It's been a while since I've updated you all so buckle down and get ready for a long one....Here goes!

Soccer or Futbal? Whatever you want to call it, I'm playing it! I found a girls futbal team here (through my many wondrous Rotary connections) and have had two practices to date. I LOVE it! The whole attitude towards sports and girls playing sports and futbal in general is very different here. For one there's only three teams in the entire city of 90 000 people; one for the beginners (youngsters who've never played before), one for girls up to age sixteen (this is where I'm playing even though I'm 18), and one women's team (but they are really really good and competitive hence the reason I'm playing for the U16 team). All the girls are really thankful to have a team and a coach and therefore they actually participate at practice. They also are really very bitter about the resources they have. They think their field is terrible and their equipment is even worse, when in reality it's quite comparable to what we have in Canada. Admittedly it's not superb or anything but it works. They have been asking me all about what it's like to play in Canada and what our fields, and leagues, and teams are like. It's really cute.
So since there is only one team in each city, and Slovakia is so small, they all play eachother. This means alot of their games are far away. Yesterday for instance they had to drive 5 hours by bus to get to their game. I don't get to play in any of their league games because I don't have a license to play but I get to practice with them, play at their friendly matches and go to their games if I want. I'm looking forward to it all! I think it will be really good as I get to do 5 hours plus, physical activity a week, meet a whole new group of people, and see random parts of Slovakia. It shall be good!

Now I'll get to the weekend. It was fantastic as usual! Friday night I went to the disco with some schoolmates and it was surprisingly fun. I have no idea why it's fun because when you think about it, it's far from desirable conditions, but all the same I enjoyed it. Really though, you're smashed into this tiny space with a whole bunch of sweaty people you've never met before, it's dark, there are strobe lights everywhere making your head spin, there's a lovely combination of cigarette smoke and fog, and the music is playing incredibly loud. Oh the things we do to oursleves, seriously. As it turns out though it's a good activity to do in a foreign country when you barely speak the lanuage because 1. everyone can dance when the dance floor is crowded 2. dancing is like a universal language and 3.it's much to loud to talk so the whole language thing doesn't even matter.

Once the disco adventure came to a close I headed home with Mariely (who slept over). We then proceeded to fall flat on our faces out of fatigue. A few short hours later we were rudely awakened by my alarm and were swept off on our next adventure: Harmaneckej Jaskyne or 'some really beautiful slovak caves'. They really were beautiful, however my muscles didn't think the hour long hike up the mountain to get to them was so wonderful. I was kind of dying on the inside from soccer practice the day before (you know considering I haven't done any strenuous activity for more than 6 months) and the narrow, steeply inclined, switchback path was no help. I did make it to the top in the end and it was worth all the effort because the caves were unlike anything I've ever seen before. And I'm really sorry because I didn't get any pictures of the inside because you had to pay 7 euros to have photo priveleges and I didn't think I'd want to take pictures that bad, that was until I saw inside, then I was kicking myself.
Following the caves we went to a tradtional Slovak market called Jarmok. This was really cool too. I've been to quite a few of these already but this one was much bigger than the others. I bought some cute little hand crafted earrings and we ate lots and lots of food! It was soooooo delicious! We had uhorka (pickles and my favorite slovak word), sausage, potatoe cakes, kofola, cabbage (hardly ever a meal goes by without cabbage and potatoes), and chicken/bacon/onion skewers. YUM! grease, grease, and more grease!

Sunday was probably my favorite day of all. I got to be super lazy in the morning, sleeping,and watching house, and good stuff like that. Once I finally rolled out of bed, my host mom had prepared a delicious pasta salad for lunch and then I was off to Stranik (the giant hill) to fly kites. Apparently it wasn't a translation problem at all, we really did fly kites on a mini mountain! It was ridiculously fun and really nice to just be able to go out some friends and hang out. There was also cake and hot chocolate involved so all in all it was a delightful afternoon! :)

Then of course on Monday it was back to school. fun fun fun. I continue to be bored out of my mind except in english class. I am learning lots of slovak words though. I have a good system going. At the beginning of the week I make a little stack of slovak/english flashcards and throughout the week I learn them little by little. Then before I know it I've learned a whole bunch of new words! One thing on Monday that made school slightly more interesting was we had an Irish man come in and speak in our english convo class. He was a really neat older fellow and he made me want to travel to Ireland one day. It sounds really beautiful, and I love their accent!

Well that's all that's worth talking about (and probably a little more). It didn't turn out to be too long.

love

p