The Great World Cleaning

Below there is a description of how to spend the day with your class in a nice and useful way.

On one of the days of 2001 The Great World Cleaning took place. Many students spent that day cleaning the streets of Nowy Sacz. But our class tutor, professor Tadusz Ogorzałek, had a different idea. He offered us a trip linked with the cleaning of Grodzisko Island, called popularly the Monkey Island, which is placed on Rożnowskie Lake. Formally the island is a teritory belonging to Gródek n/Dunajcem village.

We left Nowy Sacz in the morning and got there at about nine o'clock. The day was beautiful and warm, the sun was shining nicely and there were no clouds in the sky.

First, we cleaned the beach and the areas near the lake. And there was a lot of garbage! It was easy to notice, that people who visit the lake tend to be careless and lazy, as there was a lot of bins. We collected a few bags of rubbish.

After that we were split into two parts. One group stayed on land, and the other went to the island on a motorboat. They came back glad, happy and rather not tired, because their side of island was much less dirty than the other side and the beach.

Menawhile, the representation of the local press and TV arrived. When the other group came back, our proffessor gave them an interview, which could be seen on the local television. And then, our group went to clean Grodzisko Island.

Well, we collected much more garbage than the others. Everyone was working really hard and no one knows, if it was because of the ideology of our work, the severe look of our professor, or maybe because even more severe eye of the camera? A moment later, squat bags of garbage were lying on the bottom of the motorboat and our whole group went to the top of the island's hill, where a few centuries ago there used to be a castle. Nowadays, there are only a few stones of its walls. The view wasn't really nice and I thing it was quite saddening, because it shows a building, which used to be a symbol of power and force once, and now it's all ruined.

During the day, we collected several big bags of waste. The number of them makes us think about many things, especially about the future of the Earth, if we continue to treat our planet like that, leaving so much garbage. We were really surprised by the quantity of garbage left by the tourists on the beach and the area near the lake. We had no idea there would be so much rubbish made by a man.

After coming back we made a bonfire. It was really huge and we couldn't clome closer to it, because it was very hot. So instead of sitting by the fire we had a meeting with local youth. The atmosphere during the meeting was really nice and everybody wished we could stay there longer.

It was a pity that we had to go back home, but our professor was relentless and stubborlny claimed that the school principal told us to be back before three o'clock.

All in all, almost everyone liked this form of the Cleaning much more than the traditional way - walking along dirty, smoked, dusted streets, cleaning the streets of cigarette stubs, empty beer bottles and much, much more. I recommend this way of the Cleaning of The World to all teachers. It is a very good way to make the Cleaning more enjoyable and really useful.