Introducing Juraj!

Hi, my name is Juraj Cery. I’m seventeen years old. I’m a young man, who decided that will go to study abroad for half a year. I study at high school – Matka Alexia in the historical center of Bratislava – Stare Mesto. My school is so close to my flat, so I can go to school every morning on my skateboard. It takes like 15 minutes and It’s faster than going by bus. I have lived all my life in Bratislava – the capital city of Slovakia.

I love to live in such a “big” city. Bratislava has ca. 600 000 people, however in proportion to Slovakia it is a lot. I love Bratislava because I have a million options to do everything what I want to do. Everyday I can do something new, what I didn’t do yesterday. I love sports so much. So, me and my friends do some sports most frequently.

In Bratislava we have a lot of opportunities to do any activity, that we want to do. We climb a lot in climbing centers (there are two so large centers), we also go to gyms frequently. We have three or four gyms, which we visit because they are the most favorite for us. Some gyms have swimming pools too and we use them too.

When a lot of friends have time, we go and play football or basketball. In my neighborhood there are five pitches for football or basketball. In Bratislava there are a lot of tourists from different counties around whole word. But I think what attracts the tourists the most are our grand mountains – High Tatras.

My family and me go there very often, like four times in year. There we do skiing or hiking. Me and my father climbed four of the highest mountains in High Tatras and of course the highest mountain in Slovakia – Gerlach. In High Tatras there are a lot of things what you can do it in winter or summer. In winter there are a lot of ski resorts opened, cross-country tracks and ski trail routes. In summer you can go everywhere and do a lot of things. There is very beautiful nature. In High Tatras there are very many tourist routes, high mountain cottages (like Zbojnicka, Bilicka, Terinka Zamka and so on) and a lot of beautiful glacier lakes. If I wanted to take some foreign friends somewhere, I would take them to High Tatras. High Tatras prove to be very beautiful but very dangerous too. I think, High Tatras are the most beautiful mountains in Central Europe.

I have two brothers; one is younger and one is older. The older Jakub was studying in England for half year like six years ago. He praised it so much, so I decided that I want to study somewhere too. I have been to England a few times before, so for sure I wanted to go study somewhere in England.

But my older friends persuaded me that it would better to study to Ireland. I didn’t have too much information about Ireland so I started to find schools through High School International. They have so many schools to choose from. And that was a very good opportunity for me to go study in Ireland. Because I’m going to go study only for half year, it was so difficult choose some school for me. But finally, we found one. It’s called Blackwater Community School and this school is in very small city called Lismore.

It’s very unusual for me to study in a city so small. But it will be interesting and something unknown. I really liked that I can pick subjects, which I want to study. It’s pretty cool and good for me because I’ll study something, that I want to study. I picked Home Economics, Business, German Language; Math and English are obligatory. So, I’m really excited for school and I hope It will be not so difficult to study these subjects in English and not in my native language – Slovak. I’m little bit nervous because I think I don’t have very good English. Tomorrow I’m going to flay away and I’m so delighted. I’m going to go fly away from Vienna so my friends will take me with their car. My parents can not take me, so I must go with my friends but it’ll be fun. When I arrive to Dublin, there will be someone from HSI waiting for me. After that, he or she will walk me to bus station.  From there I’ll go by bus to Waterford. My Host Family will be waiting for me there. I’m so glad to be able to stay at my Host Family. But I will miss my home so much.