By CATHY SPAULDING
Staff writer
Plano website designer Sherry Williams recalled expecting a dramatically different culture when she went to Poland in October to teach.

What she said she found was reassuringly similar to her own life.

"I became friends with a teacher who lived in a house with no running hot water or no telephone," Williams said. "But I learned how we are so much alike as humans. They all have the same fears, same concerns."

Through the Global Volunteers international development organization, Williams spent three weeks teaching at an orphanage in the eastern Poland community of Siedlce.

Williams, who volunteers with the American Red Cross disaster action team, said she came upon the teaching possibility when she was searching the Internet.

"I was looking for volunteer webpages and I saw Global Volunteers," she said. "Their website offered so many different areas to go to."

The 15-year-old Minnesota organization links teams of volunteers with short-term human and economic development projects around the world. The service vacations tout immersion in a community's culture, language, traditions and challenges of daily life. Participants pay their own airfare, plus between $1,000 and $2,500 in fees to pay for meals, lodging, orientation and ground transportation.

The English speaking partnership in Poland began in 1990 when Rural Solidarity sought help in building democratization and free enterprise.

Williams said it took a couple of weeks to do the paperwork and go through reference screening.

"Before I left, they gave me papers on what to expect," she said.

She arrived in Poland on Oct. 7 for three days of training and language classes.

"I was so fearful of the language barrier," she recalled, adding that she had never traveled overseas before. "But I was able to communicate real well through hand signals and facial expressions."

Global Volunteers spokesman Barbara DeGroot said people in eastern Poland "rarely experience English language because few Americans visit there."

Williams and about 10 other volunteers stayed at Reymontowka, a rambling manor in the Siedlce countryside. It was the former home of Nobel Prize winning author Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont.

She said she spent nearly six hours a day helping children at a nearby orphanage with their English lessons and their studies. She also taught gymnastics and dancing.

"That's something they don't get at the orphanage," she said, adding that the facility was an eye-opener.

She said she had expected dismal conditions such as those reported at Romanian orphanages.

"But I was extremely impressed," she said. "The orphanage had worked to get nice playground equipment. There were puppies running about and milk that was sold. The children looked clean and well fed."

However, "they still needed love and attention," Williams said.

"Many of these kids had been taken away from their families because of alcoholic parents," she explained. "Every day, I was greeted with 10 kids wanting attention. I came back to the United States feeling I got more than I gave."

Her husband, Dick Williams, said he's proud of what his wife accomplished in her three weeks in Poland.

"She got 300 pictures, many from inside the orphanage," he said. "And the kids look so happy."

Global Volunteers offers service trips to Italy, Latin America, India, Romania, Africa and the United States. People wanting information may call 1-800-487-1074 or visit www.globalvolunteers.org.

Williams said her advice to anyone interested in participating is "follow your heart and just do it."

"I feel stronger now, since I went," she said. "I feel they taught me so much about myself. I'm here worrying about small things. But there, the small things don't mean anything."

Contact staff writer Cathy Spaulding at 972-424-4585, Ext. 1330.