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

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!