That time I lived in Europe

I lived in Europe, for 1 year exactly. I left Columbus, Ohio on August 16 2002 and lived, worked, loved, and got thrown out of a bar for taunting a couple of drunk skinheads in Zilina, Slovakia. I'm rushing ahead, so I'll start at the beginning.

In the Summer of 2002 I was graduating from The Ohio State University. But before graduating, I realized I had no plan after graduation, no job prospects, nothing that stuck out for me career wise. I was basically a ship without a direction. Then one day, I was walking toward class and saw an Ad in the Ohio State newspaper called the Lantern. In the Lantern there was an ad by AIESEC which wanted to send people abroad to study and work. I thought, this would be a great opportunity for me to see the world after I graduate from College.

The country I loved and lived in.

AIESEC found a position for me to teach English in a local private high school in Zilina, Slovakia. It was great, i would work during the week and travel on the weekends. It worked great between me and my roommates. My roommate at the time was from Finland, and his name is Tero Viitala. To this day, i still can't roll my r's. And my other roommate was Ladislav Vargas from Slovakia.  Tero and I would go travelling a lot because even though he is from Europe, he did not travel to many places.  Eventually he would remind me a few times, "Hey Howard, when is your Visa stay end? Let's do a Visa run when we go to Poland, Hungary, or Austria next weekend." There were a few weeks where we're completely exhausted from travelling the previous weekend and we'd look at each other and say "Relaxing Weekend!" It was fun and Tero still is a friend to this day. He's got 3 beautiful daughters and his wife Kata, also an AIESEC'r has a beautiful family in Finland. My other roommate, Ladislav, or Laco as we called him was the guy that got us stuff, movies, movies, and a lot of help communicating things in Slovak was a big help. He now lives in Malaysia and he tried visiting me in Taipei, but the poor guy got lost in the Mountains of Taipei and missed our meeting.  Laco...next time you come to Taipei, bring your phone with you on a hike! Glad you're safe buddy! 

My work was ok, for Slovakia. I'd like to say I enjoyed teaching English, but one of the main reasons I moved to Slovakia was because I wanted to see what it was like living in a different culture, rather than a fusion of Chinese and America culture in America, actually in my little world that was Columbus, Ohio. I wanted to get out of the fish bowl and jump into the ocean so to speak. In my year in Slovakia, I got homesick, quite a few times. But sports like Soccer (Football) and Hockey was what got me through the tough times.

Hockey Got Me through Homesickness.

Hockey got me through a lot of homesickness because this was before Skype and Facebook became big. Myspace was the big man on campus. In any case, hockey was awesome. I knew the rules. Plus before I moved to Slovakia, I was an avid hockey fan. On a side note, when I got to see Bret The Hitman Hart in a wrestling event in Northern Ohio, we chatted about Hockey. How cool was that? Hockey was my mainstay and since the tickets were cheap, I went to regular home games as much as I had time for, which wasn't much.

End of part 1.