Slovakia Day 14 – Baptism, Radvanský Jarmok, and a Graveyard

I am very tired at the moment, and I have had a crazy day. I am not even sure where to begin, whether it be the baptism that I attended, or the crazy festival that I went to. Either way today I am going to have to write a lot, and I only have about 45 minutes to do it, as I am coming close to midnight. (Wow, I just realised this, but it has been two weeks already! Very hard to believe!)

I woke up today at about 10:05, with a knock at my door. My host dad tells me that we will be leaving soon, and I need to get up. I vaguely remember being told that we were going to a baptism, but I did not really know when or where it was. I quickly put some pants on and grabbed my sweatshirt and thought I was ready to go. When we got to the church I realised that I was somewhat in the wrong attire. I was wearing some dinky old jacket, while everyone else was wearing very nice suits and ties. I did not really know how to feel about that, but I pretended that I did not notice the people staring at me and tried to enjoy the service that was provided. I am frustrated that I was not able to take pictures, because I had forgotten my memory card AGAIN.  I keep meaning to buy another one, but I just haven’t quite found the right time.

After the service, we ran a quick shopping spree, dropped our groceries off at home, and walked off to lunch. Either no one really knew where we were going, or they didn’t want to tell me. Either way I was surprised when I got to the restaurant, and I was even more surprised when I saw the same people from the baptism. Although I was surprised, it did make sense in the end, that the whole family was going to eat lunch together on an important day. While I was at the restaurant, I got educated on an important part of Slovak culture, although I don’t know if I can share it. I met some fantastic people that all told me I had to visit them. I definitely will take up on guys offer, he and his family currently live in Bratislava, and they offered to take me all around the city. I hope that I will be able to travel around the country and see all the amazing sites that SLovakia has to offer.

After I got back from lunch today, I almost immediately was dropped off at the mall for what I will consider the most exciting (and expensive) part of my day. I had made plans with some of my classmates to go to a huge festival in the city, called Radvanský jarmok. A brief history on the festival, how true this is, I don’t know. The one man that lives in Bratislava that I was talking about explained it to me, but he was slightly “out of it” so to say, so I don’t know how correct this information is. Anyway, the festival has been a yearly tradition in Banska Bystrica culture for over 350 years. Radvanský, which was once its own town, now part of Banska Bystrica, had a large church. This church’s “patron spirit” was Mary, which somehow ties into a yearly festival. How it does, I don’t know, that was not explained to me. Originally, this festival was used just as a practical gathering to trade goods, but over the years it was turned into a fantastic event with many different types of food, drinks, and entertainment.

I plan on going back tomorrow, which is why I really didn’t take any pictures today. I wanted to be able to enjoy myself today, and not worry about having to take tons of pictures for the blog. I got to try many different foods, candies and drinks, which I loved. I have not had food that I have disliked yet, and I hope that doesn’t change. My favorite food that I had the privilege to try today was this fantastic cylinder of dough and cinnamon. I didn’t try to remember the name, because I was trying to enjoy myself and try all the foods. Sorry, I will get the name of it tomorrow!

I wasted plenty of money on rides today, but I have to ask myself, were they worth the price? The cost to me: 5 Euros ish per ride. What I get out of it? I get to spend 5-10 minutes getting a crazy adrenaline rush and being able to enjoy it with my friends. I don’t know about you, but I think that is definitely worth it. I am probably going to forgot some people, and if I did, sorry, but I want to thank Ke, Laura, Sophia and her cousin, Veronica, Richard, Thomas, Igor, and so many others. I was able to have one of the best times of my life because you guys were awesome tonight. Thank you!

I walked alone on the way home, and not going to lie, I was pretty spooked. It’s like the graveyard I  had to walk through was trying to spook you. There were no lights in the graveyard, except for the candles that were lit by the graves. And those were pretty spooky, because they looked like eyes, and I was being watched the entire way through. It takes a lot to spook a big guy like me, but this graveyard was pretty close.

That’s all I am wanting to write tonight, I am closing in on midnight and I am tired and sore. Crossfit really did a number on this out of shape guy. But, I can’t end today without the very special word of the day! Todays word of the day is:

Slavnost – festival

I believe it is pronounced like you would in english, but I might be wrong. I think it should be pretty obvious why I choose this word for the fantastic festival I attended today.

