Six Slovak students met Joko at the railway station and got on the train to Poprad to spend one incredible week in the cottage of Janko Jesensk\u00fd in Tatransk\u00e1 Lomnica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We changed trains three times. The most interesting part was the second train, when Joko made fun of the ticket inspector. He showed her tickets from the previous train. She said they were OK, but we still needed to change trains in Star\u00fd Smokovec again. When I told her that Joko was making fun of her, she said she knew and left. When we finally arrived at the cottage, there were already people from Ukraine waiting for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the whole day, Dasa and I were sitting near the entrance, welcoming students coming from other countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, the United States, Latvia, and Slovenia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some groups arrived during the day, some early in the morning, and some on Thursday. We were divided into four mixed groups of all nationalities. The reason was to make us speak English as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The evening programme started with my presentation about Slovakia. Dui was laughing almost all the time because, right before my speech, he said he hoped I wouldn\u2019t be talking about general facts because people would fall asleep. I did talk about some general facts, but also about other things in Slovakia, and he found it funny. Whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the presentation, Dasa, Sandy, Tana, and I were dancing to a Slovak children\u2019s song, and then we taught it to everyone. For the next two hours, Dui entertained us with games that helped us remember each other\u2019s names. Then hungry Europeans tried typical Slovak food prepared by Slovak girls \u2013 bryndza with bread and onion, and Coke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the groups left the cottage after breakfast. Slovak girls joined groups 1 and 4, led by Boris and Saso, and later Martin Vacek arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We went to \u0160trbsk\u00e9 pleso by cable lift. We were supposed to go up to Lomnick\u00fd \u0161t\u00edt, but it was too windy. Tana and I went first to tell people where they should wait for others. It was fun watching people getting off the lift because it only slowed down slightly but kept moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we arrived at the observatory, a man working there told us the history of the building and explained his work. Then we went back to Tatransk\u00e1 Lomnica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After two hours of walking downhill, we were completely exhausted. But in the evening, we were again full of energy and perfectly prepared for the presentations of the nations and the disco afterward. I really liked the Polish presentation, but the others were great too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We woke up to a beautiful day. Our teachers thought it was the perfect day for hiking, so we all went to the railway station to catch the train to \u0160trbsk\u00e9 pleso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we finally arrived, we met three special guides of the High Tatras\u2014Ondrej called them \u201cgreen men.\u201d We were again divided into groups, and on our way to Popradsk\u00e9 pleso and the Memorial Cemetery, they talked about the fauna and flora of the High Tatras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We also took water samples from the lake to find out whether the water was clean or not. After that, we visited the Museum of the High Tatras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The funny thing was that the Bulgarian teacher Branko and his friend got lost already in the village of \u0160trbsk\u00e9 Pleso, so they just took the train back to Tatransk\u00e1 Lomnica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the evening, we played games with Jonah. The goal was to discover how important group unity is. We didn\u2019t finish until 2 o\u2019clock in the morning, but we really had fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another beautiful day meant another hiking trip. First, we went to the museum in Tatransk\u00e1 Lomnica. We watched a really good video about the Tatras\u2014I had never seen such a nice film about the nature of our mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the film, my group went to Star\u00fd Smokovec and then we walked up to Hrebienok. On the way up, I felt so hot that I had to take off my winter coat and one sweater. Some people were too tired, probably because we didn\u2019t sleep enough, so it was a bit difficult to get them moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we finally stopped at a restaurant and looked down, we could see only clouds beneath us. It was wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a short break, we continued to Bil\u00edk\u2019s cottage and to the Studenovodsk\u00e9 waterfalls. When we returned to Tatransk\u00e1 Lomnica, we lay down and fell asleep in a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We stayed at the cottage to clean it, while others went to the Belianska Cave. In the afternoon, we were supposed to go ice-skating, but the stadium was closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we used the time to prepare decorations for the Halloween party. We had never seen so many pumpkins, witches, cats, spiders, and bats before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some girls made a huge pumpkin on the blackboard, and we were ready for the party. While we were painting, Siobhan, her husband Dan, Dui, and his students were baking pizza and \u201ccrazy bread\u201d for people wearing masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The winner for the best mask was a policeman protecting a nuclear power plant from Greenpeace using shaving foam. I also liked Jonah\u2019s mask\u2014he was \u201ctucn\u00fd\u201d (fat), because the first Slovak word he had learned was \u201ctucn\u00fd.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the party, we had another disco. Some people were dancing until 5 o\u2019clock in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last day. Some people left early in the morning. Everyone was happy that the camp was at least as good as expected, but also sad that we were leaving all those nice people and the beautiful place that had been our home for one week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Special thanks go to the Soros Foundation (OSF Slovakia and OSF New York), our principal Mrs. Tesserov\u00e1, Joko, Mrs. Vackov\u00e1, Mrs. Strakov\u00e1, Mrs. Siobhan Lockhart, Dan, Dui, Robert, Big Jonah, and also to the students from 3.E, 4.D, and 4.F, and to all former \u0160rob\u00e1rka students and friends from Slovakia and the Czech Republic who helped with organizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as many people said before: don\u2019t forget that iEARN is a big family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ivana Hojnosov\u00e1<\/p>\n\n\n\n
List of participants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Slovenia: <\/strong><\/strong> <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Estonia:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n USA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hungary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Romania<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Czechs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bulgaria<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lithuania<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Macedonia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Poland<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Slovakia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TUESDAY Six Slovak students met Joko at the railway station and got on the train to Poprad to spend one incredible week in the cottage…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_customify_content_layout":"","_customify_sidebar":"","_customify_page_header_display":"","_customify_disable_header":"","_customify_disable_header_top":"","_customify_disable_header_main":"","_customify_disable_header_bottom":"","_customify_disable_page_title":"","_customify_disable_content_vertical_padding":"","_customify_disable_footer_top":"","_customify_disable_footer_main":"","_customify_disable_footer_bottom":"","_customify_breadcrumb_display":"","_customify_header_transparent_display":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iearn2004.srobarka.sk\/sk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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