July Newsletter

(*Pictured: Me, Zuzka, Kristen and Jessica, before the Vychodna Festival Parade started. This is Zuzka’s relative in his traditional village costume, displaying artwork in his yard. The second photo is a group of folklore singers who performed in the parade.)

Life in Hybe
Ashley Severson, Young Adult in Global Mission
July Newsletter

Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your summers and seeing a lot of the sun! Haha, sort of funny to use a sun as my logo for this newsletter. It was chilly and rained through MOST of July, a little crazy! But everyone was grateful, for the most part, because the gardens and crops needed it. Anyways, so this was my last full month in Slovakia. I thought it would be a bit difficult to fill my time, because all of English classes finished in June, but I was wrong! This month was extremely busy too!

The first weekend in July was the Folklore Festival in Vychodna, packed with traditional Slovak folk dancing and singing, fairytales, food, crafts, and more. This festival is the most famous in Slovakia, and I was really lucky to be SO close to it! Vychodna is one of Hybe’s neighboring villages, only about 6 kilometers away. So did I enjoy my time at the festival? Well, I think one of my new life goals is to become a Slovak folk dancer and come back to this festival to perform. Ha! I enjoyed everything a great deal, but most of all the dancing. I went to one of the children’s fairytales, called “Chin Chin” and it was fun! The fairytale is about two birds that fall in love. The boy bird is lazy and irresponsible, and when the two birds fall in love their parents aren’t happy with their wish to get married. The parents think that they are too young and that the boy bird will not be able to properly support his new wife, and they were right. The two newlywed birds can’t find a place to live, food to eat, and everything falls apart because the boy bird is so irresponsible in providing for her. The story ends with him learning his lesson, the two fixing their lives and the boy bird learning how to take care of his wife. (This made me think…I feel like American fairytales are usually about girls wanting a boy, and in the end getting what they want. And Slovak fairytales are about being domestic. Do we have a lot of fairytales about being domestic? Hmm.) I also ate a lot of langose at the festival (fried dough with garlic, cheese, tartar sauce and ketchup).

I went to 3 of the main stage performances for folk dancing: the first on Saturday evening with a variety of different types of dancing, some singing, and a few bands; the second on Sunday morning, featuring other international dancing and/or singing performances, from the Czech Republic, Spain, Turkey, and Italy; the third on Sunday afternoon, which was another variety show of different styles of dancing and singing. All of the costumes from every performance were so detailed and fantastic! I think I spent about half of the time at the festival looking through my camera lens, but everything was just great and photogenic, so it was worth it to keep those memories. During the festival time I also got to meet up with my volunteer friends Jessica and Kristen, and we went with Zuzka to her parents’ house. They were so welcoming and nice as always, and it’s always great to see them! I enjoy them a lot. We went to watch the parade together, which was a collection of representatives from different villages and cities all over Slovakia. They were all dressed in traditional costume, and either dancing or singing, or both. Zuzka showed us which performers were from which villages (she could tell because of the costume designs…every village or city has an individual design), and explained that Hybe doesn’t actually have its own traditional costume because it has technically been considered a town instead of a village since quite a ways back. While we were watching the parade, I even was able to recognize the melody of a few Slovak songs and sing along (ok, mumble, because I didn’t know the words) to some of them, with Zuzka and her dad! Good times! :-) The whole weekend there was just great! I was really happy for the opportunity to be there and see everything, and I hope to make it back to the festival again someday.





(*Pictured: The main stage at the Festival’s finishing ceremony, with all of the performers gathered together on stage. The second photo is one of the performing groups at the Vychodna Folklore Festival.)

In the middle of July we had children’s camp! (detsky tabor) Wow, what a week! It started on Sunday afternoon right after church and ran until Thursday afternoon. It was BUSY let me tell you! And we (me, my host sisters, and other girls from the youth group who helped for the week) slept at the parsonage all week instead of going home. We had about 23 kids for the week, arriving at 8 or 9 am and returning home at 8 or 9 in the evening. The camp had an Indian theme, which was really fun! We made Indian hats and clothes and put up a teepee (which we decorated ourselves with paint beforehand). We also had competitions for age groups to see who could “retreat” the quickest. When we heard the theme song from the popular German film “Winnetou,” every kid and volunteer started screaming and running to the home base position, and the first group with all of its members to line-up won points. (Everyone was shocked when I said I had never even heard of this film before camp.) We also each had nametags with our own Indian name for the week. Some had traditional Indian-type names, like “Biela Kvet” (white flower), and some just names without meaning. Mine was one of those, it was “Harka,” and I liked it! Remembering so many kids’ names in Slovak is difficult enough, so trying to remember their Slovak Indian names proved to be pretty challenging, but I managed.

Some of the activities we did were: going to a cave together near Liptovsky Mikulas, going to a small swimming pool in Hybe together, having parents/family night on the 2nd and 4th nights of camp, relay races, bow shooting contests, games (a lot of soccer), arts and crafts (designing our Indian costumes, painting the teepee, and drawing/coloring), a scavenger hunt in town (going from house to house and getting people to donate funny things for our competition), singing, watching films (cartoons and the film “Winnetou” and saying table grace in like 4 different ways (clapping and holding hands, short songs, long songs, spoken word). The family nights were really a fun time, with lots of singing and games involving both kids and parents together. For one of the games at the first family night, the pastor told parents to find their kids in the circle and stand by them and my host mom came up to me and was like “my kid!” It was really sweet.