Tomorrow I WILL have a much more in-depth post! Look forward to it!

All of these pictures were taken on a Sony A6000. If you are looking for a great light weight camera that takes fantastic pictures, I would definitively recommend this setup here.

Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera with 16-50mm Power Zoom Lens

Slovakia Day 12 – Slovak Classes, Police Again, Pizza, and JDM Dream

I was very excited this afternoon. Do you ever read or watch something, and it just inspires you to do something even greater? I was able to experience that this evening, and to be honest, I am still super hyped for this. Unfortunately, it will have to wait a year or so before I can make this dream a reality. Read on to find out!

Today I had my first meeting for my Slovak lessons. We just set up times, but something I noticed while all three of us were gathered was that we all seemed very tired. Ashley, Nikole, and myself are the three rotary exchange students staying in Banska Bystrica, with Nikole and Ashley going to a different school than my own. We had decided to meet at my school, and we would have an hour lesson every Monday and Wednesday. I hope that these lessons help, because I sure could use it.

When I got home from school, my host dad told me that we needed to go to the police station. I was somewhat terrified at the fact that it might be another one of these. However, my host dad told me that it shouldn’t take any longer than 10 minutes. I had my doubts, but I went without a word, literally too because my host dad doesn’t speak much English. Once we got there, I signed a few documents and we were done. I want to share the reason that I had to go back entirely, but I think that for the safety of my stay I better not. I will leave it up to your imagination.

My host dad made some fantastic pizza today, and I got to know a little more about him because of it. In his struggle to communicate with me in English, I noticed that he sometimes uses German words on accident. I found out today that he used to work as a Pizza Chef in Munich, which would explain the fantastic pizza and the occasional German.

Finally, what I lead on in the first paragraph. I was watching a video where these two guys bought a VW Golf for $1000, and turned it into an alright machine for just $500 more. One of the things that they did to it, which really caught my eye was they plastered some comics to the front right side of the car, to give it a wrapped look. I really loved this, and thought to myself “I should do that!”.

So I set out to craigslist, looking for cars that would be suitable for this possible project. Obviously, I won’t be home for another year, but I was more looking for certain makes and models of cars, than specific ones. I already made a post on reddit asking some questions about it, but here is the list of cars that I found.

My criteria for these cars are: RWD, JDM, manual trans, and no newer than 1995. Pop-up-headlights are recommended but not required ;). I spent a good couple hours scavenging my local craigslist, letgo, and other sites, and here are the cars that I found.

• 300zx (there were a lot of these, for +/- 1k, very likely this will be it. Only reason I don’t like it is that the owners abuse these poor things.
• RX7 (A few of these too, and they are reliable so it would be a little less stressful for me)
• Miata (I love Miatas, but I am worried because they are on the pricier side. If the low end miatas were $500 cheaper I wouldn’t be on here asking this haha).
• 280zx (I don’t know much about 280ZXs, so IDK about this. They are fairly cheap though.)
• MR2 (Again, I would buy a first gen MR2 so fast, but they are a little more pricey than the others in this list. I guess that is the mini-ferrari tax.
• Mitsubishi 3000GT (this car is very sexy, but there are not many on the market near me. Mid range in price too)

I will look into finding some pictures of what I would like to do, or I might download a cheap 3D design software and try throwing something together. Who knows. It’s late, so I will finish this off with the word/s of the day!

Velmi je to chutne – It’s very tasty

You would say it like Velmi ya to hutne, and I chose this phrase because the pizza I had today was very tasty!

All of these pictures were taken on a Sony A6000. If you are looking for a great light weight camera that takes fantastic pictures, I would definitively recommend this setup here.

Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera with 16-50mm Power Zoom Lens

Rancho Cucamonga with a Czech Exchange Student

I feel bad for dragging our exchange student around everywhere, but I was just so excited to be able to show her around that I almost couldn’t help myself. Yesterday I got to meet our new exchange student from the Czech Republic, Linda Tran. She is 17 years old, and she is currently a senior at our local high school. Yesterday we went hiking, walked around the mall, and drove all through Rancho Cucamonga. I am excited for her to be able to meet my friends that I have here, and to be able to take her to other places around the city!

