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Rotary District 6110 Youth Exchange |
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Harry
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| YE Journal at Rotary Youth Website | ||
Students: To add a message to your travel blog, email the entry to vicki; she will put all entries online.
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Why I Chose to Study Overseas for a Year |
Note: Most Recent Entries Appear At the Top
| Date/ Entry Title | Entry |
| 4/23/08 8:48 AM | Hello everyone, Allright so whats new with me? Well I just moved to my 3rd host family about 3 weeks ago, and it's a single mom right now named Elen R. Her daughter is in the US in California for exchange and comes back in about a May 8th so not that far away. I'm enjoying living here very much, she makes quite good food and im lucky for that. I'm living in my town now again my second host famiy lived in a village 10 minute train ride and 20 minute walk outside. That was not the funnest part of living there but i really liked that family as well. I'm now living in Mistek by the city square, my city is Frydek-Mistek and it's got two parts of the city Frydek and Mistek. Last week 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. I'm studying Russian now at my school and I still have German which I did last semester also. I actually like Russian more than German because it’s a lot like Czech. the only problem is Azbuka (Cyrillic) 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. Now my teacher speaks Russian every class and i'm usually lost for most of it. She speaks Czech, Russian, German, English, and maybe something else.. but Czech is so close to Russian that when she speaks it the students understand almost everything, and i'm left catching random words I think might be similair to Czech. I'm enjoying learning the basics of these languages and I'm really enjoying traveling it is really alot of fun. In late Febuary I had a ski week and I learned how to snowboard here so it was alot pretty nice. I was in the advanced group and it was only my 3-4th day, but we were all going to the snow park and I learned how to boardslide and grind rails which was pretty cool. The trip was about 4 days long and on the 4th day we went to Germany which was 10 km away from the hostel we were staying in and we went cross country skiing. That was fun as well one guy and I turned it into extreme cross country because we had been snowboarding to much and cross country wasn't really for us. anyway thats all for now -Harry |
| 12/10/07
1:59 PM |
Hello everyone, Living here in the Czech Republic is amazing, and you can not even imagine how much of a great time I am having here on exchange. Besides making friends from quite a few different countries I’m also experiencing an interesting new lifestyle. By that I mean that I would never have the chance to see so many new and different things back in the US. (obviously) I am living in a city named Frydek-Mistek (F-M), and my current host family lives in a suburb of it..10 minute walk away. It is called Staremesto (oldtown) and it has around 1000 people living here. FM is 20 km south of Ostrava the 3rd largest city in the CZ, which has 300,000 people…not very big compared to the US. FM is located on the Slovakian border, an hour drive away.School here is different for me than most exchange students.. on account of I am attending a university/jr. college. It is for students that have graduated high school and who are going to go into business/hotel management. So that classes are based on tourism, languages, and business. But, I don’t speak Czech fluently enough to take the harder classes so I am in…12 English classes a week, 8 German classes, 6 computer tech/ typing, 1gym , and 1 sports rules. Basically the only chance I have to learn something out of those is German. Which I can learn faster than Czech, because it is closer to English and makes more sense than Czech. (I know more Czech) haha The only downfall to going to a university besides the fact that everyone is about 20-24 years old…is that they mostly commute to my town. A lot of them live in villages and those are usually 20-50km away. Some are Slovakian and some live farther away than Prague. The language is coming slowly, I’ve realized the more I study the better I get…imagine that. Haha Also I’ve been told my about 5 CZ kids that Czech is one of hardest languages. About 3 said it was in the top 3, 1 said it was the hardest, and one more said it was about 5th hardest. The only thing I got out of all of their opinions is that Japanese, Finnish, and Thai is harder..lol Seriously though Czech is pretty hard, and its been 3 months since I have been here and I’m just now starting to really get decent conversations with people, one of bad things is that most students take English for at least 10 years in the CZ. And at my school they are still studying it so most kids are fluent here…well then you have the kids that don’t know any English barely so it works itself out.. you just have to really try to learn the language. I’m guessing it’s that way with all the exchange students this year. In my town are 2 other exchange students Jeff from Ontario, and Thomas from Tennessee. WE have become quite good friends because we go to school together and usually end up hanging out with each other almost everyday. That could be one reason my Czech is coming so slowly, but not the only reason I have traveled to a ton of cities here, and I’m not even joking. Would you like me to list them? Ok I will. Prague, Jindrichruv Hradec, Tabor, Cesky Krumlov, Ostrava, Opava, and Brno… think that’s all. Also in September I was able to go on a trip to France, THAT WAS AWESOME. My host father’s daughter is a French teacher in a nearby town, and her class goes on a yearly trip to French speaking countries. We visited a lot of southern France and it was amazing. A few of the cites were Avignon (my fav.), Lyon, Marseilles, Monaco (I know its not in France but we went there) and many more. I also got to visit Pont Du Gard, which is an ancient part of the roman aqueducts! I studied about them in my Latin classes back in the US but I never thought I would be able to see them in person! It was so cool, not to mention in Nimes I got to go to an ancient Roman coliseum not THE coliseum but another one…man it was so cool. I never knew those were in France but I guess there are just bits and pieces of ancient Rome scattered throughout all of Europe… I’m sure that if I had just thought about it for a moment I would have come to that conclusion on my own…but I hadn’t. So, I love my host parents right now. (enough said..lol let me elaborate) They are a retired couple, well my host dad Tony is almost retired and Milada my host mom is. I don’t know how old they are but around 65. Anyway, my host dad owns like ¼ of some factory in Ostrava, he and his 3 partners keep running it and they have owned it for 15 years. Tony goes on trips sometimes to get more business I suspect (because he’s in France right now) and I’m guessing it works. They make great food, and its always quiet and relaxing here. I have my own room which is nice, and I also love good food so it all works itself out. Tony and Milada have 2 children and they are around there mid 30s so their children are almost my age. Both of which are boys and are very nice. I will switch host families in early January and I will have the family that Jeff now has, they are nice and they have a son who we often hang out with who is cool so I’m excited. So I cant think of anything else at the moment to write of, if you would like to email me please do so. |
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