Other thoughts about camp: One of my favorite things I did at camp was playing badminton with little Dominik (8)…he’s a sweet boy, and we had a nice time playing together. Another favorite activity for me that week was going to the swimming pool. It was TOTAL chaos because the pool was a bit small, and there were almost 30 of us in it between volunteers and kids. It was quite loud, and there were all different ages (the cute 4 and 5 year olds with floaties trying to swim next to the rowdy 12 and 13 year old boys trying to nail each other with balls), but I had a great time! I really appreciated it because I could have fun with them more easily with the language barrier. Swimming is swimming, and you don’t have to communicate much to have a good time (even when we wanted to it was difficult, because it was so loud). I was able to have a good time with everybody: talking with the other volunteers and some of the kids, playing catch with the older kids, helping the younger kids float around, catching the younger kids in the pool, etc. I’m really happy that children’s camp was towards the end of my time here, because my Slovak was at its best. Any time before that and it would’ve been that more difficult to understand/communicate with them, but I think things went pretty well! I’m constantly amazed by our pastor and how energetic he is, and how wonderful his attitude is about participation and everything. I think this community is extremely lucky to have him!

Some highlights from the month have been: Remember my mention of Ester being born in June? Well, she was baptized at our church in July! Their baptismal process is very similar to ours, including the sponsors coming to the front and them bringing the baby to the baptismal water and wetting the baby’s head. Zuzka’s friends from Canada (she was a nanny in Vancouver for 3 years for this family, and the mother and daughter both) came to Hybe to visit for a few weeks (Pat and Lauren). It was such a pleasure to meet and get to know them, sightsee with them a bit (we even had the chance to go up to the top of our church and see the old bells!), and see them together with Zuzka. After losing touch with each other for about 10 years, I think it meant a lot to all of them to be together again and make new memories. For our children’s summer camp program, my host sisters and a few other girls from our youth group filmed fairytales for the kids to watch each night. It was pretty hilarious to get in on the filming action, watch them dress up and be crazy, and to see the finished product. (My favorite one stars my sisters, both dressed as bumblebees.) Lubo did an awesome job putting everything together! I hope I will be bringing a copy home to show all of you, because it’s pretty entertaining. The fairytales were all imitations of popular Slovak cartoons, so I learned of a few more shows here.

A challenge I’ve had in July, since school and everything ended, is that I haven’t felt very productive. I’ve been quite busy still, but without school to help at and other regularly scheduled activities, I’ve felt a bit guilty. I have had so many great experiences this summer, and I feel like the more I want to help with things, the less I can. In fact, it’s opposite, which has been true for a lot of this year actually. Everyone here is always helping me and making my experiences amazing all of the time, and sometimes I wish I could reciprocate more. This goes back to the feelings I had this winter too, about wanting to be “productive,” but I am still learning time and time again that it isn’t the “work” that has made this year what it is…it is the fantastic people. My greatest hope is that I have helped make their experiences great, and that their memories with me are as good as mine are with them.

Another challenge I’ve had this month is the sadness I feel from only being able to stay in Hybe for about eight months. I really feel that God put me at my first placement for a reason, and I know many benefits from being there, and met many fantastic people there too, but Hybe REALLY feels like my home in Slovakia. In spite of feeling that God put me in Koseca for four months for a reason, I still can’t help feeling frustrated. A part of me is selfish and upset that I won’t experience a full year here in Hybe. Because I’m heading home in August, I will miss my host family’s cousin’s wedding. I will miss four more months that I could’ve had talking, acting stupid and laughing with Zuzka. I’m not even sure what I’ll do without her. And a Christmas with all of them, with my host family, who have become like an extension of my own family in the past 7 months. And some of their birthdays and name days that I originally should’ve been here for, if I had spent my entire year here. So sometimes, even though I think I understand, I don’t really understand why. If only I had those months…but I don’t. My time to leave will come soon and I will be praying for peace of mind. I want to be less selfish and trust God and His reasons, though it may be difficult at times. I pray for this beyond this year too, in the rest of my life. I feel so much more prepared to do that after my year in Slovakia. Again, I thank everyone SO much for their support in helping me to do this. It has been amazing.

On that note, I’ll leave you until next month. Technically we don’t need to write an August newsletter, but I’m going to anyway. It just wouldn’t feel right to write only 11 newsletters for a year of adventures away from home. Hope you’re all doing well! If you get a chance, please check out my blog at ashleyrenslovak.blogspot.com.

Take care and God bless,
Ashley







(*Pictured (from left to right): 1. A group of girls at children’s camp: Emka, Beatka, Sarinka, Simonka, and Debi. 2. Some of the kids by our teepee and dressed in their Indian costumes. 3. John 3:16 puzzle in Slovak. We put it together outside, trying to pin down the pieces with rocks so the wind wouldn’t blow everything away. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son...”)