Okay I know I suck and I haven't written nearly enough in a long time. Time is going by way too fast here in Slovakia and I find myself busy all the time, so I started focusing just on writing in my personal journal, but I'm gonna keep up with my blog again. Since I have so much to write about, I'm gonna write some main overview of the last two months. Week 10 - October 23 - I went with my class on a university field trip to Brno, Czech Republic. There, in some convention center they had tons of universities all displaying information and free stuff! I got so many free pins and small items for my blazer. I spent the whole time with my two friends Sarah and Monika who both want to study medicine. After we talked to the universities they're interested in, we had time to explore other places, many of which had fun activities like holding animals or virtual reality. At the end I went to a stand for some exchange student program and I met a new Canadian and Kazakh woman. We got some cool photos there and met a lot of Czech people who asked me about New York City and why I was there. The next day was a normal day of school, and I left early as usual to go teach at the school I help in Kubra. If you've read my other blog posts, you'll remember a story about a girls school that all held signs up to the window asking me about where I was from. Well, while I was waiting at the bus stop, they were there again with signs asking me more! I wrote them a sign back telling my Instagram, and a bunch of them followed me and asked questions like "is it true that you're an American?" It was really cute! That night, me and Valeria went for the first time to a Christian youth group in Trencin that was run by Americans and Canadians. They invited us for a night so we could meet everyone and have a good time. It was actually cool to meet my first Americans in Trencin, and they were all such generous people. Friday, instead of going to school, I went with my host dad, uncle and sister to a forest about an hour away from my house. There, we spent about four hours in the forest picking mushrooms. My host dad and uncle are so smart and knew about almost every type of mushroom there, which ones to pick, and which ones to leave. By the end of the day, we had about 5 baskets full of mushrooms. That night, I brought Valeria with my classmate to see another hockey game for Dukla Trencin. Once we got home, we went straight to sleep as we had a trip the next day to Slovenia! Saturday morning we got up really early and Valeria and I took a train with my Rotary counselors wife and his two children. There we met Ziga, my counselor and we began our drive to Slovenia. We stopped at a really fun restaurant somewhere in Austria with a huge slide and lots of candy. Once we finally arrived in Slovenia, we went straight to a restaurant to meet with Zigas dad. His dad is as crazy and fun as he is and spoke very good English. There, they bought us so many different food plates to try, I was so full. In addition, they gave us the Slovene version of Coca Cola, called "Cockta." It had a vanilla taste and was soo good! At the restaurant, Ziga's dad accidentally spilled a whole glass of wine on me which was super funny and actually made my white shirt look better. After the restaurant, we went to the home of Ziga's parents were they welcomed us with more Slovene food! About an hour later we went to our apartment near the center of town and walked to a bar to meet the friends of my Rotary counselor. From there we walked to the city football stadium to watch a soccer game. It was Maribor vs Ljubljana, the top two clubs in the country. It was one of the first professional soccer games I'd ever seen and it was crazy. The Slovene people were SOOO into it, with flares and chants and everything. Sadly, Maribor lost, but it was still a great time. Afterwards, Valeria, Lina and I went to the town mall where we shopped and talked for a long time. At the end of the night we went to McDonalds, the only restaurant that was open, to pick up food and eat at home. I have to say, it was the NICEST McDonalds Ive ever been to in my whole life. It even had those buzzer things that tell you when your food is ready. It was actually so nice, that they told me I wasn't allowed to take photos of it after they saw me. Afterwards, we went back to the apartment, where Valeria and I decided to walk back to the city center to see the square and all the buildings at night. Maribor is SUCH a beautiful city, we fell in love! When we came back to the apartment, we talked a little longer until Ziga came home with a bunch of Burek, a traditional Balkan food. Its like a flakey dough stuffed with meat or other things, and of course we ate a bunch of that too. The very next morning, Valeria and I woke up really early to go see the city center again, but during daylight. Sadly it was raining and terrible weather, but it was still so beautiful. In the late morning we left back for Trencin, where we had a Rotary Halloween party to carve pumpkins with orphans from my city! Week 11 - October 31 - Halloween day, I went to Bratislava for the day with Valeria and her family. Shortly after we got there we met up with Valerias Slovak friend who did an exchange in Colombia. It was Valerias first time in Bratislava so we did all the tourist things, then met up with more exchange students! We spent the whole day going places and meeting new exchange students. Later in the day, some AFS exchangers joined us, including a