So many trips

It's been such a long time since my last post (or at least it seems that way to me) because since then I have been a week in Dubrovnik for spring break with all of the exchange students, and then 3 weeks on an amazing tour of western Europe with 90 other students from around the world who are living in Austria and BiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina)! 

Dubrovnik was wonderful, we swam off the rocks in the Adriatic and the water was EXTREMELY blue, we ate amazing seafood by the water, we walked the walls of the old city, took a boat tour of the surrounding islands, and climbed up the mountain overlooking the city. 

Eurotour came a week later, after it seemed like we had just gotten home! All of the students in Croatia took a train together to Linz in Austria, where the tour started.  
Here's where we went: 
Linz
Cologne
Brussells
Bruges
Paris
Toulouse
Andorra
Barcelona
Avignon
Monaco
Lucca
Cinque Terre
Florence
Pisa
Jesolo
Venice
It was a crazy amount to do in just 16 days but it really was the trip of a lifetime. We got to know the Austrians so well in just a short amount of time, and we saw everything. We saw the Eiffel Tower, visited the Louvre, Moulin Rouge and the Cologne cathedral, Segrada Familia, the Palazzo Medici in Florence, the leaning tower of Pisa and the canals and gondolas of Venice. We visited Monte Carlo (on a Sunday haha) and spent a day biking around Bruges. We ate Belgian waffles and chocolate, French macarons, Italian cannolis, gelato and pizza, and almost tried Escargot but they were too expensive. We also spent a lot of time on a bus, but all the better for blasting Balkan music, catching up on lost sleep, and getting to know each other even better.

In the meantime, school ended for my Croatians and we all got T-shirts to celebrate on the last day. I wish I had been there, but I was still on Eurotour! The last day is always a huge party called Norijada, with lots of eating and drinking and reminiscing.

Guess what?
I got sick of long hair and cut it all off! But it was harder than it looked so I had to make an emergency run to the hair salon with my friend.

 It seems like it's the beginning of the end! School is over, the Croatians are taking their exams, and I only have a month left here, which is absolutely nuts. I guess I'll see all of you in America soon!

217 days down

Guess what? 
I went to a trivia night at a local cafe and totally aced the one question they had about America (What state was Obama and Senator in? Illinois represent!) 
My host dad went to Dubrovnik last year and got to see the Game of Thrones set. So jelly. 
I visited the National Archives of Croatia, which was in a gorgeous Secession-style building and learned about termite damage
We are going to the opera tomorrow - Orfeo ed Euridice. 
The Alps from the above are amazing. But who's surprised. 
.  
It's been a bit since my last post, but everything has been happening so fast it seems completely unreal that I have been here for 217 days! 

SO, since its been over a month since my last post, here's what I've been up to: 
Croatians, while they do not celebrate Halloween in October really, have Carnival in February, Which is essentially the same thing, with the addition of giant jam-filled donuts everywhere. The best ones are in the cities of Rijeka and Samobor, but we had our own little celebration here, with a costume dance / karaoke party hosted by my school and all the young kids including my two host brothers went out trick-or -treating for candy and money (and they actually got money not like the occasional dime someone will toss you for American Halloween!).
My friend Tina and I went as Charlie Chaplins and got a free day off of school for our costumes along with Elvis, a giant robot, and the flapper girls from our class. 

Charlies

The day before, I finally got to see the coast!   The water totally lived up to its reputation, it was bright blue and crystal clear.   I went with the sophomores in our school on a day trip to Rijeka, one of the largest coastal cities in Croatia.   We got a tour of the city and then went to a workshop about interpreting and understanding old photographs and a man who worked there showed me a pamphlet he had found in his attic in Austria detailing instructions for American soldiers in WWII on how to interact with local Austrians, and warning them strongly against drinking too much Schnapps and fraternizing with the locals for fear of venereal disease.  I thought it was hilarious. 

Rijeka Carnival decorations

River harbor

If any of you have seen Pharrell William's "Happy" video and all the others in cities around the world that followed, hopefully you'll like this because we did one here at my school!   We spent the morning last Friday filming while we danced to that crazily catchy song, and now it's finished and on Youtube: it
features Tina, a lot of the other seniors funny, my host my / homeroom teacher, and look at 3:26 for yer gurlll. 

