Rotary Trip

So, for the past week I was on a long Rotary trip to Krizanov, Poland,Slovakia and Ceske Budejovice.

In Krizanov we meet the outbound students from the Czech Republic and spent the weekend at and adventure camp with them.

On Saturday we spent the whole day doing outdoorsy team building stuff like high ropes, low ropes (I fell on my butt...), archery, bungee running, and AquaZorbing.

Before I went on this trip I had no idea what aquazorbing is, but I found out that it's this new sport type thing where they put you in a giant plastic ball on the water and you fall infinitely while trying to stand up. It's fun, but really challenging.

On Sunday we got on the bus and drove all the way to Poland, where we stayed at a monastery for three nights. It was really fun, and definitely interesting. The monastery was this huge area with all these different chapels that were supposed to mirror the life of Jesus and you could do a mini-pilgrimage around them instead of going to the holy land (this was the original intention of the builders of the monastery). The monastery was also famous for recieving the Golden Rose from Pope John Paul II and a visit from another Pope that I cannot remember the name of.

The first day we were in Poland we went to Auschewitz and Birkenau.

The second day we went to Krakow and saw the city and castle. I touched a famous bell in the bell tower at the castle that supposedly will get you pregnant in a year... let's hope not.

Then, we took the bus to Slovakia and went hiking in the "Slovakian Paradise". The hike we went on was absolutely fantastic, I drove people crazy because I kept dancing around in circles and telling people, "This is like my home in America!" and stuff like that. The only drawback was that we started the hike in front of a gypsy ghetto. It was completely shocking, they literally lived in wooden houses with serrated tin roofs, like something you would expect to see in India or Africa, but certainly not in the middle of Europe. They were these little kids who followed us partway into the forest and kept asking us to please give them something. It was disturbing and saddening.

After that, we went to Bratislava for a few hours the next day. I would like to spend some more time in the city if I can, it was beautiful, but I think our time there was far too short.

We then drove to Ceske Budejovice and hung out with all the Slovakian inbounds for a few days. We had the District Conference and toured the Budweiser factory there. Makingbeer is a very interesting process...

Then, we drove home.

It was a good trip, and this Saturday I leave for the EuroTrip!