Week 13 - November 13 - I woke up really early in the morning and got picked up by Valeria's host mom with Valeria and Pablo also in the car. We drove another hour and a half to the city of Martin where we had to get our medical exam for our Slovak visa. We were at the hospital for 2 hours maybe and had some ... interesting ... tests done to us. We went to the town center of Martin to eat and walk around the town. It is a small town but still quite nice! There they also have a historic village museum which we visited. It's an outdoor museum with a bunch of historical village buildings. There, I found such a cute cat and I held him for the whole time we walked around the village. I love cats. Afterwards, we went to the house of Valerias host grandma, where they ALSO had a newborn baby cat who was SO cute and fell asleep on my lap, I was dying. We left a little earlier to go visit a castle overlooking the Vah river, but once we arrived the castle was closed. Instead we drove to the city of Zilina to get Chinese food. It was a long but nice day. Thursday, my old classmate Emma brought me to her English class in another city called Nova Dubnica. The class was so fun and her teacher is the nicest woman ever! Her daughter is living in USA right now, and she understands what it's like to live away from home during high school, and she treated me just like a mom, it was so cute! The class was so fun! She bought pizza and kofola for us and bought me a bunch of presents for coming! After class, while waiting for the bus, I saw a stray cat and held it for a few minutes. When my bus came I had to put the cat back and it absolutely broke my heart that the poor kitty doesn't have a home and has to live in the cold. I love cats so much. Anyways, during this entire week I had applied to Rotary to travel to Tabor, Czech Republic cause my other New York friend invited me to a prom in her school there. The very last day I received permission and the very next morning I was on the first train to Prague. The train ride was about 5.5 hours, which was LONG, but it was no problem. Once I arrived in Prague I had to get a connecting train to Tabor and also buy a returning train ticket. Let me just say, Prague train station is extremely unorganized and the workers there were so rude and had absolutely no idea what they were doing. They kept sending me back and forth to different ticket offices to buy the ticket cause they didn't even know where I should buy the ticket. I didn't even have enough time, so some very nice Czech woman helped me find my train platform. Adjusting to hearing/speaking the Czech language took a little time, but wasn't really a problem as it is so similar to Slovak/Polish anyway. On my train to Tabor, I met a Chinese guy who spoke almost no English but had got on the wrong train. I successfully talked to random Czech people to find out his next station and buy him a new ticket and felt so proud of myself for communicating fluently in Czech! When I finally arrived in Tabor, Gabba was at the station to pick me up. I met her friends quickly, then we went to the town center to visit it. We arrived just before dusk and walked around a park at sunset. It was beautiful! There, we met up with another Brazilian exchange student and went to Gabbas house to get ready for dinner and the prom. We dressed fancy, then went to a Chinese restaurant in the center. Prom was after and was quite different than American proms. First of all, ALL students had alcohol. In front of their parents and everything. I spent the whole night with the Brazilian boy there and some Czech people I had befriended. By the end of the night, I was so sad to leave my Czech friends! We got home around 2 in the morning and went straight to sleep for Prague the next day! I was soo soo excited to finally visit Prague. Gabbas host parents drove us to a mall in outer Prague where we bought a metro ticket and went to the center. There, we met up with a Canadian and Argentinian exchange student, and left Gabbas parents. The whole day was so crazy and fun. We went to McDonalds to get cheep food and met up with another Brazilian boy there. We spent the whole day visiting all the sights, with more and more exchange students joining us. By the end of the day, we had 9 of us total, plus two Czech girls! We visited the old town square, Charles Bridge, city castle, the John Lennon wall and much more! At the John Lennon wall, we asked two American girls take a group photo of us and the girls talked and acted just like typical Connecticut suburb girls, so I asked where they're from, and of course, they're from Connecticut!!! One was from Middlebury and the other was from Fairfield!!!! We talked so long about all the restaurants in Fairfield that I miss. It's crazy what a small world it is. We got traditional Trdelník (which is actually from Slovak villages, but has become super popular in Prague. We found an American bagel place which I've missed so much. The