A weeks worth of stuff....

AHHH its been long time since I've posted (a whole entire week and a half to be exact!). I've been keeping really busy these past couple of weeks which has been nice. Everyone seems to be gearing up for christmas around here. The decorations have come out and the town square looks soooooo beautiful! There are lights and sparking things everywhere! I love it! and everyone assures me it will look even more beautiful once it snows here. Yeah! It hasn't snowed here yet! I cant believe it. Everyone kept telling me ohh you have to be ready, Slovak winters are cold..... but I'm still waiting for the cold to get here. I mean it was 11 degrees the other day!

Now for THANKS GIVING! Oh my goodness it was so much fun! So Mariely and Paul and I all woke up early and headed on over to my councilor's house (its walking distance from my current host home)for the day of cooking. Boy oh boy was it a lot of work! I have a new appreciation for you dad. Cooking a turkey, making gravy, potatoes, and stuffing isnt exactly easy. In fact I'm rather impressed all the food turned out as good as it did. I mean it could have gone really bad, three teenagers in the kitchen all day long. So Paul cooked the turkey and potatoes (with my councilors guidance of course) and Mariely and I worked on the pumpkin pie. Okay now this was hilarious. We were gathering all the ingredients for the pie when Natasa pulls out 'the pupkin'. I took one look at it and said, ummmmm sorry to break it to you Natasa but thats not a pumpkin!. It was a squash of some kind. And at first I thought it was a spaghetti squash, which would have meant we were in big trouble but it turned out to be some sweet squash so it worked just fine. Mariely and I then slaved away for the next two hours, preparing the pumpkin batter and pie crust from SCRATCH! (as a side not, it is quite difficult to bake here. For instance they don't use baking soda and chocolate chips don't exist. Also you can't buy a pie crust anywhere because it also doesn't exist.) Now I would find making a pie from scratch difficult in itself but you have to remember we are in Slovakia so that brings it to a whole new level of difficulty. Translating all the ingredients into Slovak, converting everything from cups into mLs, and trying to illustrate what "mash" or "mix" or "cut in" is in slovak is no easy task. BUT we managed to make it through and much to my surprise a beautiful (and delicious!) pumpkin pie was born. Once everything was finsished we set the table with ribbons and fancy cutlery and candles... the whole shibang, and voila! American Thanksgiving in Slovakia!
It really did make me so happy and it was really cool being able to share some of Canada with the Slovaks. They LOVED the pie because it was unlike anything they have here and my councilor's already asked me to make it again for her. I forsee a lot of baking in my future.

So Thanksgiving was on thurs last week and then on Saturday I got to go to the mountains with my host fam!! It was fantastical! It was about a 3 hour drive to the High Tatras (across the entire country!) where we stopped and did some hiking. It was funny because at the beginning of the trail it really isn't beautiful at all. All you can see for miles are whats left of trees. It was just stump after stump after stump in what looked like a deserted wasteland. So to be honest I wasn't very impressed. But then my host dad kindly explained to me that five years ago there was a huge wind storm and it snapped all the trees and left the entire area devastated. Once we made it to the base of the mountain though it was truly stunningly beautiful. We hiked for prob 2 hours into the forest, up the mountain, stopping at two pubs along the way. Yes there are even pubs in the middle of the forest in Slovakia! So we would stop have a rest and get a drink. I had some mountain alcohol as my host dad called it. It was called Borovicka and its made from Pine trees (fun fact #103: Slovaks can make alcohol out of anything. Plums, peaches, pine, spruce, pears... you name it and they have an alcohol of it). It was disgustingly strong.....definitely not my favorite thing in the world. I also had some mountain tea which was yummy! Along the trail we say beautiful waterfalls and were surrounded by huge towering coniferous trees. The smell was wonderful and the sights amazing.
After the mountains we all piled back in the car and headed for Strbske pleso. An absolutely stunning lake. And when I say stunning I mean stunning! I've never seen anything so breath takingly beautiful in my life. I have pictures which don't do it justice but Ill put them up for you to see for yourself. Here we walked aroudn the lake a little bit and stopped for supper at a cute little cabin restaurant serving traditional slovak cuisine. It was delicious! I had a plate full of, you guessed it, potatoes and cheese! It was halusky with cabusta. Yum Yum Yum!

Now I'll fast forward to this weekend.Nothing eventful happened this week. I attended Rotary, had two story hours at the english school, played futbal,and went to school. SO onto the good stuff. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZooooooooooooooooooooomMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
This Friday I went to Mariely's house to sleep over becuase my parents went to Bratislava for something. (im not entirely why because they dont tell me all that much...prob because I dont understand all that much. I'm just getting used to being uninformed). So Friday I went out with some girls from school. No dancing this time but it was still fun. And saturday, oh saturday I went shopping with Mariely. She needed a dress for Stuskova (which is their version of graduation here). Stuskova is next weekend (they celebrate it in Dec for some reason) so we really had to find one this weekend. Now I have to explain the situation because there was slight panic that we wouldn't find one as we were confined to Zilina shopping centers. There are two malls but they are about the size of sherwood park mall. So when it comes to shopping they are good but sometimes you just want to go to west ed for shopping. SO I spent ALLL day sat watching mariely try on virtually every dress in Zilina..........and we did find one eventually. Thank goodness! It was loads of fun though (I know you males reading this prob won't understand in the slightest what I'm talking about but the ladies will). I found my dress in H&M while I was in Bratislava visiting the Canadian Embassy. It was funny because I had under an hour in the shopping center but I knew I needed a dress and Bratislava has fantastic shopping, so I managed to find one. Now thats skill! So needless to say I'm super excited about stuskova. I have a super cute dress, and a beautiful wrap and hand bag which I'm borrowing from my host mom. So I'm all set.

Okay and last item on the agenda. I had a lovely day today with all my host family. We went out for lunch to a restaurant, which is not very common here, with my cousins and aunt and uncle and grandma and it was very nice. I ate tons of food!!! Probably five pieces of this delicious cake my grandma makes that has cream cheese and chocolate in it and homemade cheese cake and chicken smothered in cheese and rice and fries and OH MY GOD I AM SO FULL! After the restaurant we came back to my family's house to sit and watch tv and talk (and the adults drank of course) and I had a good time with both of my cousins. I love them! Barbora (they call her bobka for short) is ten and Jakub (or kubo) is 15. I go to school with jakub so we know eachother really well now and we have a good time together.

So that is all. phew!

p


ps. IVE BEEN HERE THREE MONTHS!!!!!