Exchange in April

Hey all,

I'm doing great lately, and I have been taking alot of pictures so I have some more of my town random buildings and the such. here is that link below

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010843&l=81941&id=1447620606

Allright so whats new with me? Well I just moved to my 3rd host family this weekend, and it's a single mom right now named Elen. Her daughter is in the US in California for exchange and comes back in about a month. Speaking of which I leave on June 10th.. it's creeping up on me like crazy i have 60 days tomorrow 2 full months left ahead of me. So I have to get on it, as in do everything I wanted to do here.

So I had a kind of random Friday night this last weekend, to say the least. Jeff, Thomas, David (2nd host bro) and myself were all waiting at the train station to go to Ostrava. It is 20 km north of FM and it's 3rd largest city. Anyway there was 2 homeless guys there and they were both causing trouble with the taxi drivers inside the train station for whatever reason. After getting escorted out by the taxi drivers a couple times, one came on to the train platform where we were waiting for our train.
Now, this homeless guy has a name and that name is FRANTA!.. sounds like fanta but with an R. and after him telling David that he wants us to vote for him in the next Czech election which he wants to run for president of CZ in. haha The funny part to that is he didn't know that Vaclav Klaus was re-elected this year already and he thought we were saying Santa Claus..they sound kinda different ;)
Then our train came and Franta decided to go with us to Ostrava, we proceeded to videoing our conversation with him for about 10 mins. getting pictures and it was funny. He also started touching Jeff's hands saying they were to cold and then he kissed Thomas and Jeff both in the ears..that was awkward. Then at the end we gave him our 2 liter of pop because he wanted it and we went to meet up with our friends. (the end of that story)

Today I went to Elen's work (host mother) she's a surgeon at the hostpital and I got a little kind of tour it was cool. I also started talking to all of her work friends/colleages they asked me how I like Czech food and things like that. Elen is really cool I like her alot, she's currently remodeling her house and it's kinda crazy but it doesnt really bother me. Also she speaks English but not very much and so 100% talking to her is in Czech which is really good for me. It is my first host family to do this with so im excited. It's difficult and I make her laugh alot but she does that normally. Also on Sunday were going to Bald Mt. which is the 2nd highest peak in the CZ..but its also really small haha. I climbed it with my first host father Tony, and it took like an hour at most I think but it was fun.

Tomorrow a friend on exchange in Prague is coming to FM to visit to Sunday so he will be here for four days. So that should be fun I will post what we do, and im guessing we will have alot of pictures as well.

Then on April 28-30 we have a Venice trip and Jeff, Thomas and I are trying to stay later and travel because Jeff has family that lives in Italy but we shall see how that goes.
So thats all for now
-Harry

long time no blog..

ski week, daily life, new semester, website, this last week, return date

First off I’m putting a link to a map of all the cities I’ve traveled to so far since being on exchange. It shows my favorite places and a big map/small map of the world. (got it from facebook)

second which is ski week, which was amazing by the way. I really love snowboarding, and it’s an independent sport/extreme so that’s probably why I liked it so much, plus I was pretty good for starting out here. I ended up boardsliding a box rail, if any of you know what that is, I will put pictures up from that. and this weekend I’m going to steal Jeff’s camera and take at least 100 pictures of Frydek-Mistek, he doesn’t know yet but he will soon :) Ski week went like this, ...let me start from the begginging. A friend on exchange who lives in another city about 5 hours came from his town to visit us guys in FM for the weekend before ski week. We went out to a school ball we got invited to (although we don’t go to that school), and that was Friday. On Saturday I think we went to the cafe and just chilled out for the day. Then on Sunday, it was my host brother David’s birthday and Jeff and Trevor (friend from Cali) came for that and there was more hanging out. Then Monday morning the starting of ski week us 3 guys (Thomas was in Switzerland) and one more guy on exchange from Canada went to the total opposite side of the country 10 km away from Germany. It's called Spicak and we were also in Zelezna Ruda. The train ride there took about 12 hours, we had a delay in every city and we missed our train in Prague because our train was late. Anyway it turned out to be a great week because it was my 3rd day snowboarding and I got into the advanced group...haha it wasn’t that hard because everyone was starting either skiing or snowboarding, and out of 14 kids 5 were in the advanced group which was cool. I was in the group with Jeff, Nate, Trevor, Julie and myself. We all ended up being snowboarders and really hitting the snow park hard. I’m the only one from the group that didn’t get hurt to badly, except for when I was doing a 50-50 to a frontside boardslide on a box rail and slipped out on the boardslide and smacked my face on the rail...except for that which didn’t hurt that much except for me biting my lip I was the least hurt from the advanced group. :) haha.. Jeff kind of had a minor concussion, Trevor fell off a jump and couldn’t walk for a day, Nate messed up his knee and could kind of walk better than Trevor, and Julie I don’t remember but she hurt more than me.!? lol..

