This weekend was the first weekend since I arrived that I had to myself, with no travel or activities planned. I have been prone to feeling burned out and empty at times due to the sheer amount of things that I’ve had to do, and I was greatly looking forward to having some R&R with my guitar, just so I could recharge a little.
Then, in the afternoon, my host father comes in and tells me something in something in Slovak, though it was much faster ana more complicated than I can understand currently. He follows it up with “get ready, you are going to fly”. Understandably, I wasn’t any less confused after hearing that, but I threw some shoes on and got in the car. My host brother and I drove down to Zvolen and I get ushered into a small four seater airplane, by then I had put two and two together and figured out that something like this was happening. The flight was fantastic, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I hadn’t been in an aircraft that small before (the plane is a Rockwell Commander 112 TC). Overall I was very excited, we were in the air during the sunset over the peaks of the Tatras on the horizon.
I felt like a little kid as I put on the headset 
The view was majestical 
Then on Sunday, I met up with some classmates of mine, whom are friends of Lucia, the exchange student from B.B. who’s currently in Taipei, Taiwan. We walked around the city and talked for near five hours on Sunday, which was quite nice, my classmates are typically quite shy to speak english in general, so I don’t always spend as much time with them as I may like. Though it’s just as much my fault for not initiating conversation either, even with my fears/struggles with speaking Slovak and my sense of guilt for making others speak english with me.
In an odd way, I feel this situation making me both a more shy person, and a more extroverted person, granted, the former seems much more temporary given its origin (my current situation/language barrier). The latter I hope proves to be a permanent change. One of my greatest weaknesses is forcing myself to reach out to people and initiate social interaction, and I have numerous regrets from high school that derive from that struggle. So if I can learn to handle the social anxiety I often feel at least in part while I’m abroad in SK, I will be very glad.
I sympathize with your situation. Being in Europe had a similar effect on me as well. Keep in mind that one is not necessarily better than the other. Things are not always as cut and dried as we initially see or would like to think. Life is full of contradiction and an important part of life is managing that contradiction – and learning how to do so. But that’s where a lot of life’s beauty is also discovered. With time and a little kindness toward self, a lot of peace can be found in that discovery.