Teší nás, ak výmena hostiteľských mám sa vydarí ako tá v septembri 2017 v Belgicku a v auguste 2018 na Slovensku. Belgická účastníčka obe výmeny zhodnotila nasledovne (článok je v originálnom znení):
I ‘d like to share my experiences with this EVA exchange in order of better understanding people.
We met you as an amazing group of 4 Slovak women in September 2017 when they visited us in our 4 Belgian houses. We prepared a visit with a lot of challenges: 14000 steps a day and almost every day climbing a tower. And we were glad to feel your enthousiastic and energised reactions.
So we were looking forward to meet you again and were a little bit afraid about your challenges for us.
We started by climbing the stairs in Bratislava castle and enjoying cabbage soup. New tastes, new habits of ‘hop’ and a lot of new words: all kinds of situations where we were out of our comfort zone. We tried to understand Slovak language by recognizing words simular to our language and listening to words repeatedly used. It was for all of us a challenge to explaine what we tried to say in a language that we don’t often use.
I was glad that I know a lot of Latin names of trees and flowers while walking, so we had a lot to discuss about. We discovered similar recepies from halusky and sodo in other countries. We exchanged a lot of recipies, visited historical sites and talked about our way of living with children, parents, neighbours and environment. For me it felt like we shared the same ways to become happy and shared also same worries.
The challenges in Slovak were different: steep mountains and deep holes, sometimes you couldn’t understand what was the problem. For me the most difficult was the moment of the strike of Ryanair and how to cope with the unexpected situation. Because of the trust that we were in good hands we believed that there would come a solution in a way without disturbing our hosting family.
What I admire the most of all is the love for Janosik, hiking, the home made food and herbal sun creams. I appreciated the surroundings of the Slovak country by climbing towers and admire its beauty. After this experience I come to the conclusion that we all have the same needs in life: love and healthy space to care for.
Thank you! Konnie