As for my new semester of school, I’m no longer taking typing class or a second German class. But I do have Russian now, and more English classes. I actually like Russian more than German because it’s a lot like Czech. the only problem is azbuka but that’s fun to read after you get it basically..unless your teacher writes it in cursive on the board, you read it in print in the book, and your writing yourself is chicken scratch..and did I mention that I’m being taught it in Czech? but that’s ok the teacher is also my Czech teacher at school so whenever I get a bad case of...what?/I don’t understand this she just translates...which seems to happen often.

Daily life is going pretty well, not much to tell there other than the fact that not much has changed. Except for my month long no school, that’s not fun not having it but I’m over it, I had to much free time anyway. I’m still mainly going to cafes, or what us guys have started doing is going to Jeff's flat and watching episodes of scrubs, lol yea its fun and sometimes we practice Czech we made up some flash card games which makes it fun to learn... yay! ..haha :) but all in all I’m mostly just enjoying what I can here, and experiencing as much as I can.

Stating with last Thursday I’ve had a great jam packed week. David (host bro) Jeff, on of David's friends and myself went to Ostrava to go see a thaiboxing tournament. It was really cool, I’m not much of a boxing guy myself, but it was cool to bet fake money on whose going to beat up who for 10 minutes each.
Then on Friday I had my schools ball, and that was a lot of fun. I don’t see kids from my school out and about much but when I do see them at school parties or wherever I do seem them I always have a lot of cau's or ahoj's the next few days at school. (hi's hey's)

Saturday was a good day also, it was a lot of relaxing but it was fun. Jeff and I didn't do much but hang out and watch more scrubs, and go to the cafe but thats it.

I don't remember doing anything to interesting Sunday, and Monday but I'm pretty sure it was fun. Tuesday I had my Rotary presentation for my club, Jeff and Thomas also had there presentations. It was in Czech and I kinda got everything caught in my throat so it didn't turn out for the best. But it's okay I'm studying Czech more now and that will help me out a lot (yes i know thats an obvious answer)

Wednesday which was tonight, Mark who is living in Ostrava (Canadian) came to FM to get some money from Jeff so we went to the cafe, and hung out for a while. Except for missing skype with my mom its been great week. : `

And finally for now, I'm trying to set my return date for June 9th.

-Harry

1. Vail, CO, USA


2. Frydek-Mistek, Czech Republic


3. Avignon, France


4. Marseille, France


5. Washington DC, DC, USA


6. Tulsa, OK, USA


7. Prague, Czech Republic

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been a while heres an update

alrighty then, here we go

ive gone snowboarding once more since my last time, wow...sorry christopher i know you were only 3 years old but i didnt mean to sideswipe you... :) yea i hit a jump to it was crazy...haha

The only sad thing that happened when i went to visit Prague and Třebíč (can you say that?) was that 2 of my good firends here had to go back to Australia. there school years are from jan. - jan so thats how they exchange..it sucks because i loved those guys and they are alot of fun..

Ive got a ski week coming up where i will be snowboarding at and thats at the end of jan-start of feb so that should be fun.. not everyone is going though because it is expensive but enough of the exchange students are going for it to be alot of fun.

The 24th will mark me being gone for 5 months, and if thats not hard enough to believe its harder to believe for me that my exchange is half over! seriously where does all the time go? but lets not get me started on the concept of time im not really sure it exists.

I have just been doing average day to day things here, i dont have school this month because my school has exams all of jan. so its really nice to be out of that thing..except for my english test im studying for on czech history for tomorrow..which is kinda lame.

basically ive just been chilling out in cafe's or at my house or jeffs flat... and facebook can always kill some boredom (not that im bored here by any means). haha A friend of ours is coming up for the weekend next weekend so im looking forward to that, should be fun.

Im not playing bass as much as i should be, but i just hate not having an amplifier..kinda blows but whatevs maybe i can just suck it up and keep practicing because god knows i need it.

Nothing really else to report, nothing out of the ordinary going on here, just living in the CR an enjoying every minute of it :) im basically just at a slow point right now without school and ive ngot really no extra curricular activities so im just relaxing...

harry


ps ive got idea why but spell check is like "i hate you" so thats not working out right now

tak cau