October13
Last Monday was crazy. I haven’t really thought about the randomness of it till now. Carlyn and I headed to Ferka Urbanka, one of our dorms, about an hour early. We were going to pass out fliers for english class called, “talk it out.” I got there and honestly, I just didn’t want to do it. The dorms are dark, literally and figuratively, it was cold outside. It’s tough, really tough. We’re sitting there and we hear this loud music coming from somewhere, something like singing in this traditional rotund way. It’s not like Chingy or Nelly or something that you might expect to hear in a college dorm, it’s more operatic and accordianish. So, we just keep listening to the music…and I realize, I don’t know these people, their culture, it’s so different from my own.
Dara meets us at the front desk so we can get the key to the room that we have reserved to have our meeting in. [note: she has to meet us because we don't speak Slovak and wouldn't be able to communicate with the guy at the front desk.] We get up to the room and time begins to pass. We do have one girl that shows up, her name is Jarka, she goes to the Vet School, and is Mirka’s cousin. Dara tells us we might need to go knock on doors and invite people to come. [note: I do not want to do this, I start feeling a little queasy at the very thought of it] Yet, we do it. Me, Shannon, and Matt. I mean full force, we’re knocking on doors inviting them to english class. Upstairs on the top floor, there is some super loud music, bass cranking, but we’re going, and we see this group of people out in the hall way, sitting on cushions of some sort, taking shots, and smoking their own personal hookah. We walk by to go invite people on the hallway and when we come back out we just start talking to them. I’m pretty sure Matt got offered a shot, and me and Shannon conversed with the girls.
After a significant amount of knocking, we went back to our room. We had another guy there, his name is Jan (John) and we conducted class as usual. Jan didn’t speak hardly any english so class went a bit slow at times. Anyway, afterwards as we were leaving we took note that there is a club downstairs in the dorm, I mean, a full on real club, complete with a broken fuss ball table, beer, and even tea. [we are in europe]. So, we went, there were students in there hanging out, drinking beer, enjoying each others company. That was new for me, it’s the first time I’ve seen students doing something like that, that we’re able to access and come in and meet them. This for me was revolutionary.
Later, after we left the dorm, we headed to another dorm called Jedlikova, where we read that there was some type of event going on, we weren’t sure what it was, but me, Matt, Shannon, and Aaron went out there. And I mean it was a real live techno party. Complete with lasers, fog machines, strobe lights, really extremely loud techno music, and guys that couldn’t dance.
This was just in a 4 hour span. My life here is random, sometimes I forget how random it truly is.
