First Month in Slovakia.

Before I went to Slovakia, I decided to write this blog in Dutch, but It’s part of the EVS program to improve my English. So I made this change. Don’t blame me if my English isn’t correct, it’s a learning process like whole life.

So many new impressions. Everything was new, but I felt at home very quickly because of the wonderful people that I met. It started when I arrived at the airport of Vienna. I found my suitcase immediately at the baggage drop. And then my Slovak mentor was waiting for me together with another mentor to welcome me with Dutch tulips, Staphorsts hood gear made of paper, traditional Slovak sheep cheese, my name cut out of orange paper and poppy seeds cake. They eat so much poppy seed here, I can’t wait for the summer, I expect the whole landscape to be red of these flowers. I also started to eat oats with poppy seeds in the morning. I tried to have no expectation before I came here, so I wouldn’t be disappointed when I came here. But when I went to the on-arrival training I felt so lucky because our project is well arranged as far as I can see now.

The first week we got some time to adapt to our new surroundings. And we, Nadia from Romania, Quentin from France and me from the Netherlands, made presentations about our countries. Now I know that Romania has the largest population of bears in Europe. Here in the high Tatras are bears as well. I would like to go hiking there, because everyone says it’s so nice there. If I go there I’ll write about it and make pictures for you. Slovakia’s nature is surprisingly beautiful. They even have a small rain forest in the north east close to the border of Ukraine and Hungary. There are many caves, castles, waterfalls and nature reserves. In the first weekend we were blindfold, brought to a park to play a city game, it was very exciting! We smelled all the flowers of the gates of the presidential palace and ate really nice pancakes with interesting fillings. 

One thing I learned at the training after we spoke with a social worker of the Roma culture, who has Roma roots himself. Is that Roma people don’t want to learn by teachers. They were taught by their grandmothers/grandfathers to learn ancient crafts. They are proud of their traditions. That’s one reason why they don’t always accept to learn in current school systems. The iceberg of a culture is deep under water and there are so many things we don’t see or understand as a foreigner. When we adapt to a culture we need to respect the culture, but also be ourselves.