Week 17 - December 10 - This week was the start of feeling Christmas-y! My class hung up decorations and put up a Christmas tree, and Trencin even had it's first snow! on Tuesday, we had some "open doors day" so I showed up to school for one period and they let me leave. I went to Pablos house for the day and it was so beautiful! His house is so big and amazing. We got kebab and I returned home. When I got home, I got a package from my family in USA. Mostly with gifts for people in Slovakia, but it also had some bags of Goldfish!! This month, the thermal pool in Trencianske Teplice began some promotion where you can get the treatment for only 4 Euros, so we went both Tuesday and Thursday, followed by going to an amazing Italian restaurant both times after. Thursday also, at my school in Kubra I got to decorate more gingerbread cookies! By the way, sorry, I know my grammar in English is absolutely horrific, but speaking Slovak all day has really confused me. On Friday, my parents had work in Bratislava so they brought me in the morning so I could see the other exchange students. I met up with a few of them in the train station in the morning as they have to take a train everyday to school. From there we went to their school in Bratislava. It was a private bilingual school (all the classes are taught in English), and it was absolutely beautiful. Very small, but so beautiful). We all talked with eachother and had fun until they had their Slovak foreign language class, which we all went to together and played many Slovak games. Also in the class were two other American girls who live there and go to the school. Afterwards we all walked to the otherside of the river through an area of Bratislava called Petržalka which is full of communist flats. It's actually where they filmed a lot of scenes from Red Sparrow. Anyways, we went to Aupark, the big mall, and all got food and hung out together. The rest of the day we didn't have too much plans except visiting/shopping in the Christmas market and eating together in Old town. It was a nice day! The next day I went with my host family to visit my host grandma and see their new cat! It was so cute. Afterwards we drove to the city of Zilina where my parents would go to a concert at night. By the time we arrived it was already almost dark. I walked around the Christmas markets with my host family and got punč (traditional drink for Christmas markets) at the Rotary stand! Before the concert started, I met up with a Rotex named Viki, who did an exchange in California, and another Slovak boy who's going on exchange next year. We later met up with Sierra, the American girl living in that city, and her Slovak friend. We all went shopping for Christmas gifts and explored the city. At the end of the day, we went to the Mexican restaurant there, which was deffinitely more "south-west" American style, but still really good. My host parents loved meeting Sierra and drove her home. It was a beautiful city and fun night. The next day, I went with just my host parents to the Czech border to a mountain where we could go sledding. It was so cute sledding with just my host parents down a huge hill. Slovaks also have completely different sleds. They either use those really traditional wooden ones, or a really small circular piece of plastic to sit on and slide down. Also many Slovak people fill a plastic bag with hay and use that instead. The mountain was absolutely beautiful. Afterwards we went to a Czech restaurant and enjoyed the time together. I'm actually the luckiest exchange student, my host parents are the most amazing people in the whole world. Week 18 - December 17 - Monday was easy since it's the last week before Christmas break! After school, I went to a cafe with a few of my classmates and had a great time. We spent a few hours there, then met up with Valeria and her classmates in town, where we all shopped and hungout together. We ended up all going to buy kebab. It was nice having the mix between Valeria's and my classmates mix (that sentence is definitely not correct but literally, I don't speak english anymore). At around 8 o'clock me and Valeria met up with Grace, the other American girl from our Slovak class, at a cafe in town to say goodbye before she goes back to USA for 2 weeks. She ordered nachos and it was like chili flavored chips with cold salsa poured all over it haha, interesting version of nachos in Slovakia. I ended up having to leave early as my host parents came to town with ice skates so we could use the town ice skating rink together. It was just me and my mom skating but it was so cute and fun! It's so nice that the ice rink is open to the public for free, and with free rentals of skates. After, we got a sandwich and walked around the beautiful Christmas decorations in town. On Wednesday, I went with my classmates and Pablo to a cafe. We were there for a few hours and I started feeling really bad. (I've had a cold for the last two weeks, but I started feeling really hot and out of it). I went home with Pablo so we could meet Valeria and go to our Rotary Christmas party together. When we got home, I took my temperature, and had a fever. It wasn't terrible, but I had to miss the party :( They ended up texting me that our Rotary club gave us a 4 day trip to Ukraine as a Christmas present! Our Rotary club is literally the best. The next day I spend all day in bed, getting sicker and sicker and my fever kept rising. On Friday my fever continued rising until it was almost 104 (40c). They made me first take a bath in super cold water to take down the fever, until they brought me to the hospital where I got checked and put on some strong anti-biotics. They also found more blood in my urine, proving that my kidney is not functioning normally. Later I had to get wrapped in a freezing cold towel 4 TIMES. It was one of the worst things I've ever experienced