day we happened to be there was the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution (anti-Communist Revolution) and there were HUGE anti-Russia protests over the city the whole day. During the end of the day, we were in the old town square, and protesters started pouring out from every street and alley with signs and flags! Protesters gave us tons of free pins and signs that said "demisi" which means "resignation" as the current Czech government is pretty loyal to Russia. Us exchange students started joining there chants and having so much fun! The Czech people loved us and gave us more free stuff! It was a great day. At night, we went to the Charles bridge tower which had a beautiful view of the city at night. Finally we got Italian food, then went back to the mall, to finally go home. I had an AMAZING time in Prague with all the exchange students, and Prague totally met my expectations. It's such a beautiful city. Every building is crafted so beautifully, I truly loved it. Anyways, the next day, we got up early again, so we could visit the town center of Tabor. We walked around all the BEAUTIFUL old town streets and also to the very top of the church tower which had a great view and which sold hundreds of historic pins. I bought an old communist Czech pin there! Tabor is so beautiful. We got ice cream, then when to the train station. I had an hour train to Prague, then about 3 hour "layover" in Prague, so I went back to the city by myself, just to see the beauty one more time. I probably looked like a loser carrying my suitcase alone in the city center, but there's just so much to explore in Prague! Eventually I got on my train going home for another 5.5 hours, and almost every seat was full so I had to sit next to these 3 Slovak men who obviously weren't so open to the fact that I was an American. After they heard me speaking English on the phone, they started making so many jokes about me in Slovak, which they didn't realize I understood, then started putting things in google translator and playing it out loud in English like "don't go here." It was honestly super uncomfortable, BUT, to make matters worse, I got extremely nauseous for almost the whole train. In the very last hour I went to the bathroom by myself and threw up 4 times haha! It was really depressing to be alone in the bathroom throwing up, but sometimes it really do be like that. My host parents were waiting for me at the train station and took good care of me cause, of course, I was sick again. Anyways, it was such a great trip and I had an amazing time! Week 14 - November 19 - Thanksgiving week!!! My classmates were so nice to me this week as they knew about thanksgiving and that I might be homesick. I'm truly so grateful the Slovak kids are so great with me! I was sick the first two days, but didn't do much until Thursday anyway. On Thursday, the Rotary club of Martin had a big Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of American exchange students and for Slovak Rotarians. I attended with my amazing YEO and her husband. It was so nice to see the other Americans there. They had us all give a speech about what we're thankful for, and it went great. They had 3 big turkeys there, and they were for sure the biggest turkeys I've ever seen in my entire life. They were HUGE. I've never celebrated a true Thanksgiving in USA with all my family and the traditional food, so it was kind of a "first time" for me. They made a really cute photo booth for us and we all took photos! It was a great way to celebrate Thanksgiving and I truly am so grateful. **On Friday, one of my best friends from USA was visiting Vienna and told me she'd go to Bratislava for the day so I could meet her. My host mom brought Valeria and I for the day, and I got to meet Anna, my friend!! It was so nice to see her, and so weird to see someone from home. Her whole family was there, and it was nice to see them too. We ended up just visiting tourist parts of the city. It was a great day there! I ended up talking all night with my exchange best friend Joaquin, talking about and looking forward to the whole rest of the year! ** On Saturday, the American church here in Trencin had a thanksgiving for all of us and invited me and whichever other Americans could come. My two other American friends here in Slovakia came with their family and another boy came as his dad was spending the night in Trencin for the big outbound orientation that was here. The Thanksgiving at the church was so cute and the food was AMAZING. Like the other Americans are amazing cooks. They had everything traditional: turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry jam? (I don't know how it's called) and everything else. After the dinner we played Cards Against Humanity haha! Valeria stayed that night at Pablos house but I was too sick so I went home instead :( Sunday, we all met back in town and explored Trencin for the day. We sat on the castle ledge for sunset, it