Maggie Kriz: Veselé Vianoce a Štastný Nový Rok

Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year! I have been having such an amazing time over the break and my time in Slovakia is going by so quickly I really can't believe it. On December 23rd I officially hit the 4 month mark and it is difficult for me to believe that I will be changing host families on the 16th of January. I really love my host family and it will be very difficult for me to leave them but at the same time I look forward to seeing the inner-workings of other Slovak families as well.

I have been so busy here in Slovakia! Recently I had a Rotary weekend where we went to Bratislava (Slovakia's Washington, DC) and Vienna, Austria. They are both such beautiful places and the decorations during this time of year were truly amazing. Both cities are well known for their Christmas markets and it was great to be able to experience that chaos first hand. The streets were packed with people, I though Steamboat was crowded but now I realize what it could be and thank god we don't live there during the holidays! I also really loved exploring the history of these cities, they are both filled with beautiful castles, churches, and palaces that were built far before the Mayflower even hit Plymouth Rock.

Christmas here was very interesting but also very different from the United States. In Colorado I am used to my entire family coming up to Steamboat and spending a lot of time together, it really is a big deal and my mom's favorite holiday so she goes all out (I always tell her that it looks like Santa threw up in our house because of all the decorations). In Slovakia, it is much more low key (they only celebrate with their immediate family) and they actually celebrate Christmas on the 24th of December rather than the 25th. Perhaps my favorite thing they do though happens about a week before Christmas. In front of ever supermarket in Slovakia there are huge tanks full of these fish that I would guess are about 5 to 7 pounds. Every family buys a fish and you take them home and they live in your bathtub for a week (when you want to take a shower you have to scoop him up into a bucket and then put him back afterward) and you feed him and most of the small children get really attached even giving the animal names and playing with it. But then, on the 24th, the men take it out of the tub and kill it and you eat fried fish and potato salad for dinner.... It is a very odd tradition but I guess no better way to show children the value of a life.

I am also really looking forward to the week of January 7th to January 14th because I will be going to the Austrian Alps with my school! I miss skiing and snowboarding so much, it is insane! I guess I took having a ski mountain in my backyard for granted because now it is all I can think about! I am excited to see what the mountains are like here in Europe because the only places that I have ever skied are all in Colorado!

Well I have to go but Merry Christmas once again and I wish you all love and joy in the New Year! I will talk to you all soon! Oh and to all the skiers and boarders in the club, take a run for me!!

Outbound Students for 2010 - 2011 Selected

We are thrilled to announce that the three Steamboat Springs candidates for the Outbound Exchange in the 2010-2011 school year have been accepted into the program by the District.

Zane Elston will be going to Thailand.

Kelly Ernst will be going to Switzerland.

Alli Major will be going to Australia.

Congratulations!

Carlo Gavatorta - Hi everyone!

Hi everyone! I'm Carlo Gavatorta and I'm the exchange student from Italy living in Steamboat. It's been 3 months now since I got here and I simply love Steamboat. I will move to my second host family next week and I really enjoyed my first family. I'm sad I have to leave them but that's the program and I have to follow it, hopefully I will be able to keep doing activities with them cause they are a lot of fun. School is going good and I'm enjoying the American school a lot. I have made friends even though at the beginning it was pretty difficult, but after 3 weeks I found very good friends.

I just had my second snowboarding lesson today and I really like it. I have to say that I'm pretty lucky to be in Steamboat because it's such an amazing town and there's a lot of stuff to do. Also the ski-area donates me a ski-pass and equipment which is a very cool thing. The rotary Club here is very active and they really take care of me and the other exchange student. School is not very hard and just the first two weeks my brain had to work so hard that I got tired a lot, but when I went over that and I felt more confident with the language everything has been way easier.

America is a cool country and I am really glad I am living this experience.

Carlo

Jouselyn Chum - Ecuador

I am Jouselyn Chum, from Santo Domingo, a city in Ecuador. I have a mom, dad, and two young sisters at home, and a little dog named Cosita. I arrived in Steamboat on August 24. It has been hard to go to school in English, because in South America, we don't have good English, or maybe it is different. But I am trying, and I feel better now about my ability to learn English and to be able to talk to people. Steamboat is pretty cool. I like the lakes and rivers. I am excited to try skiing this winter. I've never skied before. I love speaking English --- I will use it for college, since I want to study tourism. To study tourism, I need to know two languages.

