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
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