The Procrastination has Ended.... For Now.

Ahojte, všetci! Ako sa volate? Dobre? Dobre.

Thank you for putting up with my, well... pretty much not posting. So. Here goes:

Christmas, or Vianoce, as it’s known in Slovakia, involves traditions that are essentially... entirely different from American ones. Let’s start:
1. Vianoce is nice, but the day before Vianoce is the one all the kiddies care about; that’s when you get the darček, the presents. Christmas Eve is when you get presents, and when you have Christmas dinner. It’s all very odd to me. Coincidentally, it’s not Santa Claus who gives you darček. It’s Ježiško, or “the little Jesus”. Not a huge difference, I’ll grant you, but Ježiško evidently prefers the darkness of the evening to the darkness of the morning; he leaves presents under the tree after dinner. (Around seven at night, or so. It’s pitch black outside by then, in case you were wondering.)
2. Vianoce večera (Christmas dinner) has one major element: ryba (fish). And everyone has it. Everyone. When I asked Petra about what people like my beloved elder sister (who hates fish with a fervent burning passion, and would probably murder someone if we made her eat the hated thing on her birthday) eat for Vianoce večera, she opened her mouth, froze, then got this nonplused look on her face. Eventually she said “I... actually don’t know. I’ve never heard of anyone eating anything but fish for Christmas dinner.” It’s very strange. Everyone does the same thing for Christmas here. I’ve never really heard of two American families celebrating Christmas in the same way. So odd.
3. There are superstitions that must be observed with Vianoce večera. First of all, you must eat a piece of garlic dipped in honey. Why? Well, supposedly, the garlic will give you good health in the new year, and the honey will give you happiness. (At this point, I would like to state that I currently have a sore throat, and am coughing at random intervals. This does not seem like good health to me. However, it tasted significantly better than the spoonful of black eyed peas my mother tries to shove down my protesting throat on New Year’s back in the States, so I suppose I shouldn’t gripe.) Then, you must have a fish scale, and some sort of coin under your plate. This is supposed to bring you lots of money in the coming year.
4. After dinner, the children (if you can call an eighteen year old and a twenty-seven year old children) are banished to some other part of the house, whilst the parents “look for Ježiško” *cou*get the presents from their hiding places and put them under the tree*gh*. Then they are called back down, and the unwrapping frenzy, which is the same in any country, commences.

After this, the next two days or so are spent with family and friends. For me, it was spent with a smile permanently plastered on my face, and nodding when appropriate, especially at dinners with people I sort of kind of vaguely knew. Generally, I was allowed to sneak off to a corner to read my book fairly quickly after dinner was finished. When I wasn’t, my eyes tended to glaze over as I drifted off into Lala land. No one was talking to me, at any rate. This isn’t a problem, you understand, it’s just, well, dead boring. This is probably why my favorite guests were a set of friends of my host parents. The Anatol family consists of two parents, I’m afraid their names escape me, and one daughter, a ten year old girl named Sara. Sara and I tended to get thrown together when our families got together, me because my Slovak language skills are like a toddler’s, and Sara because she’s a ten year old kid. Thus, we bonded. I would speak in my halting Slovak, occasionally substituting an English word, and Sara would speak in her decent, but far from brilliant English, while randomly breaking into Slovak. She learned English, while I learned Slovak. It was a brilliant arrangement, and kept both of us from going mad with boredom. That’s probably why I wound up giving her a Vianoce darček of sorts. She’s now the owner of a copy of Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, in the original English. I do hope she enjoys it, once she learns enough English to read it. I’m going to miss her....

Now, after the torture of family get togethers, came Silvester. Most of you are probably blinking and going “What the heck is Silvester?”. I did the same when Miša first asked me what my plans for Silvester were. She was equally surprised when I informed her that we didn’t really have any special names for December 31st, that it was just “New Year’s Eve”. So. Now you are among the enlightened: Silvester is the same thing as New Year’s Eve. Isn’t that nice?
At any rate, for Silvester, I wound up wandering around Starý Mesto, listening to the concerts the city had set up there, and just generally wandering around and taking in the sights. I did end up having to get something at one of the many McDonald’s in Starý Mesto (there are... at least three that I know of within walking distance. Possibly four. And if that isn’t sad, I don’t know what is.) purely so that I would have an excuse to use their bathroom at around 23:15. I then hastily headed for the Danube, so that I could watch the midnight fireworks show over the Danube. It was absolutely gorgeous! I managed to snag a seat on the wall separating the street from the bank that was right across the river from where they were shooting off the fireworks. Excellent luck, on my part!

And... two days later, at about nine o’clock at night, I moved. I am now living in an apartment in a totally different part of town, near my school. I don’t really have a verdict on the place yet. I’ve only been here for one day. The Novaks seem to be nice enough people, even if I don’t know my host father’s name yet. The only downside is that they don’t have wireless internet. And the internet they do have, which is hooked up to a family computer, is, well, to put it bluntly, slower than molasses in January. So. I get to type things like blog entries on a word processor on my laptop, then take said laptop to Starý Mesto and go sit in a place where I know I can get my hands on wi-fi. I’m going to hope that a coffee shop that I know of has easily accessible free wi-fi so that I don’t have to freeze my hands off in the process of doing so (the place I know of is outside. SO not pleasant.) And they have a spiral staircase to enter and leave the house. I hate spiral staircases. It has to do with the heights phobia.

And... that’s all there is. There isn’t anymore.