My first official post in my brand new blog... I hope everything and everyone is doing well in America!
Everything here is amazing.
I live with a family whose son is on exchange in Nevada right now. Both my host parents are really nice and they speak pretty good English, so they have been helping me learn Slovak. My host father likes a lot of the same 70's/80's music I do and after I got here, I played the Charlie Daniel's Band for him and he liked them a lot. Their house is pretty big... two stories and a basement. I have my own room with a little terrace that looks out into the mountains... with a couple houses slightly in the way. The family has two dogs, Orvil and Otelia... both labs, one black and one brown. [People here have good taste in dogs too, obviously.] They look different, though... they're shorter and stockier-ish, i think.
My school is close enough to my house that I can walk so I walk to school with my closest friend, who is my neighbor, and some other girls. School is pretty okay, I can't understand much, but I am trying, and i think the teachers appreciate that. I don't have to do the homework the other students do, but sometimes the teachers give me assignments like researching an American author and talking about him in front of the class, or talking about what I learned about American's entrance in WWI... and I get to say those in English, so it's not bad. There are two English teachers at my school and both of them are super nice [though one is much better in English than the other... hmmm.] and I help out in English class. Like in LUHS, the school day is set up to have 8 classes, but here if you don't have a class, you don't have a specific place to be... so we sit in the hallways, leave the school, go get lunch... or whatever. I don't have to be to school untill 9:30 on fridays because i don't have the first two classes and I get to leave early every day but Tuesday. Lunch is another thing that is different... there is no designated time for lunch. My school doesn't have a cafeteria, so we have to go to different schools or home to eat. I walk with my friends to a school that is... maybe 1/4 mile away to get lunch, since lunch is really good there. When we have lunch depends on when we have classes. If we have a break after noon, we can eat lunch at 12 or 1, if we don't have a break all day, we have to wait untill 3:30. Between classes there is about 10-15 minutes to sit and chill, which is really nice and most people bring subs and stuff to eat then... some people eat one every break, which is amazing to me since EVERYONE is super skinny. and sometimes there is even more time because teachers can be late to class or not show up... my English teacher didn't come to class today, so we got a whole hour free.
My classmates are really nice. Everyone has been helping me learn Slovak and I have been teaching some of them the English words for things, but they have a very good grasp of the language. For the first week of school, I sat next to a boy named Juraj ["ur-ee"] who I met before school started, since I hang out with his "group." There are a lot of cool names here, but his is my favorite i've hear so far. And everyone has English names... Juraj is George, Zuzka is Suzana... It's neat.
The people I have met here are a lot like my friends at home. Everyone is outgoing and fun. My favorite person I have met here so far is a kid everyone calls Kenzo. He likes all the same bands and music as me, but I especially like him because he is the only person I have ever met whose eyes are always shining, no matter what is happening, like whatever is going on at that second is the coolest thing that has ever happened to him before. It's really cool, and it makes everything seem that much more fun.
The thing that suprised me most about schools and people, though, is that there don't really seem to be any "social classes" [other than gypsies/everyone else]. No one looks at anyone else as a "geek" or "punk" or anything. The girls who would definitely be in the "popular" group in my school sit and talk to the "geeks" all the time. I think it's different because they have all been in the same class for the past three years, and most of them have known eachother since grade school. Another difference is that there are no sports in school. There are town teams, but not school teams... and when these teams have games, they sometimes travel outside the country to play, which is really cool.
There is a festival going on now in my town. It is called the "Tempus Art Festival" and it will be going on for the rest of the week. There are different acts going on every day and night, they never do the same one twice, and the actors are from 9 [i think] different countries in Europe. This is the third year of the festival, and it's really cool. I went to the first night with some friends to a dancing show... i don't really know how to explain it, because it was REALLY weird, but it was only two dancers and they did acrobatics, acting, singing... everything. it was neat.
Other than that, I have been able to go to castles, museums, a disco, and my friends' houses... a well-rounded experience. The coolest thing I have been able to do so far is to dance with gypsies, which I don't think is really highly looked-upon here, but it was amazing and fun. We went to this old town that was supposed to be like Slovakia "back in the day" and there was music playing, so we found where it was coming from and there were a bunch of gypsies dancing and singing, so my friends and I just jumped in and started dancing, it was AWESOME. Also, on one night of the festival there was a live band playing, and they closed down the town square so people could hang out and dance so my friends and I went there and "pogo-danced" [which is like moshing, but slightly less violent.] I also taught them how to do the macarana [which is probably totally spelled wrong.] because the band played it, but not all the people i was with knew what to do.
I haven't had a food yet that I didn't like at least a little and I have never been hungry... people here eat so much more than me! The best thing I've had so far though is "banan a čocolat" which is a banana, two strawberries and a piece of orange on top of fudge-stuff on a plate topped with whipped cream [and by "topped" i mean the entire plate is covered] and drizzled with chocolate. Absolutely amazing!
My rotary club doesn't have many meetings, they have only had one since I've been here. They are all really nice... we went to a nice restaurant and I got to drink coffee and try to talk to them in Slovak. It's neat, when you get coffee here, you always get a little cookie to dip in your coffee or, sometimes, a little piece of candy and whenever I go out with anyone now, without me saying anything, they give me the little cookie/candy. it's neat... definitely a sweet deal.
Speaking of Slovak... my Slovak is getting pretty good, and I can carry on short conversations with people who don't speak English. It's really funny trying to figure things out when I am with people who don't speak English or don't remember how to say some word that I don't know in Slovak... I was talking to one of my friends and he tried to tell me something about a shark, but I couldn't understand so he acted out a wave, then a person swimming away, and then moved his arms up and down and said "hum, hum" untill I understood.
So this has been a super-long blog, I will try to update as often as I can, but I'm sure nothing else will be this long. Also, if I can, I will put up all the pictures I take/get other people to take for me. Please excuse all spelling errors, because I'm sure my English will get worse as time wears on and I am way too lazy to go look things up. If you have any questions, ask away... I hope everything is going well there, please keep me up to date!
Love,
Chelsea