and I was screaming everytime they changed the towel hahaha. On the one hand, I haven't been homesick during the holidays cause I've been to concerned with my physical health to think about back home. Even with the antibiotics and anti-fever pills, my fever didn't go down for the next two days. It was horrible. I was feeling so delusional, hallucinating at night and feeling miserable. I hadn't left the house in the last four days, except for the hospital, so on Saturday, my host mom brought me out for about 30 minutes to pick up the light from Bethlehem. Basically, since the fall of Communism, a scout from Austria goes to Bethlehem every year to pick up a candle, which they bring back to Austria. From there, Austrian scouts bring it all over Austria and to Bratislava. From Bratislava, Slovak scouts take a train all the way across Slovakia to Kosice, and at every station are more scouts waiting to pick up the light and bring it to all the towns and villages. The light spreads to other countries too! Slovak scouts meet Polish scouts at the border, who then spread the light to all churches in Poland. It's really quite cool! Anyways, so my mom brought me to the train station in Trencin where my siblings (scouts) and many other scouts were waiting to pick up the light from Bethlehem. On Sunday, the host mom of my American friend drove her to Trencin for the day to see me cause I was doing so badly. It was really nice to have a friend come visit me. My host parents love her, and all my exchange student friends so we had a great time together. I watched movies almost the whole day while my host parents put up our Christmas tree. We watched movies all day, it was fun! My fever finally went down a little and I got hungry after not eating for 4 days. My host dad brought me, my friend, and my sister to an American hamburger restaurant in Trencin and it was amazing!! It was the first time I'd started to feel better again. However, there my whole body started getting ichy. When I got home, I was itching uncontrollable and looked at my stomach and it was covered in red hives. My body was having an allergic reaction to the medicine. My mom brought me right back to the hospital where I had to have an injection to stop the spread of the reaction, and stopped taking the medicine all together. It has been a wild week. Week 19 - December 24 - In Slovakia, and almost the entire world, they don't celebrate Christmas on the 24th, but instead on the 25th. In the morning, I mentioned to my host parents how I'm sad to be away from home, cause every year me and my sisters watch the Good Luck Charlie It's Christmas movie together, and that I missed them. My parents found the movie somewhere on the internet and watched the whole thing with me. It was so cute and I love my host parents so so so much! Later in the day, my host uncle and his two daughters came over and were gonna celebrate Christmas with us. Around 5/6 o'clock, we began Christmas dinner. First, we ate oplatky, like a very thin wafer, that we put honey on. Then, we had a mushroom soup. Traditionally, its sauerkraut soup, but we were all young and probably didn't like soup, so we had mushroom instead. For the main meal, we had Kapor (carp, i think) and potato salat. Kapor is very traditional in central Europe, and many Polish, Czech and Slovak families actually keep the fish swimming in their bathtub a few days before the holiday. Anyways, Kapor is not the best tasting fish, and its FULL of tiny bones. It takes so long to eat so little cause you have to be so cautious. Potato salad is also super popular in all Eastern Europe and it's pretty good. I forgot to take a photo of the dinner table, I'm stupid, but below I'll attach an internet photo of what the foods like. After dinner, we all went outside to light sparklers and celebrate, and during this time "Ježiško" (baby Jesus) comes to the house and leaves presents for everyone. My host family is so sweet! They got me a beautiful folklore shirt, Trencin sweatshirt and a big box of Pelendreky. I gave them presents too including a framed photo of us together. I truly feel part of their family and I am forever grateful to them. The next two days I still stayed home sick, watching movies and playing Slovak version of "Clue" with my host cousins. The day after Christmas day Valeria came over to spend the night in my house since her family was going to a Folklore party. The next day we'd realized it was time to get out of the house after being home sick for over a week. I was feeling better anyway, so we took a trip to the Slovak village of Čičmany, which still preserves the old wooden village buildings with traditional patterns painted in white. We toured two buildings and walked around the beautiful town. After that, we went to a ski slope right across the town which was very tiny, but perfect for remembering how to ski (I haven't been in a few years). After we went skiing we went to my host grandparents house to spend time and eat pizza that we ordered. My host grandparents and uncle's family are so sweet and all got me presents! The next day I stayed home again to recover even more, until my host dad got home. I wanted to bring my host family out to a dinner one last time before I left, so we walked all the way to town to find the Japanese restaurant we wanted to go to was closed. Instead, we went to a pizza restaurant and still had an amazing time talking and enjoying our company. When I got home, I spent over 2 hours showing my family all over Westport on google maps streetview. The next day my family and I drove 2 hours away to a city called Nitra. There, my good American friend Haley lives and my host parents also love her. There, we visited the whole city which is quite beautiful. They have a nice castle/church with a view of the whole city. After we toured the town, we went to an American street food restaurant