November, enjoying the cold weather

November was a cold month, starting with crispy autumn leaves and ending with real snow. On the last day of November while I am writing, I am sitting next to the window with in front of me a green needle-leaved tree with a layer of snow. These last days of the month we are preparing Mikuláš and Christmas activities in the office. We will have a small theatre play next week at a school, a company and our Integra friends, a centre of people with special needs. My main task was to design Christmas cards that children could colour in. I enjoyed drawing very much. And I am happy that I finished all of the work.

All my weekends were spent with friends who were visiting me or who I visited. These last weeks I want to spend well because I don’t want to miss anything. Like my sister said I have Fear Of Missing Out. And I think it’s especially now, now I don’t have so much time left here and there are still things to see, to discover or to explore. The first weekend of November, my Dutch friend from Prague visited me and I showed her around Bratislava.

The next one I visited Brno were a Slovak friend lives who I met in Iceland. It was lovely to see her again she showed me one of the most beautiful places in Morava, an area near the Czech border with Slovakia. There we felt like princesses visiting the castle of Lednice, built by the Lichtenstein family. We walked in the gardens with the beautiful coloured trees and the autumn coloured leaves covering the ground. Since I am hear I feel like appreciating the seasons more, every season has something beautiful and I hope climate change will not change that.

During the week I participated in a youth exchange of Mladiinfo, I did my gratitude workshop for thirty-seven people. I also talked with young people to inform them how EVS is for me. They were all enthusiastic beautiful people.

A few days later I had to pack my rucksack again because I went to Graz, the second biggest city of Austria. This city I really wanted to see, so my boyfriend, sister and her boyfriend decided to meet there. It’s a really cute city, and finally I saw some more bikers, this street view I really miss the most in Slovakia. We used USE-IT map which is a really great to discover European cities and it is made by locals. I printed it on paper and taped it together; we left it at the Airbnb for other travelers. The Airbnb was a really cool old-school place and downstairs was an art gallery. We spend our time eating pizza, drinking tea and reading books.

One day we hiked in the mountains around the city. We met a homeless person in a cave and gave him the 5 euros that Ralph found when was waiting for me to open the door of the Airbnb. The homeless person was listening to the radio, he had only one candle and he said ‘grüß got’, that’s what Austrian people say when they say hello. We also saw many Christmas markets, there were fourteen in total. On Sunday it was time to say goodbye again. Now only one month was left when I will see them back home.     

I worked at the office again, most of the time I spend drawing for the outcome of my EVS, because I made some kind of a comic book to illustrate what I did do this year.

The last weekend of November I went to Dolné Kočkovce near Púchov, because my Mentor Svetlana wanted to show me her home. It was a very cozy house with a fireplace. She helped me with filling in my youth pass, which is some kind of certificate I receive for being an EVS volunteer. We talked a lot and the next day we went into the forest for a long walk, all day. We finished at a well. There was ironed sparkling water, which tasted interesting. We filled our bottles and went back to the house. I met her family and we ate goulash of wild, because her father is a hunter. It was a long time since I ate meat; it always tastes very special when I try it. The next day I would go climbing but the train I would take had 80 minutes of delay. So I missed it. I was a bit disappointed. I haven’t done many sports lately because it is so cold and I want to stay in the flat, it is already dark at 4.30 pm. I hope next week I’ll have more success climbing and doing yoga.