Sunday 4- Thursday 8 September 2011

It's probably a good sign when you've been in a place a little over a month and you find that you're too busy to write in your blog; especially if you're busy doing things that don't have to do with going to an embassy or an immigration office. Here's the run-down of what I've been up to:

Sunday: I went back to the Word of Life church (the charismatic one), and this time Heather came with me. I wanted her to come so I could get a second opinion about the church, and she wanted to go so that she could listen in Slovak (she's trying to spend 30 hours/week working on her Slovak language development). Funny thing though: she liked it because she's from a more charismatic background, but I actually started to feel like it's not the church for me. It's not the charismatic-craziness that bothered me this time; I was more bothered because the sermon was taken from a big chunk of Romans 11, but I felt like it was used as a "springboard" and not actually picked through to reveal the meaning. The sermon was encouraging and all and I don't think he said anything wrong, but I'm not really comfortable with the fact that the sermon was so far removed from the original passage. Hmmmm, so I don't know what I'm going to do about that....

After that church service, I met up with a few friends from the student house in Groningen: Lucka, from Slovakia, and her boyfriend, Marcin, from Poland. It was nice to see some familiar faces and hear some stories about their recent trip to Korea.

After spending some time with them, I ran off to City Light church. It's the first church I checked out here in Bratislava, and this was only my second time going, but so far I think it's the church where I feel most at home. I mean that, but I also have a small confession to make: I was so tired and hungry by 16:00 on Sunday, I really wanted to ditch it. The reason I still went was because I invited a Dutchman, who I met in Ljubljana, who was visiting Bratislava for a conference, to join me for the service. (Meeting people and then later reconnecting with them..it always fascinates me.)Well, I'm glad I went after all because it was so nice to catch up with some old friends (by "old" I mean the friends I met at the beginning of August), and I feel like I left with a better idea of what the church is about and where they want to go (I found it interesting..like something I want to be a part of), and I met more people, and my Dutch friend brought me stroopwafels... I wish I could put the feeling that I had as I left the service into clear concise words so that you could read it and know exactly what I experienced and how it affected me. If I say, "I felt encouraged," that's inching closer to the meaning, but I think it was more like "acupuncture encouragement" because it was so pinpointed at exactly what I needed that day.

Monday: I mostly just dawdled all day. Sometime in the morning, I went into work to withdraw my desire to interview for a spot on a team that teaches business English at some big company. It seemed like a good opportunity when I first heard about it, but as I considered it more I realized that I'm not really into the idea of having that much business English on my schedule during my first year. I put a lot of thought into it over the weekend, but I wasn't sure if I would be frowned on for dropping out of the interview process for this team. I was so relieved when my boss agreed that he didn't think it would be a good fit for me!
Most of Monday afternoon I used my native speaker abilities to analyze some computer generated questions for a genius friend who's working to get his PhD in something with artificial intelligence.

Tuesday: I hung out with Heather. We went to the grocery store, then to her house to do some baking, eating, youtube watching, Slovak vocabulary drilling, and chatting. Between the Oreos (brought special from the USA- they don't have them here), the banana bread, licking the brownie batter bowl, sampling something like cream cheese, and testing the finished brownies, I feel like I must've gained at least a kilo. So worth it? Maybe not...  Anyway, it was a good time, and then in the evening we went with her neighbor to a free public Slovak course. I'm planning to pursue private Slovak lessons, but before I can arrange that it was nice to finally go to something so I can start building a base. We focused on the verb "to be"- using it for basic introductions. I like that the group is multilingual and the teacher only speaks Slovak to us; however I don't like it when I can't see the white board. The teacher was always lingering in front of the board and in my way and I was getting pretty frustrated, but I didn't want to ask him to move because the only way I could think to say it in Slovak was kind of rude ("Von, prosím" --> "Go out, please" --> that's what we say to our dog), and I didn't want to ruin his Slovak-only atmosphere by asking in English, so I kept standing up or trying to look around him, etc. until he got the hint. So he asked me something...something like "Can you see?" but the word for see is close to the word for know so when I was trying to negate and conjugate the verb he was using so I could say, "I can't see," I kept accidentally saying, "I don't know." Heather told me later that we actually had a very confusing, but intelligible conversation that was something like this:
Teacher: "Can you see?"
Leah: "I don't know"
T: "You don't know?"
L: "No, I don't know"
T: "I can't see"
L: "Yeah, I know."
I heard the phrase "I don't know" once in a film a few weeks ago, but I did not mean to produce it again- I thought I was just repeating the teacher (and hoping he would move out of the way)!
I spent the night at Heather's place on Tuesday because very early the next morning...

Wednesday: We took a trip to the village of Pezinok to help out at a homeless shelter. I really had no expectations for that trip, which was good because I may have been disappointed if I had been counting on making a difference in anyone's life or doing anything really useful that morning.  I don't completely understand how this worked out, but I guess there was some event for homeless people going on somewhere else in the city, and it was our job to hang out at the shelter in case anyone showed up there? (That's probably totally wrong... I just have no idea...) Anyway, it was kinda cool. For me, everything is just new and interesting, so I go into everything without knowing what to expect and I'm always surprised and never disappointed. It's great to be foreign! I got to listen to a lot of Slovak, and I watched somebody make goulash, and I listened to more Slovak...pretty authentic Slovak experience. I tried to memorize what was going into the goulash so I can someday make it myself; I was watching so closely, I was sure I could do it. But then, this lady came in, pulled something mysterious from the cabinet- I have no idea what it was because it was wrapped in a napkin with rubber bands around it. She kept it hidden in her palm until she came to the goulash pot, then she let it slip out of the napkin and into the pot, and I have no idea what it was. I was aghast, actually, my jaw must've dropped. I couldn't believe that she slipped into the kitchen and added something so mysterious and I'll never ever know what it was! Remarkable.
Anyway, when 11:30 rolled around, Heather and I, together with Marek (a Slovak guy who's pretty much in charge of the shelter), took the bus back to Bratislava to have lunch at the home of a Slovak couple who does stuff with the orphanage here in the city. They were darling, just like you would expect from people who work with an orphanage and invite strange foreigners into their home for lunch.
Wednesday evening I went to a Bible study at the home of Viera and Hannes (the couple from the Word of Life church). They've just returned home from Uganda this week, so Viera told us all about their trip and the things they saw and experienced. I was exhausted from my day, and especially from trying to take in all the new language, so I feel like I listened in kind of a comatose state..not evaluating anything, just listening. Actually, it's 01:30 here, so I kind of feel the same way right now... too tired to tell you about someone else's trip to Africa...

Thursday: Ran, ate, showered... it was kinda drizzly, but I felt a serious need to go visit Slavin, a big war memorial/cemetery here in the city. It's located on a huge hill that's a killer to climb up, but provides good exercise and a great view. Here are the pictures:

View from the hill where the memorial is

On the way back to the bus stop..notice the really old house on the left

I wanted to capture how steep the hill was that I had to climb to get to the memorial, but this really doesn't do it justice. You have to come experience the steepness for yourself.