Sun
May
31
If any of the exchange students from slovakia district 2240 read this i want all of you to know i love and will miss all of you. Getting to know all of you and see how everyone has changed over this last year has been the best times of my life. Even though there are some of you who i havent talked to a lot i still was able to see how you change from when we were first at language camp until now when we left Slovensky Raj. I had never realized how hard it would be saying goodbye since i can usually take these things in stride i never thought i would get home and wish i could have another week with all of the exchange students together. I really have grown accustom to seeing you guys and i dont know how i will be able to handle not having you all around. In this last week i believe we all go a lot closer and hopefully sometime in the next few years we can schedule a reunion whether it be in Slovakia or in one of our countries i can not wait to see all of you again. I also cant wait to visit all of you. The first on my list is Canada since it is the closest. Then to either Mexico or Brazil depening on my money situation.
Wed
May
20
As my year in Slovakia comes closer to its end I realize more and more the calibur of friends you meet while on exchange. I know that everyone goes into these types of things expecting to make good lifelong friends but this always seemed a little odd to me since you really dont know what kind of people you are going to be around whether or not the other students in you city will have similar interests or if your classmates are going to be open to accepting you into their group. At first i thought it was going to be hard for me to fit in because of my weight since there weren’t any kids close to my size in the entire school. It did take a little while for me to be accepted as one of them. Now i find i can talk to many of the other students on exchange without the fear of being judged or made fun of because of my beliefs.
Back home in Ohio i find that i have more true friends than i thought i did before coming to Slovakia. I am truely grateful that this has happened because you can never have enough people that care about you.
I truely hope that as time goes on these relationships never fade. Only that they grow stronger as time goes on.
Mon
May
11
One of the best things about studying abroad is it opens you up to so much that you probably wouldnt have been open to if you had stayed with your same group of friends or hung out with the same type of people. In the beginning of my year abroad I was a typical “metal head” being that metal and rock were the only types of music i really listened to. Now that i have been away from my normal way of life for almost 9 months i have changed not only my music interests but also some of the things i do in general. I believe that i am more forgiving now than i was before i came, i also think that i am more generous too. I dont think all of the changes in my life have been good ones though. It seem that i have become a border line alcoholic not in the sense that i am getting addicted to it or anything just that when i go out i order a beer instead of anything else regardless of the time of day. This is the case because living on 50 euros a month isnt that easy and when getting a half liter of beer is cheaper than a .2 liter bottle of coke my choice is really easy. There have also been things i have noticed about myself that i wish to first of all i would like to be more out going would also like to be a little more self motivated. there are other things i would like to improve on that really dont bother me personally but it would be a healthy decision to lose some weight and start exercising.