was amazing! Week 15 - November 26 - I really didn't do much on Monday since I was sick at home, but by Tuesday I was already at school. Valeria and her friends invited me to the dormitory where they live so they could film a "foreigners eating Slovak snacks" video, so I walked all the way to their dorm after school. Let me explain too, Valeria goes to a special "art" school, where the focus of the high school is art. Since it's not a regular common school, majority of the students come from other cities and live in dorms during the school week. Valerias friends had bought soo much food for us, it was really generous. We took 2 hours to film the video and I was ready to throw up at the end hahah! Many Slovak chocolates contain rum or other alcohols, and the taste is just absolutely horrific. After the video filming, we hung around the dorm and visited their different rooms. It honestly looks so fun to live there, I'd love it! After we filmed the video I went to the house of my host parents friend who happened to have had a daughter who did an exchange in USA, whose city was almost the same as Westport!! We talked a lot and ended up getting American hamburgers at like 9pm haha. On Wednesday my class and Pablo's class had a school trip to Vienna and Bratislava. We invited Valeria to come with us on the trip, although she stayed the whole time with Pablo's class. We took a 2 hour long bus to Vienna and went straight to an art museum there full of Monet and other artists. After the museum we got a few hours of free time and me and 3 of my friends went to the big town hall there and the main market square. We ate traditional gulaš from a bread bowl and tried to keep warm! Vienna is a huge city, but truly beautiful! We had to leave Vienna a little early to get to Bratislava where we would see a play at the national theatre. We had an extra hour so they let us all go to the mall Eurovea. There, I texted the Bratislava exchange students to see if there was any chance they were at the mall, and they happened to be there!! I was so happy to see all of them, and they all got to meet my Slovak friends. When we arrived to the theatre no one really informed us exchange students how formal we had to be, so everyone was wearing dresses and suits while Pablo, Valeria and I looked literally homeless. The show was nice but it was all in Slovak and after 15 minutes I got so tired of following along that I fell asleep for the whole first part. During the intermission, Pablo, Valeria and I went to McDonalds to get cheap food, and ended up just staying there until the end. It was a really nice day with my school! Thursday, I was having pain peeing again, so my mom brought me back to the hospital to test my pee, and there was more blood in it, so I got put on anti-biotics again. It's the second time so far that this has happened. Another really wierd thing that happened, the woman who took the blood of me and Pablo in Martin didn't know what she was doing and accidentally punchtured through our veins giving us these huge bruises on our arms for over two weeks hahaha. Anyways, friday my family had planned to bring me to a thermal water park on the way to Poland, but since I was on antibiotics they decided it wasn't a good idea. Instead we went to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The line for the museum was too big, but we found a Slovak tour group in the camp itself and followed along with them. We got to see all the barracks, gas chambers (destoryed) and other places. We went inside a barrack of Ethnic Polish woman and children, where the conditions were so bad, people couldn't survive for more than 2 weeks in most cases. In addition, it was sooo cold outside, giving some effect to how miserable winters must have been. I also have to say how disturbed I was by the amount of people taking happy fun selfies/photos infront of Auschwitz, as if it was some cool tourist attraction. Overall, it was a really eye opening experience and I'm glad I was able to go. Afterwards, we drove straight to our apartment in Krakow and walked to the city center. Krakow is absolutely beautiful, I've longed to come back to this city for years! We walked through the market, then got dinner in a really traditional Polish restaurant, it was amazing! When we finished, I met up with my old Polish friend Magda who lives there, and some other exchange students who also live there! My host parents let us on our own and we went to go watch the Christmas tree lighting in the center, then to explore the Christmas markets. We went to a bar in the city center to eat and more exchange students, then went to the most amazing cafe! They had some special where you can buy a basket of bread and choose two different toppings on the side, so we chose white chocolate and regular chocolate. The toppings came full in a big mason jar and the white chocolate was AMAZING. We finished the bread so soon and ended up eating the entire jar of white