Czech Republic experiences: February 2008

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