SK update

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already been 2 months since we’ve arrived!  Time is cruising by but December still seems like a long way away.

We’re slowly moving outside of our bubble, although our day to day routine keeps us within it most of the time (which is why we don’t have many new pics).  The process of applying for our visa’s has broadened our scope a bit though. Today we all went to get the required physical exams necessary for temporary stay permit/visa. My colleague had a terrible experience with this, so I was expecting scenes from the movie Hostel;  dirty medical equipment in a dark office in the basement of a rundown building. Maybe it was my low expectations, but it wasn’t bad at all. He must have paved the way for us, or maybe having Skye with us forced a more proper establishment from the lady taking us around.

The hospital was located at the local medical university and while the building was very old (actually, what building here isn’t?) the clinic was bright and clean and even had leather sofas in the waiting room. But the room was painted ceiling to floor sky blue, which was a little strange. I will say though, that it was a very un-thorough examination. They drew some blood (which was more painful than it should have been) and then I went in a room/office with a women that spoke English quite well. It was funny though, they took my weight from a bathroom scale and measured my height from a pencil, hand-drawn ruler on the wall!  Her exam was pretty brief, just asked about allergies, surgeries and then listened to my breathing .  Skye then followed with an even quicker exam — they didn’t even take her measurements, just listened to her chest.

After this, we went across the street to the main hospital block comprised of many old buildings that made up the hospital grounds. The uniforms worn by everyone was just white attire. There wasn’t an official uniform, just people wearing white jeans and T-shirts or button up shirts. Over here we had to get chest x-rays. Random, I know, a quick physical aaaand a chest x-ray (Skye didn’t have one).  The only thing worth mentioning again was the lack of hospital robes. *ahem*

Last weekend we went out… after dark!!!  Same colleague had a party in his campus housing with his friends that lived on the floor with him. It was nice mingling a bit and Benjam noticed how awesome it was that everyone’s first question was “Where are you from?”  Because it was academy housing, most of the people there weren’t from Slovakia, although everyone spoke English very well. I think I spoke with people from Finland, Spain, France, China, Japan, Ecuador, Mexico and of course Slovakia. Everyone is in a similar situation, so it was very easy talking to them all and everyone was very nice. We had to wake up Skye from her bedtime to take her with us, so sadly we couldn’t stay too long before her eyes were red, droopy and screaming “put me to bed!”.

Sadly, I can’t update on the mommy group, because the first day we got rained out and didn’t have the stroller rain-guard yet. The next week, I forgot to bring the directions or the name or phone number of the people we were to meet, since it was after a visa meeting. Oops. Benjam was not happy that day. Hopefully this week though!

And here is the standard-pic-of-skye-for-every-post pic.