Tommy's rotary exchange

      Hello again,      I recently met a couple milestones in my exchange. Firstly, I have now lived in the Czech Republic for over 5 months, which makes me about halfway through my exchange! While I am a little sad about how quickly it has gone by, I am also quite proud of how far I have come. I feel more confident in my day-to-day life, and while I still view myself as the somewhat touristy foreign exchange student, I don't think I stick out as much as I did in September and October.     Secondly, this post marks a year since my initial acceptance into Rotary Youth Exchange, as well as my country reveal! I remember being so excited in January of last year, when I received the phone call saying I was going to go somewhere, and I was even more excited in February, when I found out I would be going to the Czech Republic. If 12 (or even 15) year old me was asked what my life would be like by time I turn 17, he would not believe a single word. I have really enjoyed my stay here so far

       Sorry for being very late on this post. I finally got around to posting again so it wouldn't be an entire month after Christmas. The post is still going to be mostly focused around winter break, though, because it is certainly a lot more interesting than school.     One big difference between Christmas in America and in the Czech Republic is that most of the traditions take place on Christmas Eve. We had carp for dinner. It was actually not that bad apart from the bones. We then did something called molybdomancy (I had to google the name). It's a form of fortune telling where you pour molten lead into water and get a fortune from the shape it makes. Mine kind of ended up looking like a bean with a tail or something, I really don't know.     We spend Christmas day visiting family. One thing I did not expect to see was a t34/85 tank next to the highway. We drove past it, so I wasn't able to get a picture, but it was certainly a surprise. We spent most of the day in

       Welp. The snow melted. Yesterday was 39 degrees Fahrenheit, and raining. There was still green grass in some places, and it looks almost identical to October, but now without leaves. We still enjoyed the snow for the week and half that we had it, though. I went cross country skiing with my host family whenever we could, and it was a blast. The trails are short (5 kilometer) unlit circuits on what I think may be golf courses. The whole area is relatively flat compared to Anchorage, but there are still many gentle hills (for those who live in Anchorage, it's like the Mize loop in Kincaid). I am still afraid of the nonexistent moose in the woods. The deer here are smaller than most dogs and I usually mistake them for rabbits whenever they spring out of the woods.       One cool thing I did with my class was making an igloo after school. It was organized by our class teacher, who teaches biology and physics. He was the only person who knew how to position the blocks of snow so t

      This post is quite short, mostly because I have not been taking many photos. While I totally want to blame it on being in the moment and always being busy with something, I will try my best to take a bunch of photos, especially with the holidays coming up. I also said I would post again before December in my last blog post, so this is also so past me can save face. I will almost certainly post twice in December, as I can kind of feel things picking up (yet again another promise that I might end up breaking).     School has once again been mostly the same. The math teacher finally realized that I am not Czech. Other than that nothing much happens in school. I did sign up for a school floorball tournament in December. I have never played floorball before, so I am really hoping my classmates can carry the team to victory. I will tell you all how it goes next month.     I have still been going to orienteering practices, though the races have ended with the cold weather. The team I am

    Hi again. I forgot to post for a whole month so I'm just going to post whenever I remember from now on. I think I haven't posted recently because of school intensifying and the weekends becoming more consistent (they are still very fun, but I would just be describing the same stuff in every post).      One thing that is still crazy to me is how unexciting people find castles to be. A while back we went some ruins after an orienteering meet and I was blown away, but my host father said, "This one's okay... there's a better one close to  Jihlava". I thought he was joking at the time but he was serious. There was one less than 20 minutes away and it was AMAZING. We flew a camera drone to get some shots of it in the sunset, and it was very cool to explore.         I am starting to understand more words in Czech, though I know I am far from fluent. In some sentences I can pick up enough words to at least partially understand it, but I do not understand the gram

      This last weekend was 4 days long due to a holiday so Mr. Debef, Alan, and I went for a bike trip with some of Mr. Debef's friends. We loaded our bikes up after school on Wednesday and took off. The goal was to bike to where the Doubrava river joins with the Elbe and be back by Sunday.     We managed to bike to the village of Uhrinov by dark and slept outside (we didn't pack tents). Fortunately, it did not rain, although it was rather cold in the morning.   We spent the whole day biking, only stopping for drinks and snacks (don't worry Mr. Barak, I didn't drink any beer). We eventually stopped by a campground/lodge that was by a pond to sleep. In the evening I was surprised to see many bats flying over the lake to feed on the insects. I had only seen bats once or twice in my life prior to this, so it was entertaining, especially when they flew right up to us.     This night was much warmer than the last, and we slept facing the moon, which was full and very bright