chocolate off the spreading sticks they gave us. The exchangers in Krakow and my Polish friend were SO fun I had such an amazing time with them. My host parents are also the best in the whole and told me I can stay out longer with my friends, just to come back to the apartment at night, and they gave me the house code to get in. I really had such a great time! The next morning we had a 2 hour long free walking tour of Krakow. The tour guide was from Poznan (my region of Poland) but had grown up in England. His tour was really amazing! We started in old town, and the city gates and went all the way to Wawel castle. On the tour, I met two young Italians and started talking with them. It turns out they're Erasmus students in Warsaw together, and were there with many other Erasmus students from all over Europe. Another Italian man heard us speaking in Italian together and joined us along with his girlfriend from Turkey. My host family made fun of me for already making friends with more foreign people haha! I am truly in my element in big groups of foreigners. Anyways, towards the end of the tour, we visited Jagiellonian University which is one of the oldest and best in all of Europe. Our tour guide told us all about how powerful and advanced Poland was for it's time, which is reflected in the beauty and architecture of the whole city. The tour in someway depressed me, cause our tour guide brought light to the hundreds of years of occupation and genocide that absolutely destroyed Poland set us back hundreds of years. It was hard to see how people and strong Poland was, and to know about the modern day struggles of Poland, simply cause of how long countries fought over Poland, murdering millions and destroying everything each time. It is a very sad reality but makes me very proud to be Polish. Following the tour, we went back to the market square to get some food and souvenirs, then left Krakow for Wieliczka. Wieliczka is an old salt mining town, where the mines contain beautiful salt sculptures, chapels and many other beautiful sights. We had a 2 hour long tour, all in Polish and my brain was absolute mush. It's hard enough for me to think in Polish, let alone differentiate between Slovak and Polish languages, which are very similar. Anyways, it was beautiful to see and tour! We went to a nice restaurant after, then drove 4 hours back to Trencin for school the next morning! Week 16 - December 3 - We had Slovak lesson in the morning on Monday and Pablo brought his guitar so we could learn a Slovak Christmas song to preform for the Rotary club on Wednesday. We learned the song "Stoji Mikulaš" which is annoyingly catchy. After the lesson, we were talking together about Asian food and how much we miss it. My YEO/Slovak language teacher had just learned about a new Japanese restaurant that opened in town and decided to invite us to go! It was so fun and nice of her. Her husband came too, and we all ate so much. She is the best YEO ever!! Tuesday after school, two boys in my class invited me out to get hamburgers, so I agreed to go! We went to another new restaurant in Trencin that seemed so American! I got a pulled pork hamburger with coleslaw! It was so delicious! At night I went to the finally Rotary meeting of that year (except the Christmas party). Almost every member was there, and we all preformed Stoji Mikulas for them! On Wednesday, I gave a huge presentation to my English class about the USA and New York city. My presentation was so big it took all three hours, and we didn't even finish! After school I went to town with Pablo and Valeria for the town Christmas tree lighting and opening of the Christmas market. Every city in Slovakia has a special performance for this night including devils (which attack the back kids), angels, Saint Nicolas and even more. We didn't understand so much of what was going on but the city was so beautiful, full of people and lights. The markets were beautiful too, and we decided to go to the city tower to see the whole market from above. It was really beautiful and something that the USA really misses out on. Thursday was December 6th, Saint Nicolas day, also my names day!!! For those who don't know, in Slovakia and most of Eastern Europe, all traditional names (after saints) have a day of the year, and these days traditionally are almost as big of a day as a birthday. In addition to just my names day, on St. Nicolas's day, he puts candy in the shoes of all those who are good, and coal in the shoes of those who are bad. I woke up to a big of candy in my shoe, which means I was good haha! So many other family members and friends gave me candy today, I had so much. After school, my friend Joaquin, an Argentinian exchanger from Kosice came to Trencin to spend the night and travel with me to the Christmas Orientation the next day. *When he arrived, I gave him a quick tour of town with the daylight I had left, then my parents brought both of us to Trenciansky Teplice to