Maggie Kriz - 85 Deň!!! Zlaté Oči!!!

Ahoj Steamboat Rotary Club!

I honestly can't believe that it is already November! I feel like it was just yesterday that I was boarding a plane headed to europe and now, after adding up the days on my calendar, I see that I have been here for 85 days already, I guess they really weren't lying when they said that time flies when you are having fun! It is so amazing to think back on everything that I have done these first few months, I don't even know where to begin.

Our first district rotary meeting was in a town about three hours away from Spišská called Strečno and it was so amazing to be able to meet all the other exchange students. There are about 60 exchange students in Slovakia and the Czech Republic that have home countries ranging from Brazil to Japan. It was a great weekend, we saw one of the oldest and most famous castles in Slovakia (there are two right across the river from each other and it is said that that is a secret passage connecting the two that they have not found yet). They also arranged for us to go on a rafting trip down the river at sunset and it was so picturesque seeing the reflection of the colors on the water.

Our next district meeting was in a town called Banska Bystrica and it was over my birthday! We had such a great time getting to bond more (and this time being able to talk about missing home with other people who understood). They arranged for us to have a tour of the historic town and then had a delicious lunch in the town square. That night we had a disco and they rotary club got me a huge cake to share with everyone! It was so amazing!

I am still loving my town and feel truly blessed with my first host family. They are amazing people and have really helped to make me feel at home in such a unique and completely different setting. They also did a fantastic job with making me feel better about the loss of my grandfather, who died on October 16. I really am going to miss having such an amazing man in my life and I have some regret with missing his funeral but I feel that he would have wanted me to move on and have a great experience so I am doing my best to fully come to terms with the loss.

I also have an amazing group of friends that I spend a huge chunk of my time with. I am so lucky to have found such great people so early on in my exchange. I do, however, feel like the new toy sometimes. Every time that I meet someone knew (which is almost every day) they want to know if life in America is like they see in the movies... I always hate to break it to them that American high school is not as glorified as they make it out to be in Hollywood.

My free time is usually spent playing volleyball at my high school, out with friends, or in art classes that I am taking at the local art school here. We also had a "production" at my school called Imatricule which was a series of choreographed dances and skits which were interspersed with hazing of the freshmen class (via public humiliation)... it is their way of accepting them as their classmates. It was really entertaining, but I must admit some of the pranks were a little over the top.

The food here is pretty good be also very different! It is very hearty and they rarely eat out. Most of it consists of some type of potato, cabbage, and meat.... I have to admit that I do miss ethnic food! But so far I have made my family some mexican food that they really love. Also, this thursday we will be celebrating Thanksgiving, my father is going to have all the exchange students from our town (there are three others) over to our house and we are going to show them how America does a feast!!! He is kind enough to make the turkey but I am going to fix everything else... I hope it turns out ok!

Maggie Kriz

Claire Parsons - 2 Months? No Way!

Hello Everyone!

I've been so busy (in a good way) here that when I finally stopped to figure out how long I'd been living in Belgium, I was shocked to realize that this coming Friday will indeed mark 8 weeks from when I took off from Denver. Wow! And in these 8 weeks I've been so lucky to do so much and experience so many things! Since I can't possibly talk about it all I'll include some highlights!

Kayaking: Two Saturdays ago Rotex put on this Kayaking activity available to all exchange students in Belgium. (There are three different districts in total) Early that morning I took the train from Brussels to Dinant (a small town in southern Belgium) and spent a wonderful, beautiful sunny (sunny? Belgium? YES!) day kayaking down a river with 200 other exchange students from around the world!

Liege: My current host dad works as a lawyer in Liege (a town in eastern Belgium about 1 hr. away from Brussels) so I was lucky enough to be invited to the VIP section of the inauguration of the Gare de Liege (train station in Liege) to see the spectacle at the beautiful train station designed by the famous architect Santiago Calatrava.

