Velikonoce

A.k.a. Easter.

The Czechs have a very interesting take on Easter so I'll tell you about it. They think that it's funny that we hide eggs and then go look for them, instead they whip each other... much more logical. Anyways, the guys make these whips out of willow branches (see pictures on Facebook) and then they go into town and whip the girls to ensure a healthy year. When you hit the girl she is supposed to give you something like chocolate or alcohol. A Rotarian invited my host family and I to go to her house and see how the whips are made and so that I could have my very own. It was extremely interesting to see and to learn how they're made it's a very complex process. First you need a minimum of twelve willow branches and then you take another and wrap it around the bottom, binding all twelve together. Next you take four of the twelve and bend them into a helix shape and then make it stick to the rest of the whip. Finally, you braid the remaining eight branches together and tie it together at the top with a bow. It doesn't sound very complex when reading about it, but it is in real life.

So on Easter Monday we went over to all the Grandparents' houses and whipped the grandmas, female cousins, and aunts and they gave us a lot of chocolate and goodies. Afterwards we sat around and had coffee and wine and talked about Easter and how different it is from Easter in America.

Way before this, on Saturday I think, my host mother and I dyed eggs. For those of you who don't know, my third host mother is an art teacher at a local school so she knew how to paint the eggs and all the detaily stuff. The dyes here work much better than the ones in America I noticed. I was given the task of blowing the yoke out of the egg so that it could be painted which ended with a cup full of egg insides and me all out of breath. Next my host mother melted some crayon bits in order to paint with the wax and then she got down to business. She painted a bunch (See pictures on Facebook) and then she gave me an orange one to keep, which I really like. I sat and took pictures, not being the artsy fartsy type myself. It was a nice Easter overall, I got to know a lot of my extended host family which was nice. Easter marks the last school break until the end of the year which means that we're getting close to the end. One trip I forgot to add to my list last post is the school trip we take. Each class takes a trip together for three days near the end of the year so I have that to look forward to as well. I hope you all had a great Easter, I know I did!

U Ondrůšku/Králíkové

Soooooooooo... I figured I should probably update this blog again since it's been a while since last time. This post will be all about my second host family the Ondrůšeks. Vladislav is the father, Dana is the mother, and Kamila is their daughter. I lived with them from January to halfway through March. Vladislav, known as Vlada, is the Financial Director of a large company that produces large machinery based in Uhersky Brod. Dana is the secretary to the headmaster and a school in Uhersky Brod. Kamila is about six months older than me and goes to the same school I do. They live a mile away from school so the walk home was LOTS of fun. We drove to school every morning though so that was nice. Their house is amazing. It's very modern. Everything is black and white and chrome and I really liked it a lot. It looks just like a house out of a magazine. It was also three stories high. which meant lots of stairs. I also had to continue wearing my house shoes, which I officially dislike, because the floors were all hardwood and if you only wore socks you would fall. I know... I fell down the stairs. Anyways, they weren't home very much which means I was alone a lot. Vlada usually worked until seven or eight and Dana would come home for like five minutes and then go run errands or work out until seven or eight. Kamila was always in her room so I rarely saw her so it was pretty much like being alone all the time. Kamila is very quiet and shy (so I've heard) so we didn't really talk, ever. The only time I would ever see her was in the morning before school and after school I would see her for like ten seconds on the way to the kitchen or something. Vlada and Dana don't know English at all so I really had to speak only Czech, resulting in major improvements there which is nice. I recently wrote an article for the paper about how political campaigns change in relation to the changes in technology which was a very interesting topic. The Ondruseks NEVER ate. They didn't cook dinner so I was left on my own for that one and they never at breakfast either. So I usually ate two chocolate croissants at school every morning and then a Nutella sandwich or PB&J for dinner. One meal a day + Walking a mile everyday = minus nine kilos. So none of my clothes really fit me anymore and it's annoying. There's not much more to say about them because I didn't spend a lot of time with them. Since they were never home I never really talked to them, and since Vlada was convinced I couldn't speak Czech at all he always yelled when he spoke to me which was really annoying so I kind of avoided that. On the weekends we didn't do anything special. We were always just at home and every Sunday Vlada and Dana would go skiing and leave Kamila and I home alone. Anyways, I had to leave them two weeks early so I went to live with my English teacher: Milena Králíková.

Milena Kralikova is also my Czech tutor so it was really nice living with her. We would speak Czech and if I didn't understand something or wanted her to explain some piece of grammar or something she would speak in English. I lived with her and her boyfriend for two weeks and it was really nice. At first it was weird having people around after school again and having dinner, but I got used to it again after a while. On the weekend we went to the movies twice and saw The Box, which I didn't understand at all, and then we saw Up in the Air, was was OK. Anyways on my last day living with her we went to a holocaust exhibition put on by some girls from my class. It was in the Jewish synagogue that was partially destroyed, and later rebuilt, in WWII. After the exhibition, I moved to my current, and final, host family: the Kovaříks.

The Kovariks consist of Petr, the father, Jana, the mother, and Viktor, their son. I don't know what Petr does, I asked, but didn't understand the answer so it'll remain a mystery for a bit longer. Jana is an art teacher at a nearby school and Viktor goes to the same school as I do, he's fifteen. I've only lived her for a week, but so far everything is going well. We get along really well and Jana is a great cook. We just had a dinner of spaghetti, homemade tomato sauce with chicken pieces and sauteed vegetables, with Italian wine. It was really good. Viktor doesn't have any siblings so with me here he doesn't really know the "sibling boundaries." He doesn't really know when to leave me alone and when I don't mind if he's around. Like, when I was writing an email home, he came in and just was like hi and I was like I can't write in English and speak in Czech at the same time. It's a bit odd, but I expect it'll get better as time goes on. They have two cats, Blackie, and...Blackie. One's a girl and one's a boy. I'll write more about the Kovariks in a later post after I've lived here longer.

So three months from Saturday, Daniel's birthday by the way, I come back to America. It still feels like I just got here yesterday and if there's one thing I've learned while on exchange it's that a year is not long at all. Anyways, before I come home I've got a lot planned so I thought I'd give you a list of where I'll be and when:

April 9-10 My friend April from Pisek is coming to visit me
April 21-May 1 My Mom comes to visit!!!! We'll be in UB, Prague, and Berlin!
May 3-13 Greece and Italy with Rotary
May 18-23 Backpacking in the Ukrainian mountains with school
May 28-30 Krakow in Poland with Rotary
June 4-6 District Conference with Rotary in Trebic
June 17-20 Canoeing/Camping on the Vltava River with Rotary
June 20-27 Trip to France and England with my exchanger friend Amy
July 3 I come home!

So there's my list of what'll I'll be up to for the last three months of my exchange. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and post them on Facebook so you guys can see.