food food and more food Some school and more food

Well the food here never ceases to amaze me. I just finished eating this delicious dip stuff with bread. It was cheese and mayo and raw garlic. It was soooooo garlicky but soooooo dang good! I'm sure you can smell me from a mile away now but it's all good because I'm just heading to bed anyways. Also food related, I am getting dreadfully sick of potatoes (zemiaky). I eat them everyday often times twice a day. And on top of that when there aren't just plain potatoes they are always cooked into the meal somehow! They are everywhere!

And I'm turning into a true European... I've started taking showers at night. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd start doing that. But it really is quite nice. You shower at night just before bed then sleep in really late in the morning, roll out of bed, throw on yesterday's outfit, grab an apple or two for breakfast and you're good to go in 20 minutes. It's beautiful! Nobody really cares what your hair looks like here. Most people have long hair and they either put it in a ponytail or just let it be. They all seem to be fans of the 'o naturelle' look which is all good with me- I mean the less effort I have to put in the better. AND it's totally acceptable to wear the same outfit three days in a row here, in fact it's encouraged, so you conserve laundry. I must say I still like to shower everyday, even though most people here shower every second or third day. I prefer not to smell like a barn.

As for school it's the same old same old pretty much. Boring as ever. I had a biology test today and I'm pretty sure I failed it. You see it's difficult as it is to learn everything in Slovak, then on top of that you have to deal with the fact that the teacher doesn't even speak a word of English so I have no idea what she expects of me. At least this time I knew what the test was on. I had three worksheets to study from; one was the digestive system, one the circulatory system, and the final one the respiratory system. Fun stuff, learning those giant words in another language. Ha so I did my best to learn them in three days, and I didn't think I was doing half bad, that is until I saw the test today. It was not what I thought it would be. Instead of having to label the diagrams (which I assumed would be my task, seeing as my worksheets were diagrams of the systems and thats it) I had to write all the parts of the respiratory system down in slovak from scratch, name the components of the blood, and list what parts of the heart carry oxygenated and de oxygenated blood. Oh boy. Not good. Oh well. I thoroughly enjoy the fact that it doesn't matter if I fail or even if I get zero though. It's really quite refreshing after having almost killed myself for two years in IB.

This brings me to the ancient teaching styles here in Slovakia. For one they still use chalkboards. And how the teacher's teach is by giving notes orally (no pictures, nothing on the board, and most definitely no power points). So as if it isn't hard enough trying to follow written notes in a foreign language, I have to try and listen and interpret what I hear onto a piece of paper. Yeah it's virtually impossible for me to do. So that makes, my learning anything virtually impossible, which then in turn isolates me from everyone else. So I prefer to keep my nose in a book or something so my day isn't quite so dreadfully loooooooooong. I have anywhere from four to eight 45 minute lessons in a day with ten minute breaks between each lesson. Breaks are wonderful, I get to eat and visit with friends. We don't get to take lunch until after the sixth lesson which is at about 130 so I'm always STARVING by the time lunch rolls around. This is probably a god sent because the food isn't particularly appetizing most days. MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm cafeteria food.

Well seeing as I'm back on the topic of food and I started on the topic of food that's probably a good place to leave it for now.


Lots of love to everyone! I miss you all!

P