Rotary Meeting: My Rotary club here in Brussels is pretty intense which is why I was terrified when I had to make an impromptu speech (in french!) about my life in Steamboat, and in Belgium so far. It went surprisingly well though!

School: School has by far been the toughest obstacle I've encountered here so far. I'm in 9 rigorous courses where the teachers (though very involved) treat me like one of the Belgians. Learning about the economic crisis in French has proven nearly impossible, memorizing french poems weekly isn't easy, and the different methods in math have proved very difficult to master. I keep on working though as I know in a few months I'll understand nearly everything!

Friends: Being an exchange student from America is exhausting really. Everyone here is absolutely obsessed with America and I'm constantly being bombarded with questions about California, New York, Abercrombie Clothes, Yellow school buses, "pom-pom girls"(cheerleaders) and colgate ("the colgate american smile") toothpaste all of the time. I don't mind it though! I laugh and say "c'est pas comme les films!" (It's not like the movies)....and that always comes with a little bit of disappointment. As friends go however some of my best friends so far are my three AMAZING host siblings! At school it takes a little bit longer to move past being just acquaintances, though I know I'm getting there! It's also nice to compare how many kisses I get at the beginning of school everyday now compared to when school first started! (When greeting and saying goodbye to someone one kiss on the cheek is used!)

I'm absolutely loving living here, and having an amazing new cultural experience every single day. I'm so incredibly lucky!

I hope everything is well in Steamboat!

à bientôt!

Claire

Liza Stout - 100% manana!

So i have now been in Spain for three weeks. It is so crazy!!! It has gone so fast and although at this point, I am not doing very much in a day they all feel so full. I think that is because it is all in Spanish. So I will start with how everything is going from the begining. I have decided that everything here is without a doubt 100 percent manana! Haha, you warned me, but I have actually begun to like thinking more about doing stuff manana because it makes me more relaxed today. The first week I know I had culture shock and I never thought in a million years I would understand this crazy language Spanish! But now three weeks has past and I am able to carry on a conversation and understand a lot of what is being said around me. I am on my second week of school and enjoy most of my classes. I am studying drawing, sculpture, philosophy, science of the world, spanish, english, and computer technology which I don't like because it is very confusing even in english. I really enjoy here how I have 1 group for all my classes because it makes meeting people and making friends a little bit easier but it is for sure still a struggle. People are always very friendly but it is hard to make it to the next step of having people to hang out with and get to know better. But I am sure that will come with time and understanding the language better.

The food here is very different from back home, there are some dishes I love! and some I can't stand. But it is always fun to try something new. Probably what I miss most is starbucks and giant cups of coffee. Here it is all little shots and a lot of pastries which are good but I am a little concerned about gaining that fifteen, it's already working it's way on :)

My family is great and very kind. I am trying to find a sport or an activity to do after school which has been extremely difficult and here my school is not at all helpful in that area. My counseler here is not very supportive and I have only talked to her once on the phone but she promised to help me find an activity so I am just going to keep waiting manana :)

I hope all is well back in the States! I miss it but am enjoying myself here,

Thanks for everything!

Liza

Maggie Kriz - Ahoy po Spišská Nová Ves

Ahoj Steamboat Springs Rotary Club!
I have now been in Slovakia for an entire month and I am loving every minute of it. It is hard for me to believe that I have been here for so long, the time is moving so quickly that I can hardly keep up!
My host family is amazing and they have been warm and welcoming from the very start (when they picked me up from the airport they were ready with Slovak chocolates and the video camera). They have introduced me to a lot of Slovak food which is delicious but also very different from the food in the United States, I have to admit that the only thing I miss is Mexican food (which I am planning to cook for my parents just as soon as some spices arrive from America). I have also introduced Banana Bread to Slovakia and I think that it is here to stay, my family and friends cannot get enough! I am living right in the center of town which is amazing because I am only seconds away from everything I could possibly need.
I have now been attending school for about three weeks and it really amazing. All the teachers have been patient with the language barrier and my classmates have really reached out to me. I have so many friends already and have many opportunities to experience Slovakia as if I were a native teen. My friends have also been really great about teaching me the language (of course they laugh everytime I learn a new word and cannot pronounce it correctly). The language is very difficult (I have heard from my friends that it is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn) but I hope to communicate easily in a few months.
I have also gotten to see many of the landmarks in my region of Slovakia (that is the Spiš Region) one of which is the beautiful castle that is only about 15 minutes from my house. It is called Spišsky Hrad and is the largest castle in Central Europe. My town also has the largest church tower in Central Europe and my friends and I climbed the hundreds of stairs to the top where you could see the entire town.
My first district conference was in a small town about two hours from Spišská Nová Ves in a town called Strečno. It was a lot of fun meeting all the exchange students around Slovakia and the Czech Republic (there are about 60 of us!). They organized a trip down the river on these rafts that were guided by men dressed in Slovak traditional outfits and we also went to the castle that is in Strečno which was beautiful.
I wish that I could write more but I need to watch my little cousin (alebo bratranec po slovenský) who we call Dudo and he is not thrilled about watching me type... he wants to play with his toy cars!
I hope that everyone is doing well in "the boat" and thank you so much again for this amazing opportunity!
Maggie