go to a hot water bath. It was really fun! When we got home, Joaquin and I walked to Billa and Lidl (grocery stores) to get ingredients to make empanadas and guacamole. My host parents are so amazing and love when I have visitors. We all stayed in the kitchen together making empanadas for a little over an hour. At dinner, we ate them and my host parents gave me a Slovak shirt for my names day present. They're so sweet! Once we finished dinner, we went to our room for the night. The next morning we woke up to Pablo and Valeria walking into my house cause they had no where to go. We all packed our stuff and walked to the train station to be there at noon. We got on a train with all the other exchange students, but almost every cabin was full, so Valeria. Joaquin and I went to one of the very last cabins. There we studied Slovak together, asking questions to each other to practice. The other passangers in the cabin thought it was cute that we were learning and all started helping us out with our Slovak, correcting the grammar and giving us good words to use. They were sooo sweet! Slovak people can really be so kind. When we finally made it to Bratislava we met with Rotex and waited for more exchangers on other trains. We ended up waiting there for about 1.5 hours, so Joaquin and I got kebab, then all of us had a big dance party. Exchange students are always obnoxious, but the other commuters liked out dance party in the center of the station. When the bus got us, we went to the town center and got 3 hours of free time to explore Bratislava and the Christmas market. It was already dark when we got there, so the markets were open and beautiful! I went with joaquin and two Brazilians to get chinese food, then explore the tourist sights of the city. *We later met up with more exchange students and all studied basic Slovak together for the language test. We later went to our dormitory where we spent the night, got our rooms, ate dinner, then got ready for our language test. It was only the first part of the test, written part. It honestly wasn't hard, I knew everything except for some of the small grammar things which I had no idea. After the language test we went upstairs for curfew. The next morning we got up and got on a bus to Vienna. We first went to Schonbrunn Castle for a tour. It was a huge and beautiful castle. We got many photos there all together. After Schonbrunn, we met up with a Slovak girl living in Vienna and she gave us a huge tour of the entire city. We first went to the main square and cathedral, and we got 1.5 hours of free time for lunch. I went to a Chinese restaurant with Joaquin, Valeria, and 5 other exchangers. Everyone in the restaurant was incredibly rude to us, including the workers, but the food was great! We later continued the city tour visiting all the other sights of Vienna. We ended up at the Museum Square * and got 2 hours of free time to eat, see the Christmas market or go to a museum. Me and Joaquin first went shopping for presents for secret santa, then went to a natural history museum full of every type of animal. It was actually such a cool museum and we had a great time! When we got back to the dorm, we had dinner, then decorated gingerbread cookies (perniky) with frosting! It was really cute. We had a small talent show where people could sing or present talents that they wanted which was also cool. And finally we wrapped our secret santa presents and exchanged them in front of everyone. I got a deer keychain from Nav the Australian. The Rotex gave us an extra hour to all be together once we finished, so we all talked and hung out together, it was so cute! That night, all of the boys on my side of the dorm decided to shave a line in our eyebrow which we had done before. The Rotex ended up walking in on us and we all thought they'd be mad since we were up above curfew, but they were really nice about it and laughed at what we did. We went to sleep then, and got up for breakfast and the second part of our language test. In the second part, we each got called individually and had to answer questions to the Rotex all in Slovak. During my turn, I was called to talk with a Rotex and the exchange president of all of Slovakia which was really scary, but we had a great conversation in Slovak, and everything turned out great! Afterwards, we got a bus back to the train station, said our emotional goodbyes, and got on our trains. When we arrived in Trencin we got crepes and my American friend came over to make mac and cheese for my host parents! It was such a great weekend, I'm so grateful for Rotary organizing and paying for it.
I am so grateful to have had another amazing month full of trips and new experiences. My Slovak is getting better and so are my relationships with people. I'm so happy here and wouldn't change anything!
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AuthorNick Bilotti Archives
March 2019
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