craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy fun!

Well here I am again! with a whole bunch more to share with you all! This weekend (as I mentioned before) was my first orientation meeting.... and it was AMAZING! It was so cool meeting people from all over the world the best part was that they actually totally understood what I was going thru. We had a blast talking about all the things we thought were different about here and our homes, sharing funny stories, hard times, and solutions. I think it was really goood. It reminded me that I'm not in this alone, there are a lot of others going through the exact same things.
So who was there? There were a lot of Americans! I never expected so many but there were alot! There were supposed to be 59 of us total from the district (which covers slovakia and czech) but a few couldn't make it out. So there were probably around 20 americans, there were 3 Canadians (myself, 0ne from kelowna, and one from dawson creek), like 10 mexicans, and 7 brazilians, one girl from Japan and one from Taiwan, and 2 from Australia.
And what did we do? Well there were a couple of presentations but really what we did was stay up all night long, hike halfway up a mountain, eat really interesting food, dance up a storm, and raft down a river. It was a crazy weekend and I am SO TIRED!! But I made a lot of really great friends and a couple good rotary connections.
Okay, I'll start with the food. It was good but very different. They tried to feed us traditional slovak and czech food so we had sauerkraut on four pieces of sourdough bread with pork one night and then schnitzel and potatoes another night and some chocolate yogurt! for breakfast. We had this strange tea stuff with every meal too. All of it was pretty good except I just couldn't quite handle the sauerkraut meal. I really hate looking at soggy bread, and so the thought of eating just grossed me right out, I just couldn't do it. But there were a lot of people who didn't really like that meal so one of the girls at our table pretended to be vegetarian and got the vegetarian meal which looked much more appetizing and we all shared that so we didn't have to starve. It was funny and a good bonding moment :).
The rafting was really cool. We went down the Vah river on this wooden box with benches on it essentially. There were two tour guides on the boat/raft thing stearing and paddling wearing traditional slovak dress and apparently this mode of transportation is traditonal for the slovak people because they used to use it way back in the olden days. After the raft which was freezing cold I might add because we got wet and it was only 12 degrees that day, we took this long walk half way up a mountain to a castle. This was really cool beacuse you could see so much from on top and I took some really beautiful pictures which I will post eventually here for you to see. It was strecno castle, the second castle Ive visited since I've been here.
Once we were done at the castle they made us walk all the way home which was actually quite a ways (we took a bus to the castle so I dont know why we didn't take one home!). By the time we got back to the hostel we were staying at we were not only tired from the five hours of sleep we had gotten the night before but also exhausted from hiking up a moutain and walking all over the place! Then we had to dance that night! It was really fun though even though I was absolutely wiped out. The dance was ridiculously fun because there were all the different cultures so we had all kinds of music going and the mexicans would teach a dance from their country and then the brazilians one from theirs and then there was some slovak music and some american music of course. Eventually we all made it to bed but most of us not until the wee hours of the night.
Then it was hometime at 1030 on sunday. The weekend really went by so fast! I was so bagged at the end of it all and really excited about the prospect of coming home but when my host bro picked me up he informed me that we were going for lunch at my grandma's house. So I was like oh okay but it turned out to be really nice actually.
It was my host moms mother and she is a very sweet lady. She made us soup and chicken and potatoes and this cheese thing and fed us homemade pickles and cake too! I was soooooo unbelievably full when she was done with me! I'm beginning to understand the meals more now. This is how it works. You eat whatever pretty much for breakfast but lunch is what is REALLY important to them. Its like they go out of their way to make sure you are fed lunch, and it should always be a full hot meal. That is why we eat at school at the end of the day because if your parents aren't home to prepare a luch for you then you eat at school (or you go to grandmas...). Its really cute because the are always concerned about whether or not you had enough to eat, everyday my host parents ask me 'how was lunch? did you get enough to eat? Are you sure its okay?' and everyday I assure them I'm fine. Then they don't eat supper really at all. In my family my mom cooks a big meal on Sunday (for lunch) and we eat together and then we have the left overs for the rest of the week for supper and half the time my mother doesn' t even eat anything at all! So its taking me some time to adjust to this new eating routine but its coming. I'm so used to semi starving all day and then coming home and eating a big supper so this is definately different, but in a way it makes a whole lot more sense. Eat the most in the middle of the day and you'll have more energy for the rest of the day....

well my eyelids are feeling rather heavy at the moment so im going to have a nap before my parents come home from their weekend trip to bratislava to golf.

dobru noc! (good night)

p