Back in Beograd

So we have all returned to Belgrade to begin our independent study projects. Actually, that's not true, because a few people have gone other places to do their ISPs. A few girls are in BiH and one in Zagreb, so I believe that there are 7 of us still in Belgrade.

Before coming back to Belgrade, we spent a week in Zagreb preparing for our ISP. It was nice to go back to our starting point for a bit, but I forgot about the long commute I had from my homestay into the city center! It was still a nice week though. We had our final language exam (ahhhhh!) which I had to study loooong and hard for, but I think that I did decently.

On the 14th we took a bus back to Belgrade, which means that we've been here for a little over a week (and me without a single blog post; whoops). It has been great so far. Our ISP allows us to make our own schedules, with time for researching, interviewing and writing. We each work with an advisor who is knowledgeable about what we've chosen to study. They help us make contacts with people to interview and, of course, advise us.

So far on my ISP, I have done a lot of reading and met with my advisor, and will hopefully be meeting up with some contacts in the upcoming week (before I leave for ROME!!!). A few of the girls here, Marisa and Julie, have rented an apartment in the area of town where all the embassies are and near the place where Tito is buried, called House of Flowers. It's a decently far trek by bus (around an hour from my place) but it is a good neighborhood, and a great apartment. I've spent quite a bit of time hanging out with them there, making dinner, watching TV and drinking wine. It is nice to have a place to go to relax with my friends that isn't necessarily a cafe all the time.

On Friday night, I went on a sort of impromptu "clubbing" adventure. A few girls and I went to a cafe called Insomnia (it is on my street) for drinks. It was a cool atmosphere, and the drinks were kind of expensive, but it was nice. Afterwards, we made our way to a well-known club called Tube, which really is very tube-like on the inside. We danced for a few hours, and it was a good time. I was kind of surprised that not a whole lot of people in the club were actually dancing, but maybe we just went on the wrong night? Regardless, the girls and I had fun.

I have been reading a few tourist guides of Belgrade online that talk about how Belgrade is not really a "pretty" or "tourist-y" city. But as this guide said, it's "a city for people who love cities." I would agree that Belgrade isn't really a tourist destination. There are museums, and beautiful buildings and parks, but I don't know that a tourist in Belgrade would really get the feeling of the city, and how amazing it is. The shops, the cafes, the restaurants, the people. It is a fun and interesting place to live, and I've only been here a few weeks! It is unfortunate that not everyone that comes here can stay here for that period of time, and really see things the way I've been able to. I feel like even the two-ish months I'll be staying here are not enough to see and explore everything that I want to, and I really look forward to coming back someday.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'm really excited!!! We have some plans so far, but I will see how everything works about, and perhaps write about it afterwards!

Internet issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina

So, I have been in Bosnia for the past few weeks. Sorry I have not updated much, but I was having internet issues in Bosnia. But now we are back in Zagreb for a week, and I will hopefully have time to write about how amazing Bosnia is.

However, I will write about our experience yesterday, because it was amazing. We left early from Mostar to go to Dubrovnik, a city on the southern coast of Croatia.We got there around noon, after a few hour drive. The drive itself was so gorgeous. We went through mountains, by an amazing blue-green river and saw some of the coast. It was sunny and pretty warm so it was a perfect day to go.

When we arrived, I think we were all in awe to see the Adriatic. It is such an amazing color blue, it looks fake. The first thing we saw was... a ton of tourists, mostly old people speaking English. It was weird! We do not normally see many tourists. We took a quick tour around before we went for lunch. The city is surrounded by a big fortress-type wall which looks out over the sea. We walked around inside of it, where there are many gift shops and restaurants and coffee shops. We also saw a war memorial (we do not really go anywhere on this program without seeing one). Although there have been many wars in Croatia, Dubrovnik has historically been left alone, due to its beauty and history. However, in the most recent war, it was attacked. It was horrible to see the pictures of the town on fire and bridges being bombed. Really, most of the towns we have been in went through the same thing, but for Serbia to attack Dubrovnik was really sort of a slap in the face.