Once they had driven back from Big Bear, I wasted no time asking her if she would like to be shown around the city. She very enthusiastically said yes, and we hoped in the car and drove off. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do, but really a lot of it was just where the road took me. We had talked before I had met her in person, but it was still a little awkward at first. Nevertheless, I pushed through that bubble of awkward and we talked all about how school was and how my trip to Texas had been (spoiler alert: Texas is hot).

The first place we went was the Etiwanda Preserve. I had done a bit of a miscalculation, I must admit. Every time I had gone/hiked up the preserve, it had been with people from my cross-country team. Because of this, previously I had almost always ran or at least walked at a fast pace up the hill. I had severely underestimated the length of the trail, and the heat of the sun up above. By the time we got to the top, we were both tired and I was all gross and sweaty. Thankfully at the top of the preserve there are trees that surround the creek so we were able to get some shade from the sun.

We didn’t hike too far up the preserve, only enough to really enjoy the view there. Not related to this trip I made yesterday, but someday before I leave for Slovakia I want to hike up the preserve and see if I can find the source of the creek there. I can already see the title of the blog post : Finding the Source: Etiwanda Falls.

Once we had made our way back down the mountain, we just drove around for a little while. I showed her the other schools in Rancho Cucamonga; Los Osos and Rancho High. I had shown her where I have gone to school for the past 4 years, and I had shown her where I worked during the school year. I have really missed being able to just drive down the road with the window down and enjoy the view.

Afterwards, we went to Victoria Gardens, where I showed her all the good places to eat, shop, and chill. She claims that I know a lot about the mall, but I don’t really think that as a good thing. To know the mall and to know what restaurants, stores etc are good, you need to spend money there! I told her that I have spent way too much money and time at the mall. She did seem to enjoy it, so I hope that I can go back sometime and show her the other parts of the mall that we didn’t get to.

I didn’t take any pictures of this unforunatly, but after dinner we had a big water balloon fight with all my brothers and her. You will have to take my word for it here, but I am guessing that we had gone through about 250-300 water balloons that evening. It was a lot of fun, but it was a real pain to clean up. The water balloons stuck to the pavement so sweeping didn’t really work. I was really tempted to go and google the best way to clean up water balloons.

The night ended pretty amazingly. After she had finished her homework around 8:40, we had driven back up to the preserve to go and look at the light in the valley. I have seen it countless times, but she seemed to really like it. I don’t know if she was saying it out of consideration or not, but we lost track of time and realized that we needed to be home. My mom didn’t seem to happy about it, but she didn’t say anything. I don’t think I will push my luck next time.

To wrap things up, I am really glad that I am able to show her around all of the neat places in Rancho Cucamonga. I hope that I was not just dragging her around and having her bored the entire time, but it did seem like she enjoyed it. I am going to have to ask some of my friends about some of the cool places I can take her. For some reason, I really do enjoy being able to show people the things that I find joy in, and I find it extremely satisfying and amazing when they can enjoy it too. Today I think will be a fun day too, lets see if it is fun enough to write something about hahaha! (have to admit the picture of us at the preserve looks really awkward)

Where I will be for a year: Banská Bystrica

As some of you may or may not know, I am going to be an exchange student to Slovakia for the 2017-2018 school year. However, I myself have not done excessive amounts of research on where I will be staying, so to somewhat force myself to learn and to show others where I will be for the next year, I have written this short piece on the wonderful city of Banská Bystrica.

Banská Bystrica has had a rough history over the past couple hundred years, and it was first settled by Germans, and it was considered a permanent settlement in the 9th Century. However in 1255 it received the “municipal privileges of a free royal town of the Kingdom of Hungary”. This means that it was identified as one of the most important cities in the Kingdom of Hungary, and certain privileges were available for the city. Through the next 600 years, the city continued its ties with Hungary, until the country of Czechoslovakia declared its independence from the Hungarian state on October 28, 1918, right after the first world war. During the World War II, the city became part of the largest anti-Nazi opposition in all of Europe. The resistance began on August 29, 1944, however the anti-Nazi forces were defeated and the city of Banská Bystrica was occupied by the Germans until March 26, 1945 when the city was liberated by the Soviets. After the war, the city thrived becoming a home for many schools, such as its largest Matej Bel University.

