Travel / Your best memory after visiting Poland [41]

I live in Maryland (borders Washington D.C.) and am half Black(Black, Irish, Cherokee) and Half White (Polish). My favorite memory was visiting poland for the first time and sitting on a bus. I was speaking in English to a friend that didn't speak polish and a little girl was sitting across from me saying in polish to her mother, "Wow! Is that english mama? I want to speak english to! He looks so neat, wow, can we move to America?!"

I thought it was adorable and it let me know that the poland that my mom left behind was no longer a place that reflected communism and solidarity, but a place growing and expanding and becoming a country that mirrored the values and ways of other top countries in the world.

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  in case you're wondering what my odd mix looks like! This is me.
  

Genealogy / Why are some Polish people dark complected, and others very light [511]

My grandfather's family comes from southern poland where the mongols/tartars had at one time held control. The mongols were notorious for raping and pillaging so you can imagine were alot of the slanted eyes and darker skin tones of some southern poles and their ancestors come from. My grandfather's eyes are deeply slanted and he is olive complexioned. The other thing is alot of mixing has happened through the ages with countries like Lithuania, Turkey, and Romania.

It's like anywhere in the world; people mix and the genes are immortalized in that population, when they meet up in random pairings of people in the form of an offspring they are expressed, until then they lay dormant.