I just had one of the MOST delicious dinners e-v-e-r. It was five golf ball sized rolls of white dough with saskatoons on the inside. You boil them in water until they are all soft and warm, douse them with melted butter, and sprinkle with cocoa powder and icing sugar. And you wonder why I've gained weight!? So totally my favorite meal so far. And while I'm on the topic of food I may as well enlighten you on my other not so delightful expereince I had this week. In Slovakia, it is very typical that the woman of the house does all the cooking and cleaning and household work, not the man. So my host mom usually prepares dinner every evening for me but sometimes she has a 24 hour shift at the hospital so my host dad has to word something out to eat. And so since my host dad doesn't cook very often, when he does cook, he is extraordinarily proud of what he prepares. His face literally beams with hapiness at all his 'hard work'. It's actaully quite cute. But back to the story. One evening it was just my host dad and I home so he was busy preparing something in the kitchen and when it was ready cheerfully called me down to the table. And what did I find there? Bacon. Raw bacon. And rolls. And onion. When I saw it I was really hoping it wasn't finished or something and that he would throw it into a pan and fry it up or something. But no. He joyfully explained to me how I could put the RAW BACON AND ONION on a roll with butter and mustard and ketchup and how delicious it is. If you saw his face though, and that sparkle in his eye you couldn't have turned him down either, no matter how gross the food looked, so I went to my happy place and dug in. To my surprise it wasn't revolting. I mean I'm going to try and avoid it in the future but it wasnt' that bad. And I must point out bacon here is quite different than back home. It comes in one big hunk and you buy it from the butcher shop so no, I'm not going to get sick from it or anything. You get to cut it into slices yourself and it is mostly fat. I mean there's 3/4 s fat and the a tiny sliver of red meat. Needless to say I'm not a fan of the whole raw meat texture and after injesting half an uncooked onion that's all I could taste for hours but I tried it. And now I know raw meat isn't my thing.

As i mentioned in my last post it's spring break for me and if I remember correctly I listed a whole bunch of things I had planned for this week. Well, it didn't really go as planned but that's kind of how life goes as an exchange student. I didn't get to go to Poland today because it was holiday there too and so my host fam said there would too many people. That was a bummer but maybe another time. I did get to go skiing again though which I was really excited about even though it hurts me. I woke up at 6 AM this morning to go with my host fam. You see my host bro had training and we were staying in the apartment which is on the hill so it wasn't like we had to go far but it was still pretty darn early! It was nice because there were hardly any people on the hill (because it wasn't open yet) and the sun hadn't come out and melted all the snow and made it slushy yet (it was 10 degrees today!). But what wasn't so nice was that my host bro and all his skiing team mates are REALLY REALLY good at skiing so guess where they were practicing and guess where I had to be? The hardest, steepest, scariest hill on the entire mountain! Yup the one that says warning, not for beginners. I am proud to report I did make it down. twice in fact. But that was it. That was all I had in me. our bodies do have limits it seems and that was mine, oh boy was that mine. By the time I made it back to the room I virtually collapsed onto my bed and was out cold for three hours. The sad thing was I had only been on the ski hill for one and half hours so I spent twice as much time recooperating as did actually skiing. Next time I think I'm going to stick to the easier hill, that way maybe I'll last a little longer. :p

Those are all the stories I've got for now but there are still four days of holidays left so who knows what else will happen!

LOVEloveLOVE

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