The city was first formed over an ancient Slavic settlement, however the main reason the city exists to the extent it does to this day is because of the large amounts of copper that used to be hiding underneath the surface. However, the copper reserve underneath the surface would not last forever, so when it finally ran out in the 18th century the city was forced to look into different industries. Currently, the city derives most of its income (60%) from metallurgy, which is the the branch of science and technology concerned with the properties of metals and their production and purification. Other important sources of income are woodwork, engineering, chemistry, pharmacy and food processing.

The city is located right in the middle of the Hron River Valley, which funny enough the city hosts the Hron river which flows south through the city. The city is also surrounded by mountains, which are the Low Tatras to the north-east, the Veľká Fatra to the north-west, and the Kremnica Mountains to the west. The city of Banská Bystrica is known for its scorching summers, and its blistering cold winters.

When I will be arriving into Banská Bystrica I will have to fly into Vienna, which is the only flight I can get from LAX. I will then have to drive around 4 hours before I am able to get to Banská Bystrica, which in California it wouldn’t be that bad, but in Slovakia that is crossing nearly half the country! The climate will be extremely different than what I am used to in Southern California. I have been to the mountains and been in the snow, but I have never experienced sub-zero weather. In the city of Banská Bystrica, it is known to get below the freezing point for months on end! And the weather as of writing this on July 20, is 90° Fahrenheit! I am very excited to be able to go to such a unique and different place than where I live now, and I will try to update this as soon as I get anymore information!

Go Kart Adventure – Dropping for a Monster!

I haven’t been able to really be able to post much because I have been in Michigan for the past few days. I first flew into Detroit airport on July 12th with my younger brother, however the very next day I drove up to Lewiston, where I have been working on, driving, and abusing the poor go kart that we have.

We first arrived at our cottage in Lewiston, my first thought was swapping the engine out on our go kart. We have had this go kart for years, and the engine in it had finally quit. I am not sure of the model, but judging the feel of it I will guess that it is a 6hp engine, made by Tecumseh. However, after probably 10+ years of abusing that engine, I doubt it was producing anywhere near its advertised horse power. Thankfully, we had gotten a 6.5hp 212cc Predator engine.

The first thing that we had to do, was check for comparability, and see if we would have any issues with the mounting of it. After everything was checked we started to dismount the old engine. The old engine had blown pretty vigorously I am told, although I wasn’t there when it happened.

 

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After taking off the engine, we go to working on getting the clutch and the throttle to correctly align. The clutch on the new motor had not correctly aligned, as it was designed for the older motor. Because it didn’t align, the clutch stuck off of the drive shaft about an inch an a half, which was a pretty large distance when you consider that the drive shaft is only 4 inches long. Our next issue was the throttle, as the throttle on the old motor was in a different place than on the new motor. Because of this, we had to trim the throttle a bit, and cut away some of the plastic covering. After that, it was just minor adjustments to have it set!

Adjusting the sprocket wheel and the clutch

Working on the throttle

After a long night of working on the, we finally got to try the go kart out! It REALLY moves! The old engine was supposedly 6hp, but after years of wear and tear, I am sure that it wasn’t anywhere near the advertised horse power. With this new engine, I was absolutely destroying the trails. It threw me back into the seat and I had the time of my life.

An equal exchange?

I don’t know if what I did is an equal exchange. I traded my desktop computer for an MSI laptop. Here are the specs for both.

DESKTOP

• i5-4690k
• GTX 1070
• 240Gb Adata SSD
• 4Tb HDD
• Gigabyte Z97 Micro ATX Motherboard
• Asus Wifi card
• 16Gb RAM

LAPTOP

• i7-6700HQ
• GTX 1060
• 16Gb RAM
• 240Gb SSD
• 1Tb HDD
• 1080p 120Hz monitor
• Red Backlit keyboard
• other cool stuff

I am pretty happy with the laptop right now, I am typing this on there 🙂

It is a little slow on startup, which is a little strange because the OS is running off of a PCIe SSD, but whatever. I am going to be testing some games tonight!

Rotary Meeting

Going to my first Rotary meeting with District 5300! I will update this post with what happens.

 

EDIT

The meeting was great. There was a man, forgive me for I have forgotten his name, from homeland security. He gave a fantastic presentation on behalf of HSI, and it documented how to get into the profession, what he does in the profession, and the benefits and downsides of it. Really something. I thought it might be a good idea to ask about some illegal things, just to be a devil’s advocate and see what he would do. Pro tip: don’t.