I can not believe that I’ve been here for just under four months!! It feels like it's flown by so quickly, I can only imagin that the rest of my year away will pass just as quickly, if not quicker. I didn't do an update for my two month mark because not much had happend, but a LOT has happend for me this past month.
I've been hanging out a lot with Mckayla, she's from Penticton and we've gotten really close. I really like spending time with her and the other exchage students. I have started having Czech lessons twice a week, and I think that they have helped, but I'm not really sure. One thing I am sure of is I've started to understand a bit more when people are talking with each other. I think this will help me a lot because I'll be able to start recognizing more words and overall learning more, quicker. My class is with a bunch of other exchage students in Prague, we are mostly from Rotary, but there are a few from AFS, as well as from a program run within the school where I have my lessons. One thing that I'm really struggling with(apart from the speaking part) are the cases. The Czech language has a few cases that I need to memorise and I'm finding that quite challenging. After Czech classes those of us that are free usually spend time together, at a cafe or just walking around, lately it has been a bit too chilly to walk without a warm place to get to, but some Christmas markets have opened so I can't wait to visit more of those. One of my friends, Madelyn, from the US visited Prague and we got to go to a Christmas market together, it was a blast, the whole Christmas spirit here is just amazing. Over autumn break I stayed at the cabin of another one of the host families in my club, I was in Staré Krečany. It’s a small town near Rumbourg, which is in the north of the Czech Republic, and right on the border of Germany. I had an amazing time, I got to go on a few hikes and also did some work stacking newly chopped wood to dry for next year’s winter. Seeing as we were so close to Germany we went there to pick up our groceries because it’s about the same price, but apparently better quality and better selection. I had an amazing time and I’m so thankful for the oppertunity. At school I did a presentation on the Canadian school system for my french class, I think it went well, but I believe my teacher underestimated how in-depth I would go, but in my defence, when asked how much I should include she said as much as you can... Soooooo. That being said I probably should have asked her how long she wanted it to be. Still a good experience and a bit of a funny story. The biggest thing that has happend over the past two months is that I moved host families. I moved host families on the 8th of November and I'm really happy here. I have a older brother named Ondrej, and a younger sister named Klara. Klara and I have gotten really close, we read the same books, we both like Hamilton and we both love baking. So lots in common. Another thing in common is their whole family spent three months living in Canada last year, the lived in North Vancouver, it was really fun to show them some of the pictures I have of Vancouver and of Tofino(they haven’t visited Victoria, but they spent time in Nanaimo as well as Tofino), and then seeing basically the same photos from last year when they were there. I am so happy I moved when I did, even though it was a bit early. The first weekend i was with my new family I went with my host mom and my host sister to a hotel to the south east of Prague to celebrate Saint Martins day. Its a tradition to eat goose, and the goose there was really good. The hotel we were at was having some sort of celebration for St Martin’s day, so there was a party one evening with most of the people staying st the hotel. While I was there I got to meet a bunch of my new host family’s family friends, it was so nice to meet them all. Recently we’ve started preparing for Christmas, we made three kilos of gingerbread and decorated two wreaths, one for the door and one as a centrepiece for the table, the gingerbread took us three hours to cut out, so we spent the whole evening cutting out gingerbread. One of their traditions is to watch Mama Mia when they’re doing the gingerbread, it was a blast, we all sang and danced along to the music and I can honestly say that it was one of the best days I’ve had so far. So far I’ve been here for almost a month and I’m really loving it. I am so so happy that I was able to move and I’m so grateful to rotary for helping me. My favourite experiences from these past three months have been getting to know my new host family and spending time with friends, below you can see some photos, they may not all be in chronological order, sorry, but I hope you enjoy them anyways. As always thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it :) -Emma
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AuthorHi! I'm Emma, I will be going on a yearlong exchange to the Czech Republic and I'm using this blog to catalogue my experiences during my exchange. Archives
January 2019
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