Slovenian Surprise

by Katie Hoover

Katie is a teacher at a public high school in New York City, where she teaches English as a New Language (ENL) to students from around the world, many of whom have only recently arrived in the United States. After several challenging years, she looked to the Hero Travel Fund to craft a restorative honeymoon for her and her husband. Katie and her husband, Texas, went on a Destination: Unknown Adventure to Slovenia in July 2025. Highlights included connecting with local artists and artisans, exploring the vibrant capital of Ljubljana, paragliding over Lake Bohinj, whitewater rafting on the Soča River, and taking much-needed time to relax, reconnect, and restore. Katie returned home from this “unforgettable” journey with a renewed purpose and a deeper sense of appreciation for the challenges her students face and the courage needed to meet those challenges. She felt motivated, recharged, and inspired to be back in the classroom and be the welcoming, patient teacher that her students need.

Remember Me?

My name is Katie Hoover (I got married this past May and was Katie Lotz before). I was fortunate to be one of the winners of the 2025 Hero Travel Fund contest for my work as a public high school teacher in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. I teach English as a New Language (ENL). My students are from countries all over the world and range in age from 13-21. They come from all different backgrounds and lived experiences, speak different languages, and while some may have lived in the US for a few months or a year or two, others enter my classroom after arriving in the US last week. As I teach ENL levels 1 and 2, my students are the newest to learning English, and some have never studied it before. Often, I get a blank, deer-in-the-headlights look when I ask what their name is, as the student is either unsure of what I’ve said or how to respond. It takes a lot of hand gestures, pictures, acting out, and smiling to make students feel comfortable and able to understand.

Planning Our Trip

My husband and I knew we wanted to use the 2024 Explorer Hero Travel Fund winning prize towards our honeymoon in Slovenia. Michael Bennett, our assigned Explorer X travel planner, explained that he works with clients to plan trips in two ways:

Option 1 - Custom Travel Experience: Michael would work with us to learn our travel style, likes and dislikes, and which activities we wanted during the trip. He would then proceed with creating an itinerary proposal. After, he would show this to us so we could give feedback on what we liked or wanted to change, and he would continue to tweak it until we were satisfied.
Option 2 - Destination: Unknown @ Slovenia: We would complete a detailed questionnaire asking about our travel style, likes and dislikes, level of adventurousness, how much touring we liked, preferred wake-up times, etc., and then have a call with Michael to review the form. After, he would plan the trip and create the itinerary, but would not share it with us until a few days before we departed. The ultimate surprise!

We knew immediately the latter was the option for us. After a year of planning for my classes at school, planning our May wedding, and writing a 33-page teacher tenure application that was due on April 1st, to think that someone else would take charge and plan an incredible surprise honeymoon for us sounded like a dream! So we went with the second option, and in April and May, we didn’t have to worry or stress about planning our trip, as we knew Michael was taking care of it.

The Lead Up To Our Departure

Admittedly, as the school year wound down and our honeymoon trip was getting closer, I did occasionally feel a bit restless. Wasn't there something I should be doing to prepare for it? We were leaving in just a few weeks! It was a new and different practice for me to not be the one planning and in charge. But after the initial restlessness passed, it felt quite freeing. It was nice to put my trust in Michael and the Explorer X team. It also let me focus on ending the school year in the best way I could: Planning classes that reminded my students of how much they learned this past semester, let them know how proud I am of all their work, and how I hope, deeply and truly hope, that I see them in the fall.

The end of school is always bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I’m always filled with excitement to have some time not planning classes, to be able to sleep past 5:15AM on a weekday, and to spend more time with my now-husband, family, and friends. However, on the other hand, it’s difficult to say goodbye to my students. I work hard to build strong relationships with them, and consequently, I grow to feel a deep attachment to them. I refer to them as “my kids.” It’s emotional for me to be filled with such pride at how much they’ve grown as people and English speakers, to know how capable they are of great things and to be filled with such hope for their futures. In a normal school year, I am confident that I will be able to follow along with the rest of their high school careers by seeing them in the hallways and talking to their new teachers, as most of them will move on to a different English level and class from my own. However, this year felt different, in the worst way. This year, as I said goodbye to my students and wished them a great summer, I was filled with fear and uncertainty about whether I actually would see them in the hallways in the fall. Would the current horrific situation with ICE continue to worsen? Would some of my students not be coming back? It was a terrible feeling, and I still worry about it. But to see their smiling faces and laughter those last few days of class, and to hear how excited they were for summer break filled me with hope.

