Day 29

Hello again.. So today is day 29, I have almost been here a whole month and so far its been grand. Lots of traveling: Slovakia, Trebič, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland.. new friends, a lovely family, and I´m even starting to understand a bit more czech!

Sunday, I went with the family on a little day trip to a small town close by to have a look-see at the watchtower and the local castle. The watchtower was very interesting. It marks the spot where a US Liberty plane crashed during an emergency landing in 1944. From the tower you are able to see where the men landed and the landing of spot of the plane itself (with tthe help of the handy tour guide that works at the tower). Most men were either captured and held captive by German soldiers or died from impact, but there were a few who made it out alive. One man hid in a nearby forest living off of the land for some time. Before he died, he hung a large 15 by 15 cm Cross that had a large image of Jesus´ head in the middle of it, on a near tree.. The tree has since grown of course, but the cross remains. The tree, for the past 64 years, has grown around the cross. Visitors can still see 5x5 cm of the cross through the whole that has naturally formed in the tree, which outlines the head of the Jesus in the center of the cross. It was very cool. After our outing, we stopped at Dušans mothers and had streudle.. yum yum yummy :)
Monday, I went to school which was a little dry. I had my harder subjects and my classmates had to write tests in 4 of them, so naturally they were a little stressed.. But after school I came home and played soccer with the neighbor kids ( All between the ages of 6 and 10.... the 6 year old has better czech than I do..). That was a lot of fun. They were convinced that because I was older I had to be a pretty good soccer player, so the teams were made up of myeslef... vs. all of them. The score ended up being around 13-0.. for the kids.. but it was great! After our game of soccer a girl named Míriška (7) gave me a bit of a czech lesson :) She is soo adorable!
Tuesday, I only went to school for half of the day. I went out for lunch with my parents and they noticed that i wasn´t feeling very well so they brought me home to sleep before they went back to work.. So I lay on the couch and watched movies (in czech naturally) and slept until 6pm when the family all came home for the day. The high light of the day for sure, was seeing my brothers face when he found out that I had eaten the yogurt he had "Shottied" the day before.. I had totally forgotten his claim to the strawberry yogurt when I was enjoying it earlier.. but it came rushing back to me when he opened the fridge last night and asked the whereabouts of the yogurt in question.. he spent a good 5 minutes looking through the fridge, then I walked in and noticed what was going on.. I told that I had eaten it ealier by mistake.. he was truely upset.. OVER YOGURT. Later that night Mom went to the local shop.. I went with and purchased a container of my brothers favorite yogurt and it out it in the fridge for him to have in the morning (after taking a sharpie and drawing a big smiley face on it).
TODAY, I went to school today to purchase my lunch chip. Its this little red plastic chip that you put on your key ring and scan over this little scanner at lunch.. Its really quite high-tech! When i was at school , waiting in line for the little red lunch tag, one tof the teachers, who I think mist speak English because hers was great, came up to me and asked if I would talk with her Husband.. She said that her English is quite good but he wants to speak to someone who is a native speaker. I wa sa little hesitant to agree because my English has become a lot worse since arriving here. But I think it will be good for me aswell as him, I will have the opportunity to practice speaking proper nglish and so will he. I asked her what he was wanting out of these conversations.. because I don´t think that I am a fit to be teaching him anything in the grammatical sense, but she said that all he wants is to talk in English. If I kow how to do anything its talk :) We have yet to arrange a time, but Iĺl be going over once a week to chat. She said he woud pay me, just enough to have a little pocket money to go out for coffee or something, but to get m¨paid just to talk to someone.. in my native language.. We´ll see how it goes.. But after I bought my little red card and talked with the teacher I trammed my way back home and slept all day.... still sick :( But on a high note, my brother talked to me today! Hahaa he appreciated the yogurt!

Life and Laughter
Anička

P.S. My brother hasd maybe eaten 3 vegetables since I´ve been here.. he will literaly scrape them of his plate, or give them to his dad, even if its only 3 slices of raddish (no joke.. this an actual example!), then tonight we had spinach (I´ve plum forgotten how to spell it.). Not just a little bit of leaf on the side of the plate.. but a large (VERY large) scoop of previously frozen mushed spinach, and he ate it all up! He didn´t finish his meat or potatoes but he scraped the last bit of the green stuff off of his plate! I was in shock! So.. mental note: for X-mas heś getting Yogurt and Spinach!! :)