Many Polish people move to a new country in search of a new life - an easier life. They choose rich European countries like Germany, Spain - most choose Great Britain or Ireland.
There are many reasons why all those people go abroad and all those people are different. Some of them are young and well educated and some are just ordinary people with families. They have one big aim - to earn money, more money than they could earn in Poland and live like normal people do, without struggling and having to choose between food or bills.
In my country there is a myth that in the UK life is better and easier, so we migrate in search of a better future. I came to Great Britain in 2005 with my husband-to-be. Our goal was to save money for our wedding and improve our English.
We chose Wrexham because we had friends here and we knew that we could count on their help. As far as I am concerned that's the way most of the almost 8,000 Polish people came to this town in Wales. It is a never-ending chain. People in Poland leave everything: bed, paid job, home, family, wife and children, friends. After a couple of months or one year they feel very lonely, because their life is not a proper life. They work overtime to send money to Poland, most of them do not speak English very well, they share accommodation with strangers to make it cheaper.
So they have two ways - either they can go back to Poland with all the money they saved here and face the grey reality from which they have run away - or they can ask their family to come to Wrexham, to enlarge the Polish minority. This is the way this chain is getting longer and longer.
Although we live in one big country called Europe, there are still 'small-big' cultural differences between nations. Why am I using an oxymoron? Because, to be honest those differences are really small, but there are so many of them, that it makes a huge problem in communication and understanding between the Polish and British cultures.
I will give you an example: the phrase 'I know'. Polish people use it really often instead of saying 'I see' or 'I understand' when somebody is showing them how to do something. Personally I know people who've been fired because of this misunderstanding. There are two reasons why we Polish say 'I know'.
First - if you use, let's say English as a second language, and you are not fluent in it, you always translate exactly from your mother tongue, so in the Polish language the easiest way of showing that you understand what somebody is showing you is to say 'I know'.
Secondly in Poland when you start a new job, it's not appropriate to tell a new employer that you do not know something. Besides nobody will show you what to do, you have to watch your colleagues, because if you ask you may lose your job.
Another main difference is the typical English question 'How are you?' and 99 per cent of the time, the answer will be 'I'm fine, thank you', even if yo''ve just buried your family, your house is on fire and you got fired!
If it's wrong we Polish will say it straight away without any extra nice sentences. British people think we are always miserable but, believe me, we are not.
And, one more thing, Poland is not like Siberia. There are no white bears running on the streets. We have a proper winter, true white snow and low temperatures but we also have a really hot summer. It is about 28 - 30 degrees.
Another think that differs us from citizens of the United Kingdom is the education system. In Poland before pupils start their lessons, teachers put more pressure on general education, like world history or geography, so before coming to Britain we know something about this country and culture.
That is the reason why we feel treated like people from a third world country, because most British people know nothing about Poland, lots of them do not even know our capital city.
I think it is really important to have open minds - I mean both Polish and British people - and try to understand and get to know more about each other. 
Weblog: Wrexham
