Host Family! And Salad.

Hellooo, I am in Jindřichův Hradec!  This is my second night.  I don't have photos of the house, but I will soon-ish, probably. I'm a bit nervous to walk around my house with a camera, haha.  Let's see....from the beginning?
Yesterday afternoon, our families came to the hotel.  Valentina and my host parents were there, and they are perfectly wonderful.  My host mom even cried a little bit, d'aww.  On the car ride home, we talked a bunch – about what, I can't remember – and it was only minimally awkward.  The radio, as you would expect, is all American songs.  Some old-ish, some new.  Right now, in my host sister's room, we're listening to Cupid's Chokehold.  Wait–počkej!– it just changed to If You Seek Amy.  Speaking of which, the f-word isn't bleeped out on the radio here.   The volunteers at camp used it more freely than most of us in the States would, which I guess makes sense as it isn't their own language.   My host father doesn't speak English and is a workaholic they say, so I can't tell you much about him at the moment, only that he appears nice, hah.  My host mom is very kind, smiley, appears younger than she really is, fit, amazing.  Valí  is super nice, a hip–hop dancer, funny, and pretty.  She and her mom speak a good amount of English; their accents are adorable.  They say that they love my accent, that it makes English sound so pretty.  I'm so flattered!  Apparently they don't like the sound of the British accent.  I told them every American would love to hear that. Valentína always has her iPhone to translate the rarer words which is definitely helpful.  It's our best friend.  Náš nejlepší kamarád.  Yes, friend is kamarád\kamarádka here, ahah. Her English is much better than she thinks it is, and definitely better than most Czech kids her age, as she has a weekly tutor.  The only thing is that she uses "there" for both there and here, which makes for some communication mix-ups, haha.

The house has a big yard with a tarped pond, lawn, and garden, and a table with a flower bed beside it,  where we ate dinner this evening.  The weather right now is really hot, like 34 degrees Celsius.  I am told anything over 30= hot.   I share a room with Valentína.  Her waterbed is fabulous.  We all share a bathroom, but Czechs apparently shower at night usually, so it shouldn't be a problem.  They even hired a carpenter to install a big dresser-type-thing into the wall of a closet they had been using as storage for my clothes.  Oh, and I'll have a bedroom of my own in a couple of months?  Yeah.  They had been contemplating building one for a while now, but put the plan into action recently.  Also, they bought me some toothpaste, towels, body wash, Elizabeth Arden lotion that smells amazing oh my God, and a rack to put it all on.   Also, they just last week put in an American-style glass-walled shower.  C'est fantastique.  Oh, and the Czech....I don't know so much right now, but AFS says in 3 months I will be able to understand what's being said.  The downstairs of the house looks quite Swedish – modern furniture, nice Siemens appliances, all-around clean. 

I live outside of JH in a village called Otín.  It's a five- to ten-minute drive from the city.  The city of JH is über-cute.  There are pastel-colored buildings, cobbled streets, and two town squares.  Naměstí Míru and Naměstí Soměthíng.  Down Square and Up Square.  We drove past my school, which is a gorgeous white stone building.  I guess the inside isn't quite so spectacular, or so Valí says.  There are 90 or so people per grade; I don't know where all the kids went, haha.  Some go to different vocational schools, but still.  For a 25,000 person town, this boggles my mind.  I guess it's normal though:  a Czech volunteer whom I was talking to at camp, upon hearing that there around 700, maybe a bit less in total, students per grade in my town of 21K, asked, "Is there anyone in the city over 18?!" School begins the 5th of September, a bit late for Czech schools.

When we got home last night at a quarter to 4, they showed me the house and then I showered and unpacked before leaving to dinner at 5.  We ate at the Černej Pt'ak, or Black Bird.  They had salad!  And not just iceberg lettuce and cucumber, the works.  I had pork with chantarelles in a cream sauce, delicious.  They provided me with an English menu, but my host brother (Oh, his name is Jan and he is on holiday here for a couple of days.  He normally lives in Prague.  He's very nice and helps translate when Valí or Martina don't know a word as he spent a year in England four years ago, when he was 22. He plays ricochet, which is like racquetball, and runs.  Martina's mom is here too. She lives in the city, is young, and offers me too much food.)  I fell asleep shortly after getting home, at 8:30.  I slept for 14 hours, and am now done with sleeping forever.

Valentína fixed me her normal breakfast of cereal and bananas over yogurt.  The yogurt here is better than the American kind, somehow.  At home, they don't drink normal water, but water with a splash of German elderberry syrup.  It's delicious.  I need to get some sort of indoor shoes.  I keep on forgetting to not go barefoot inside.  You have to at least wear socks.  Also necessary are slippers for school.  Weirdness.  I'll have to get some soon.  A couple hours later we ate lunch:  chicken in a cream sauce and salad, super good salad with peppers and mozzarella and arugula and tomatoes and balsamic.  We had elderberry water again and a dessert afterward, a Kinder bar.  They're German chocolate bars filled with puffed rice and some sort of white, creamy, nouget-type heavenliness.  God, it's good.  After we had that (Valentíina and I), Martina went, "Ice cream?"  Uh, I'm going to have to pass on that if I am to retain any hopes of not gaining ten kilos while I'm here, thanks.

Brief sidestory. (What's the word I mean?  When you break away from whatever you were saying for a minute or two.  I've just spent 10 minutes performing a fruitless search on thesaurus.com.)  The European conversions are throwing a wrench into my life.  I'll ask how far someone's city is from mine or Prague or something and they'll be like, 140 km, far away.  I'll take your word for it.  I have no idea what km mean as the math takes too long, and even if it were in miles I wouldn't know what to do with the information.  Give me hours in a car.  The whole Celsius thing will also take some getting used to, as will the 24-hour time.  They fortunately use both here, but the kitchen clock is 24-style.

I'd forgotten, before lunch we went into town to buy me a swimsuit, Sim card, and withdraw money.  Yes, I forgot my swimsuit.  I don't know where it went, I folded up and set it in the pile...it's so strange shopping here, as the prices are so "high".  1 USD = 17 CZK (koruny, or crowns).  I withdrew 1,000 koruny at the ATM, which yields $58.75.  The machine I used didn't charge me any fees.  After lunch, Valí, Jan, and I went to the waterpark "aquapark".  We were there for a few hours.  Czechs are definitely thinner overall, and between all ages.  It wasn't just young people that were thin, but the middle-aged too.  Young men are more muscular (duh, but you know what I mean) and thin than young women, who generally aren't that toned.  The little kids, though, look straight out of a Russian gymnastics school, seriously.  After a couple of hours we went home, showered, and had dinner: a panini with super good, kind of Asian-tasting chicken, lettuce, water chestnuts, AVOCADO, and onion.  My host mom loves avocado, yayyy.  She says sometimes she eats it Cuban-style, on its own with honey and vanilla sugar.  Sounds glorious, right?

After dinner, which was around 8, Valí and I went up to her room, and we've been on our computers ever since. :)

Tomorrow I think we might go to the aquapark again, as well as get a Sim card since T-Mobile was closed and buy Simple Plan tickets.  They're coming to Prague on Sept. 2nd.   Ohh, and we might go to Prague (Praha) on Thursday.  Valentína's uncle lives there and will show us around.  Woohoooooo. 

Na schledanou!
XOXO