Claire Parsons - La Belgique

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Brussels, Belgium! Everything is going wonderfully here. I arrived on the 15th of August and was lucky enough to spend 10 days on vacation in Bretagne, France with the Menetrier Family (Celine Menetrier was one of two inbound exchange students this past year who came to steamboat) while my first host family was on vacation in Greece. There I ate some wonderful food, enjoyed the company of many of the Menetriers' friends from Belgium and had some adventure kayaking and sailing in the ocean. Now (since the 28th of August), I am living with the Collins in a town right outside of Brussels. They are all beyond amicable and have welcomed me into their home. The food is amazing, and the weather has been absolutely wonderful (which is not characteristic to Belgium so I've been very lucky). The speaking french part has been hard and I often find myself exhausted early in the day, however, no one ever seems annoyed, and they don't mind playing charades or waiting for my dictionary when it is needed. And I can already tell in these two short weeks that my french has already improved tremendously. I start school on this coming wednesday which is pretty frightening as the population is double that of SSHS and everyone will be speaking french. But I plan to go in with my head held high and try to make it through! Hope everything is well in Steamboat!

Au Revoir

Claire Parsons

Claire Parsons- Belgium

Hi Everyone!

For my year of exchange I will be living in Brussels, Belgium! I have been in contact with my first host family for about three months now and they seem amazing. They have four kids, one of which will also be on exchange (to Argentina). The school that I will be going to is in Brussels and the mother of my first host family actually teaches there!

http://www.lindthout.be/humanites/index.htm

This is the link to my school! Like Maggie said you probably won't be able to read it but there are some interesting pictures.

I leave in two weeks tommorow so I am doing last minute things to prepare because I know that these will probably be the fastest two weeks of my life! I am so excited. I'll post the next blog after I arrive to keep everyone updated! Thanks to everyone!

Claire Parsons

Maggie Kriz - Slovakia

I am going to Slovakia and i will be living in Spišska Nová Ves, Slovakia (it has about 40,000 people and is a tourist town for Slovenský Raj which is a large national park in Slovakia). My flight is scheduled for August 22 at about 6:00 pm. I have talked to my family, I have two sisters Dominika and Erika (they both have also introduced me to some friends that I will have when i arrive). My father's name is Lubomir and my mother's name is Renata. I will be going to Gymnázium Školská 7, it is a great school that prepares students for college. I am pretty excited!

Maggie

p.s. below i put a couple of links if people want to see them.

http://www.gymsnv.sk/index.php?page=profil-absolventa

-this one is for my school

http://www.spisskanovaves.eu/

-this one is my town's website

(you wont be able to read them but you can still look at pictures and stuff!)

Steamboat Springs Youth Exchange 2009 - 2010 Students

We are thrilled to have three students from Steamboat Springs taking part in the Rotary International Youth Exchange Program in the 2009 - 2010 school year. Liza Stout will spend the year in Spain, Claire Parsons will spend the year in Belgium, and Maggie Kriz will spend the year in Slovakia. In turn, our community and club will host Carlo Gavatorta from Italy and Jouselyn Chum from Ecuador. Stay tuned to this blog, as all of these extraordinary students will be posting stories and photos about their experiences this coming school year.