Filming of "Happy" 

Annnnddddd, I went to Germany to visit Sylvia in Husum, a small town near the border of Denmark. I met her wonderful host family along with their 14 horses, eight cats, three goats, few chickens, dogs, and bunny. We went to a farmer's party called Wittbek Zeltfest (tent party auf Englisch), ate schnitzel and a lot of pretzels, learned some Plattdeutsch (Moin moin!) And caught up on six months' worth of life. 

Beginning of the Alps

Husum harbor

It was really windy!

Disclaimer: if there are any random words or mentions of Ireland .... im sorry. This site has a glitchy AutoCorrect. 

Week 1 with Family 2

Guess what? 
My Croatian friends speak English when they're being funny or ironic. Don't know why and I love it.
I'm pretty sure that somewhere near there is a cafe and nightclub themed with the Minions from Despicable Me--(for Nicole and Wyatt)
I learned half the lyrics to the new cakje (Serbian country music) called Tri Caše (Three Cups). It's ridiculously catchy and the Croatians find it hilarious when I sing it. 
The Croatian word "kokice" means both popcorn and rooster. 

So the big news of the past few weeks is that I have switched host families as exchange students do, and I am so happy at my new family's house--we get along so well! It is pretty near my previous family's house, just in a different part of Bistra, so I can still do KUD and everything.

I got to go a free jazz concert in Zagreb the other night, and while "jazz" was kind of a loose interpretation of military men in uniform playing jazzy versions of songs ranging from Croatian ones that everybody knows to Frank Sinatra to Queen, it was really amazing! I was especially impressed by the trumpet players--and having never heard a band made completely of service officers I didn't really have high expectations which just made it that much better.

I still have 5 months left here but I am already getting nostalgic for the Croatian ways of coffee. In the morning, in the afternoon, whenever you have time, or are tired, or any other excuse you can find. Everything is done over coffee: business meetings, dates, study sessions, killing time, catching up with friends, making new friends--it is the most regular social thing people do in Croatia, and they never do it alone. It's really rare to see someone in a coffee shop alone, because the mentality is, "why would you go out of the house if you're not meeting someone?" So whenever I get somewhere early because of the bus schedule or a miscommunication, which happens kind of a lot, I have to make sure I bring a book or something that looks important to do, but I still have a suspicion that the baristas think I'm an asocial weirdo. What can ya do.
They also each have their own personality, like the voodoo themed one, the hard rock themed one, and the counterculture themed one. Starbucks is looking pretty boring. So, look out Oberlin coffee shops, I'm bringing the Croatian ways of coffee drinking with me. All day every day.

Guess what?
The Olympics aren't really a big deal here, but still. Let's go, US. And Croatia. 
I got interviewed for the local newspaper  few weeks ago and the article just came out--a giant 2 page spread about me. Wow. I feel like a celebrity. Also a wee bit embarrassed, but that's ok. 
Croatians get much more creative than Americans with curses. 
When something is bad or you don't like it, there is a Croatian expression that translates as "It's in the banana." 

I know I've mentioned the whole bit about families being closer here, but its's not even just families who are close. Croatians are just really social people in general, I think. It's just not usual to be alone, like to go exploring around Zagreb or to a museum or anything that I would like to do with company but wouldn't mind doing alone. They also stick with their close friends much more, and I think the size of Croatia has a lot to do with that. After high school, they go to University, most likely in Zagreb, because that's where the best schools are. So the majority end up in the same town, where it easier to stay close to each other than my friends from back home and I, who have scattered to all four corners of the globe. Families will leave with each other even after the kids are married sometimes, with as many as 4 generations under one roof. Even with the unemployment crisis, it's considered a better idea to stay with your family than to move to another town, even if the job prospects are better there.
In addition, people are simply friendly overall. I have yet to meet a snooty Croatian. At least among people my age here, the cliques are much smaller but spats and drama between friends is much less, well, dramatic, and less common. Everyone has just been kind and open to me.
Did I mention I'm never leaving?

Just What I've Been Up To

Guess what?