So as the week of our departure arrived and Texas, my husband, and I sat in front of my laptop for our itinerary reveal call with Michael, we were buzzing with excitement. We were ready to be surprised, and we definitely were! Michael walked us through our itinerary as we saw it for the first time, pointing out the incredible accommodations booked for us from intimate boutique hotels in Ljubljana to newly finished countryside villas. He shared personal anecdotes about different activities we’d do and tour guides we’d have. He gushed about the food at the restaurants where he’d made us dinner reservations. Texas and I were beyond thrilled and felt Michael had ticked every one of our boxes for what we wanted for our honeymoon. As stated in our pre-planning forms preferences, we never had to get up super early, we had a great combination of touring/activities and leisure time to explore independently, and we were scheduled to go white water rafting in the Soca river, one of our “must do’s” in our planning call. We had chosen the surprise option, and we felt, without a doubt, that the surprise lived up to the hype.

The Trip

The entire 8 days in Slovenia felt like a dream. We spent the first two days falling in love with the capital city of Ljublana, strolling the tree-lined river and cobblestoned streets, crossing Dragon Bridge, and visiting the castle that sits atop a hill overlooking the picture-perfect fairy tale city. On our third day, we visited Lake Bled and saw water bluer than we’ve ever seen. Not only did we get to see this water, but we took a small rowboat to the island in the middle of the lake to visit the church and ring the wishing bell (fingers crossed my wish comes true!), and then we went swimming in the lake! We finished that incredible day being brought to a stunning villa in Lake Bohinj in the only National Park in Slovenia, Triglav National Park. We couldn’t believe this small village of countryside cottages with its beautiful lake, quaint churches with wooden-shingled steeples, surrounded by incredible mountains, was real. I think I said “Slovenia is a fairy tale country” a hundred or so times during our honeymoon.

On our fourth day, our wonderful guide Domen picked us up as stated in the itinerary and reconfirmed the night before, for a morning hike to Vogar Viewpoint. He explained to us prior to the start that we would hike up the mountain for about 1.5-2 hrs, and then take a shuttle down. We were excited and followed Domen up the 1054 meters. We passed beautiful trees, butterflies, wildflowers, and quaint mountain cottages and huts. It was quiet, calm, and we saw maybe 10 people on the entire hike. It felt like we had the mountain to ourselves. To me, it was a great hike with a perfect viewpoint ending overlooking the lake. It was stunning; another great honeymoon experience.

After we snapped some photos, our guide, Domen, led us to what I assumed would be the shuttle meeting point. So when we found these two guys with huge backpacks waiting a few yards away and our guide greeting them, we thought nothing of it, assuming he must be friends with them. However, our jaws dropped when Domen then turned to us and said with a grin, “So, I lied. You two actually are not taking a shuttle down the mountain. You two are paragliding down.” Texas and I looked at each other wide-eyed in disbelief. US!? PARAGLIDING!? HERE!?! We couldn’t believe it! Forget the incredible surprise of our itinerary reveal, this surprise even topped that! We were immediately amped up and full of excited butterflies in our stomachs.

We said goodbye to Domen and followed the paragliding guides down a new path to the paragliding take-off point on the side of the mountain. Texas and I were giddy, giggling with nervous excitement as our guides laid out the equipment and prepared for our flights. When our guides asked who wanted to go first, I bravely volunteered, and after a brief introduction and explanation of how we would take off, I was suddenly airborne. And it was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. For 15-20 minutes, I was soaring above the mountains, trees, lake, and valleys (Trust me, I saw all of these things from above). Gliding along with the wind like a bird. Not only could I not believe I was actually in the air with just the safety of a parachute and my guide, but I had only been made aware I would be enjoying such a thrill a mere 20 minutes prior! It was truly an all-around unbelievable surprise experience, and Texas and I will treasure the rest of our lives.

