madarsko... SOM BOLA TAM! [[hungary... I WAS THERE!]]

hey!
sorry it's been so long since the last time i posted... over a month... oops...
things have been going really well here lately.. i've been having my ups and downs with pretty much everything but my friends, but now all is on the up....... so that's good.

okay, so..
i totally went to hungary sunday night to watch hungary vs. japan in hockey with my second host parents and my current host mom and it freaking ROCKED. i got to meet some people on the team [[my second host father's cousin plays]] and my second host parents bought be a shirt from hungary and i totally got a sweet hungarian flag painted on my face..... and it rocked.
i like hockey!!!
it brought something to light for me, though, slovaks around my town HATE hungarians. i've heard before that they had some problems... slovakia was under hungarian rule for a long time and now hungary wants to take over this part of slovakia that's all little villages where most people speak only hungarain......... blah, blah, but i thought most of it was just boys being overdramatic and such, but i wore that shirt in school the next day and juraj told me that i had bad timing because some hungarian-speaking woman was attacked in western slovakia not too long ago and more than one of my friends either walked up to me and zipped up my sweatshirt or told me it should say "slovakia" or they said something like "you know slovaks hate hungarians, right?"
i didn't realize that it could be THAT bad...... i mean, i figured it was just like wisconsin and illinois... everyone knows the bears suck and FIBs can't drive, but even though we talk a lot of smack, it doesn't really mean anything.
crazy stuff...

what else...?

i've been looking into colleges here... there's a really good one in presov, the third biggest city in slovakia, and i'm working on writing an e-mail to the head of the english department to ask if i can come see it because getting into college here as a foreigner is very difficult and it's different for every school, i guess, so i have to go there and talk to the people before i can do anything else.
but presov isn't too far from where i am now... maybe an hour and a half or something...? so i should be able to get there pretty easily.
we'll see what happens...
but for any slovak school i go to, i will need to take a year-long slovak language course where it will be like a normal school day, but with nothing but slovak....... a.l.l...d.a.y.... haha.
it's okay, though, because i really like slovak..

which leads me tooooo...
my slovak is improving dramaticly.
for serious. haha.
i was just in the capitol [[capital?]] a few weeks ago and i took a test in slovak that would determine whether or not i can travel around slovakia without a rotary chaparone and though i don't have my test results back, i got an e-mail telling me how to ask for permission to travel alone........ so i think that means i passed.
WOOT!!!
and on the train ride home, i had to spend a couple hours with people who spoke absolutely no english and i was able to have a good conversation with them and it really made things click for me... and since then i've been speaking more and more in slovak and i've been getting more and more comfortable with how i can speak and it's just super cool.
and i'm totally thinking in slovak... like, to the point that when i listen to music sometimes, i translate it in my head from english to slovak and it's cool.
and, though this isn't really a good thing, TWICE today juraj showed me something and asked "čo je to po anglický?" [["what is it in english?"]] and all i could think of was the slovak word for it.
i just looked them up and i was actually TOTALLY RIGHT about one of them [[i didn't know the spine was nerves, though, i thought it was bone part. hmmm.]] but i still don't know about the other.
what's the little case thing that people put pens in? it's like, just long enough to fit a pen in, wide enough for, say, three or four pens, and it zips shut........... or maybe we don't have a name for them?
because i don't remember seeing any before i came here.
unless i did.
meh.

anyway, i don't really know what else to write about....... i'll probably think of more later, but, yeah... i've got nothing now.

ooh, there's a christmas market in town today and for the next two days... it's neat. just like a flee market... cool stuff!

ANDDDDD they have been letting me teach english classes ALONE lately... i have two classes and they aren't every day, but the kids are really cool... one group of freshman and one group of sophmores [[sp?]]. they're NEAT!
and it's cute because sometimes when i see them outside of school, they'll come up to me and talk to me in this combination of slovak/broken enlgish and we totally go back and forth like that... or with me trying to speak slovak and them trying to speak english and it's sweet. =P

anyway, that's all for now...
i hope everything's going well there!
i love you all!!!
<3