girl from Italy! We decided to hike all the way up to Slavin, the Soviet memorial over Bratislava and saw the whole city from there! It was great. On our way down through the city center, some drunk homeless and decided to start screaming at me and the Italian girl and grabbing us. It was really disgusting, and after we ran away, he threw his vodka bottle at us. Not such a good experience. However, it was a great day and a great way to spend Halloween. The next day, started a week long school holiday which I'd spend in Northern Slovakia with my family. I woke up really early and drove with my family to Stary Smokovec in the Tatry mountains. We spent the whole day hiking up to two different huts in the Tatry. Two things I noticed, it was amazing how unbeliveably clear, yet freezing the water was, and also so shocking how many trees had fallen down due to an invasive bug species. The Tatry were amazing as usual, so so so beautiful! The very top was so windy it was hard to stand up. We went to the cabin to eat and there I sat with random Slovak people who asked me all about where I was from. We hiked our way down, then drove to a cabin on the Polish-Slovak border where we would be sleeping for the next 3 nights. It was in a very remote location and had no wifi, which wasn't a problem until I realized I had to buy my plane tickets home the very next day. My host parents drove me far away until I had phone service to email my travel agent. From there, you could see the whole milky-way. I watched it with my parents for a long time talking about how beautiful it was. Anyways, at the cabin they had a fire heating hot tub, which we decided to use. It took around 2.5 hours to actually heat up, and halfway through that we realized that the drain is slightly open causing water to leak. I got into the cold water hot tub, with even colder outside air just to plug the drain. It was terrible but a good memory with my host brother. When the hot tub finally got hot, it got HOT, and we could only be in it for about 15 minutes before leaving hahah. The next day we drove across the Polish border to a Polish castle called Niedzica Zamek. It was on a lake and absolutely beautiful! We did a short castle tour then went back to the cabin for the night. The next day we went to Pieniny National Park, which divided by a river called the Dunajec, which makes the Polish-Slovak border. There we did a very traditional boat ride up the river which was amazing. We had to walk the way back which was about 3 hours, but we stopped in between at an old monastery for monks. It had an amazing view of the Trzy Korony mountain and a beautiful church. We saw the sunset from the Polish side of the river and it was amazing! The next morning we drove to the Polish city of Zakopane and walked to a cable car in the Polish Tatry. The cable car brought us the the very top which had an unbelievable view of the Polish country and also Polish Tatry (which are different from the Slovak). Afterwards we went to the city center of Zakopane, which is full of beautiful wooden buildings. That night we got true Polish food and I can't say how much I've missed pierogi z miesem. It was also honestly quite weird to be back in Poland after so much time! I forgot how beautiful Polish was, and truly remembered why I'm so proud to be Polish. At the same time, Slovak has taken over my brain and I had a really hard time speaking Polish or Slovak as I was mixing the two languages so much! We returned to Trencin that night for school the next morning. Week 12 - November 7 - Nothing two special happened this week except for the birthday of a Rotarian in my city named Julius. He is a super nice man and wanted to have a get together with me, Valeria and Pablo. We came and spent great time with him. He ended up drawing characters of all of us and they were SOO accurate it was crazy! On Friday, the first two periods of school my class went to a cinema to watch a series of short films called "Horizonty." Before going, I was super tired and honestly not looking forward to it, but it was so cool! It was mostly documentaries or 4k sports videos that were so fascinating. They were almost all in English or French so I had no trouble understanding anyways! On saturday my two American friends came to Trencin for the day with their families and we gave them a full city tour. After a little bit, we took a bus to Trencianske Teplice, the spa town and went in a hot water pool for a while! Afterwards we got Italian food, then went back to Trencin city to watch the sunset. It was a great day! On Sunday, my host parents brought me, Valeria and my host brother to a Slovak "chateau/castle" called Bojnice. We had a 2 hour long tour of the castle and the cave below it. the town and castle were shockingly beautiful! There we met some Erasmus girls from Spain we talked to for a little while! At night, I came home and taught my host parents how to play Briscola and Scopa, two Italian card games that I used to play with my Italian friends all the time! It was so cute. Overall, my third month was one of the best. I got to visit Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Poland. I tried many new things and can feel my Slovak language improving a lot. I haven't been feeling homesick at all and actually am only feeling more and more comfortable living here in Slovakia.
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AuthorNick Bilotti Archives
March 2019
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