-Plusses of living in a village include really nice stars

-The moods of bus drivers here run on extremes-- either 

1) they wait for you as you sprint down the road after the bus and keep waiting after you had to climb into a ditch to retrieve your soaked iPod then make funny faces at you in the mirror, or

2) they open the door that you are not standing at then after you run to the correct door they decide you were too slow, close the door in your face and drive away. 

PS you never know which one you're gonna get.

-New language issues include "crowd with a bazillion people" morphing to "a crowd of Brazilian people"

Winter break has come and gone, with a lot of sleeping, coffee, skating, walking around Zagreb. I went to a New Years party with my friends here, and then we still had a week and a half to relax before the new semester started and things became very Matura-heavy for the Croatians. (Matura is the giant all-inclusive exam at the end of high school). 

I got to do some intersting things lately: explored the Croatian Museum of Naive Art, which showcases work done by people, mostly of the villages, who in most cases have never been out of the country. One artist took pictures of famous buildings he had heard of, such as Notre Dame, and colored them the way he felt they should look. There were also a lot of chickens in the paintings. I think they were usually used as a symbol for a warning. Here are some of my favorites:

Drago Jurak "Raskosni brod"

Slavko Stolnik "Krave se vraćaju"

Matija Skurjeni "Životinski svijet"

(Also that may be illegal--who knows about them copyright laws nowadays) 

Other things: I volunteered at a childrens' hospital in Zagreb with the Interact club here for an afternoon, and I guess we must have had good karma because when we left to get a coffee later, we met the President of Croatia at the same coffee shop! He was very friendly and agreed to take picture after picture. When we left there was a line of people with their babies all hoping for pictures.
I also went to this Christmas light garden with a charity organization in Bistra. It was a really cute place, and the man who ran it told us his story of growing up in poverty and never having money for a lot of Christmas decorations, which inspired him to overcompensate and decorate some 10 acres in about 2 million Christmas lights. At night it looked amazing, and he set off fireworks for good measure.

Ich bin letzte Wochenende nach Salzburg gefahren

Guess what? 
I think the Lorax actually exists. I found his twin stuffed in the Salzburg museum.
Eggnog doesn't exist in Croatia so I'm going to try and make it... it'll be interesting at least!
I got a giant chocolate Sveti Nikola in my boot on the morning of December 6.
I made friends with an octopus. 
If you are ever in Austria, I highly recommend grabbing some Mozartkugeln. They are too delicious. 
The ice rink in Salzburg had the cutest zamboni ever. It was just a 4-wheeler with an ice machine in the back.

Christmas is coming, the house is getting decorated and everyone is eating way too many cookies, so spirits are running high! We finished school last week and right before that I got to travel with Rotary to a weekend in Salzburg where we met the almost 100 students living in Austria for the year. They have a different system with "oldies" and "newbies" as the students from countries in the southern hemisphere typically leave and arrive on exchange midwinter. So at this weekend the "oldies" were getting ready to say goodbye. It was extremely weird thinking about that being me in 6 months! I still feel like I just got here. We walked everywhere, we hiked up to the Burg (fortress) on top of the city, and I got to see if I remembered any German. Turns out I do but it still comes out half Croatian. Sometimes I hit the jackpot and get a sentence which is part German English and Croatian. Stupid brain. We went ice skating as well and fell over a lot, and all had our first Starbucks in four months! Oh gingerbread latte, you were missed. We didn't see any von Trapps running around but you can't have everything.

So marking the point halfway through the year, and since its Christmas, I just want to have a gooey moment and say how grateful I am to be here and have met so many wonderful new people, have gone to Austria, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzagovina, to my host family and my friends here, for having crazy and cool experiences like taking part in the slaughtering of a pig, dancing Croatian folklore, getting lost in Zagreb with friends, trying and mostly failing to make a Thanksgiving dinner, hearing some hilarious stereotypes about what everyone thinks life is like in America (cheerleaders do exist!), and of course my family back in the good ole US of A.

By the way, did you catch that? I did in fact take part in the "kolinje", or traditional pig slaughter that happens around this time. At first I was a little queasy but after a while you get into a rhythm dicing 400 pounds of pork into teenie weenie pieces and it was fun because the whole family did it together. Plus when you do the part for sausages your hands get super soft. Pork fat = super lotion. Who knew?

the Lorax

post Starbucks happy faces

Always the one looking the wrong way.