed and everyone want on the board the plane. The plane took of at 12:10 and the journey to Paris took less than 2 hours. The gang then settled in a hotel in Paris which had a swimming pool and decent rooms with a bathroom and a TV each. Przemysław shared his room with Tomek and Cezary, Viraj shared his hotel room with Jake and Kevin, Chris shared his room with, Morgen and Sabin shared her room with Hannah, Fabina and Alejandra.

Charles decided that today wasn't going to be a day of visiting Paris attractions like the Eiffel tower, Disneyland and the Louvre. But instead, a day of rest and trying out food. So, at 7pm Charles organised everyone to eat in a fancy 5-star French restaurant. At the restaurant they ate all kinds of strange foods like snail, and frog leg soup which had side order of brie and baguettes. After dinner everyone went to their rooms. Przemysław and Tomek decided to watch some TV but unfortunately all the channels except for BBC News were in French, so they could only watch BBC News and from the news Tomek and Przemysław were told that the Olympic torch is now close to Beijing, China which was going to mark the beginning of the 2008 summer Olympics in China which is going to start sometime in early, August. They also founded out that John McCain and Barrack Obama were in lead on who was going to become the next US president this November. But besides those 2 things, nothing much was happening in the news.

Charles and everyone for 5 days visited and got souvenirs from many popular French attractions like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Disneyland. Kevin even bought himself a pair of Mickey Mouse ears and said "Look at me, I'm a mascot for an evil corporation" which everyone laughed at. Soon the 30th of July, Charles announce that they are going to visit, Egypt. Egypt was pretty much the same as France which was visiting many popular attractions, eating popular foods and getting souvenirs before returning to their home in London on the 5th of August.

The rest of the summer holiday was spent on visiting popular British attractions like Snowdonia, for about a week and watching, the Summer Olympic which started on the 8th of August in Beijing, China. The rest of the summer holiday our heroes spend it at home, doing things like playing games and watching movies and TV series. They even watch closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on the 24th of August during which the next Summer Olympics was announced to be in London in the 2012 this got everyone excited for it as they lived near London.

In on the 2nd of September, the summer holiday had ended and everyone went back to School, happy to learn what they want to learn and gain new skills like cooking and money management. On the 29th of September, the US had an economic crisis called the Stock market crash which lost the US a lot of money and this crisis later on affected the whole world, which caused things like inflations to happen. September was also the month in which Przemysław and Tomek began watching Batman: The Brave and Bold cartoon.

In October, Przemysław, Kevin and Tomek began watching the Clone Wars tv show, an animated series set in the events of the Clone Wars era of Star Wars. The Series got Przemysław interested into Star Wars so much so that, Przemysław got dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi from the TV show for the orphanage's Halloween costume party, meanwhile, his cousin Tomek got dressed as Anakin Skywalker. Sadly the series would get cancelled after season 6 in 2013

On the 4th of November, Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th president of the US.

In December everyone celebrated Christmas and New Year's Eve, as everyone celebrated their first full year at the orphanage and the new upcoming year of 2009. They all then started remembering the events of the entire year.