I bet you are wondering why would a girl like me learn such a weird language as Slovak. Why not something more common?
It's quite a long story, and a sad one. I grew up as a half-orphan (is that the right word?). Never in my life have I seen my father, and I don't know anything about him. Mother apparrently knows more, but she's reluctant to speak of him. The only things she told me (on my fifteenth birthday) were that he was an engineer from Czechoslovakia. He was in our town on some errand in the local power plant, and as far as I know he stayed here roughly for a year.
The reason why I couldn't get anything else out of my mother is probably that she assumes I would run off to see him... and between us, she's right. I mean, wouldn't
you want to know your father, if you were in my place?
I remember the first time I saw Star Wars, and the "I'm your father, Luke" scene as a little child. The night after I awoke screaming, having a nightmare about my father being Darth Vader. I know it sounds stupid, but I was really scared back then. It was then when I promised myself that one day I'll find him and get to know him. But so far, all my efforts were in vain, I couldn't find out anything about him.
The rest of the story is simple: Once I met an old European lady in the local library. After a short chat I found out that she and her husband moved here from Czechoslovakia in 1968. As she didn't have much other work, I managed to convince her to give me lessons in Slovak after my school was over. I'm nowhere near fluent, but I think I wouldn't die of hunger in Slovakia :)
As they say in Slovakia, "Dovidenia, priatelia!"