But the wonder of our trip didn’t end there! After an epic time in Lake Bohinj, we continued to be amazed by white-water rafting in the stunningly blue Soca River and walking the actual trenches of WWI in Kobarid. We ate a home-cooked lunch with an incredibly hilarious and kind older woman at her home in a village of only 20 people. We tasted different olive oils and wines, and relaxed by the pool in Medana. We tried new foods, learned new histories, and took far too many photos. It was the perfect honeymoon.

The Takeaways

Our honeymoon in Slovenia is a journey that could be next to the definition of “unforgettable” in the dictionary. We had the best time, and are still feeling the many impacts from the trip as we’ve returned home to our day-to-day lives in New Jersey.

As a language lover and a teacher of English as a New Language, I was naturally curious about the language of Slovenian. Our guide, Domen, shared some of the phonics instructions for the language, and I was immediately reminded of how I share similar phonics instructions with my students learning English. It was a humbling role reversal to be the student, completely new to reading a language that looked similar to my own but sounded very different. I remembered how challenging it is to try to train your brain to switch from the phonics you are comfortable with to the new ones you are being taught. For example, in Slovenian, the “j” is an English “y” sound, which makes the name of the capital city, Ljubljana, challenging to pronounce correctly. I’m going to bring back this reminder to my classroom this upcoming school year, as I work with the students newest to reading English in my Advisory class.

Additionally, there were a few times after I would say “Dobro dan!” in greeting that a person would respond to me in full Slovenian sentences. In these moments, I had no idea how to respond, and it was my turn to be the deer-in-the-headlights. Each time this happened, I felt embarrassed for needing them to switch to English for me to understand, but again was reminded of how my students must often feel. These moments left a real impact on me as they reiterated the importance of not only having patience with new language learners but also why creating a classroom where students feel comfortable to make mistakes and take risks is so hugely important. These moments connected to learning the Slovenian language helped me to feel motivated, recharged, and inspired to be back in the classroom in September. It made me excited to once again be the welcoming, patient teacher that students need to feel comfortable and motivated to learn English.

My husband, Texas, is a woodworker and artist. He runs his own small business, Texas Hoover Woodwork, creating furniture, wooden portraits, and live-edge picture frames. His main medium is wood; however, on the first night of our trip, Texas was inspired by a unique lamp in our hotel room and could not stop talking about it. Each night we were there he would remark at how incredible the light was and how well it illuminated the room. I’m happy to say he is currently exploring blending his woodworking skills with electricity to create new wooden lighting pieces. This is new for him, as he has never ventured into electricity woodworking before, but it will be amazing for him to create a new, unique product!

Lastly, Slovenia is not shy about reminding you that “love” is in its name, which is just another reason why it's a perfect honeymoon destination. We started this trip as a newly married couple, excited to get away together to explore a new country after a really busy and challenging school year. During our trip, without the stress of our jobs or everyday life, we were able to be really present with each other and our surroundings. We shared moments on this trip of adrenaline, amazement, and simplicity, but all of these moments brought us closer. Each night at dinner, we did one of the Explorer X’s Couple Questions, prompting us to share what we learned, loved, and appreciated about each other, as well as our hopes and dreams for our future in a way we may not have discussed otherwise. We left the trip really excited about the rough plan we discussed for how we want our life to be and how we hope to raise our future children. Being in a country like Slovenia, which is so closely tied to family and nature, inspired us to want to live a similar life with our future children. We left starry-eyed, even more in love, and even more connected.

Thank you, Slovenia, for being the magical place you are, and thank you, Explorer X, for your generosity and expertise in planning our dream honeymoon. It was the best surprise.