and I had the most amazing hamburger. After I said goodbye to my American friend, we drove straight from Nitra to a town called Dubnica to celebrate the birthday of my host cousin. There was so much family there and they were so so sweet and welcoming. They all got me presents and talked to me. Halfway through they had a whole family quiz where you had to answers questions about the family. They even included questions about me. I can't even explain how grateful I am to this family for making me feel so incredibly welcomed and part of the family. Another funny story from tonight: so my host mom is always teaching my cousins English and making them ask stuff in English to practice, and they always get kind of annoyed, but my host mom knows the importance of English. Anyways, my host mom bought them a board game called "Lets Learn English" or something, and she walked into the car showing me the board game box and said "they're gonna hate me!" It was so funny!! The next day we got up early and packed for a long trip out east. We first stopped in the city of Ruzemberok to see a tradition sheep farm with great fresh dairy products. Afterwards, we went to a huge waterpark called Bešeńová in the city of Liptovski Mikulaš for the day. The waterpark was pretty much entirely hot thermal water from the earth making all the pools really warm. There was a wave pool and bunch of waterslides. I have to say, the Slovak waterslides were definitely faster than many USA waterslides and also had no lifeguards or anything to regulate them. One of the waterslides was entirely black with a few white designs to let the sun in, making it look like a vortex hahah! It was so cool. There, they also had outdoor thermal pools that were brown from the minerals. It was so hot that we couldn't stay in for too long, but the outside air was too cold to even sit around. By the night, it started snowing and it was so cool to see the snow falling mixed with the steam from the pools in the air. It was a great day. After Bešeńová, we drove to the town and ate at an American restaurant called Route 66. We later drove all the way to the city of Poprad to sleep for the night. Our airbnb was quite nice! Week 20 - December 31 - We got up early and drove to the city of Levoča. It's a really beautiful historical town in Eastern Slovakia that my host parents knew I wanted to visit. The town was beautiful! We walked around seeing all the buildings and enjoying the architecture. We went to a museum in the house of Master Paul of Levoča, who built the highest alter-pieces in the whole world, with the absolute highest being in Levoča. We waited a little longer for the church to open and then went inside. It was very gothic and absolutely amazing. The alter-piece was huge! After Levoča, we drove to the Slovak city of Prešov. We went to the beautiful town center and cathedral which was also huge. Eastern Slovakia is truly so beautiful and has a completely different architectural style then in the West. We ate at a nice Slovak restaurant then made our way to Košice. We drove to the apartment of my friend, Joaquin. His parents and mine talked for a few hours while me and Joaquin played board games with his and my brother. Afterwards, my parents went to their Airbnb. We ate a little, then went back to the town center to meet my host family and another exchange student from Mexico. We talked around, got kebab and waited until midnight. When the new year finally came, Košice had an excellent firework show, along with many other fireworks from random people. (In Slovakia they definitely have less strict laws regarding fireworks.) There were explosions all over the entire city the whole night, it was quite an experience. We arrived home at around 2am, and went straight to sleep. The next few days I stayed in Kosice spending time with my family and Joaquins family. Since Kosice is a city, they have almost all types of food, so everyday, Joaquin and I chose a new type of food to eat since I'd been missing so many different foods. In addition, our families did many fun things, like minigolf, cinema a few times, town center of Kosice, and most importantly, LUNIK DEVAT. Lunik Devat is a neighborhood of Kosice which was given to the Slovak Gypsy population after the fall of communism. Within a year, the gypsies had completely destoryed the buildings but still live among them. Lunik Devät is infamous throughout Slovakia for being a prime example of "gypsy society" and also tension between the Gypsy and Slovak people. I have to say, it was actually quite sad to see the conditions these people live in. Every building was burned up, and mounds of garbage filled the fields. The issue with Gypsies in Slovakia is so difficult to understand cause its a cycle with so many layers. I understand the frustration of Slovak people against the gypsy population, as the government provides them with lots of money and social programs, yet so many of them refuse to work, and waste their money on alcohol. At the same time, Slovakia (and all of Europe) is definitely somewhat discriminatory against Gypsies and for sure would be harder for them to get employment or fit into society. Anyways, my last day there, all of us exchange students met up together to go eat, then I left with my family later in the day. It was quite a nice week in Eastern Slovakia. The next day was my last full day in the Vranik family before I change host families, so I stayed at home enjoy the time with them. I truly need to say thank you to the Vranik family for being the most amazing, welcoming and supportive family in the whole world. Mama, viem že to čitaš, a musim povedat' ešte raz, DAKUJEM ZA VŠETKO. Boli ste najlepša rodina, a stale, viac. Budete mi chybat'.
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AuthorNick Bilotti Archives
March 2019
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