We went for lunch at a small cafe with amazing seafood (of course). Apparently, it is a good month for oysters, so we ordered some. I do not know if I have ever had oysters before, but I am sure that they were not as good as these. They were really delicious. We also ordered a huge plate of mussels, and mussels risotto and calamari risotto (it was black). And of course, white wine. There were a ton of cats all around the restaurant, begging for food like dogs! One of them even jumped up on my lap and took a nap! It was adorable. We ate A TON of food, and then went to finish sightseeing.

It is possible to take a walking tour around the top of the fortress wall, so we did that. I cannot even begin to explain how amazing it is. As soon as I post pictures, you can see for yourself, but even those do not really do it justice. Needless to say, it is a view I will never forget.

Of course, since most of us in the program are usually landlocked, we NEEDED to swim in the water. A few of the girls got a little more adventurous and went to find a rock to go climb and jump off of, but the rest of us just trespassed onto a local beach. I was content to stand with my jeans rolled up and let the waves wash over my feet, but two other girls stripped down and jumped in! It looked really fun and I wish we all would have been able to go swimming, but we were only on a day trip with nothing to change into for our hours of travelling back to Zagreb.

We finished the day watching the sunset at a cafe jutting out from one of the fortress walls and listening to the waves crash on the rocks below us.  We took a short flight back to Zagreb, and returned home (I think we all feel like our first host families are like "home" to us now).

We have the next week to work on our ISP proposal before returning to Belgrade (or whereever we choose to go), so hopefully I will find some time to update about my trip to Bosnia.

Police, meat and booze

Ahh, Friday. Last night was my first night with my host family. It went well, not awkward like some of the girls said theirs was. I know I can be quiet when I first meet people, but they are both very outgoing and nice, and they are so adorable and funny. I really hope they like me and accept me into their lives well.

Today, we had to get registered at the police station. It took forever. We waited in line for almost two hours with a bunch of other people to get registered. Afterwards, my host parents had to go to work, so I had until 3:30 to wander the city by myself. I walked around for awhile and then it started to rain, so I got on a tram number that I'd never been on before. I just rode it until the end of the line, and rode it back into the town center. It didn't take very long, so then I just went for a walk around the main square by myself. I was going to try to find lunch somehwere and ran into a few other girls from the program.

I ate this meaty sandwich. I was nervous when ordering it from a stand on the walkway, and even more nervous when I watched the lady behind the counter shave off sheets of meat from a huge, rotating cylinder of sausage. The lettuce and tomato made the sandwich a lot easier to eat, and there was some sort of spicy sauce on the delicious bread that was awesome. After I got tired of the sandwich itself, I just ate the spicy saucy bread.

Anyway, the afternoon we spent on language classes and two younger people came in to talk to us about places to go in Zagreb. They told us about restaurants and bars and clubs and stuff. They told us about these "turbo folk" clubs, where models and football players and famous people go and they play Serbian and Bosnian and Albanian music. They made them sound really glamorous, but violent and said that there is "people dancing on tables and stomping on glasses and Italian mobsters watching girls walk around in short skirts. And then they told us we should go to them.

This evening my host parents took me over to their friends' house where we ate dinner and had drinks. They told them that because I can't drink in the US, with them I am only allowed to drink alcohol. We had mojitos (clearly a traditional Croatian beverage), and some sort of cherry liqueur from Dalmatia. Another lovely night in Zagreb.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday: Slowly starting to get into the language, and our language class starts on Wednesday. So far i know hvala (thank you), pivo (beer), and pala (half) which we learned when we were trying to buy some cheese and the old woman who spoke no english tried to sell us a huge block. This was part of our little "first day experiment," during which we walked around the big market near the main square (trg), Dolac, a big open-air market with all different kinds of food. Each of us bought a little something and brought it back to SIT to put together as a meal. I had my first real meat. There's another girl who is normally vegetarian but is eating meat during the trip and we tried it at the same time. I had a bite of some kind of weird meat that looked like uncooked bacon that made me gag and i couldn't swallow. The other was some kind of spicy sausage on a big, buttery loaf of bread and it had a really weird texture.

Wednesday: We started language class which was fun and interesting. I'm kind of overwhelmed and frightened by the language, but I'm trying not to get too down on myself about it. I know I will learn slowly, but I want to stay positive, at least for now. It is clear that some of the girls are good at language and are also really motivated to learn it. I am neither. But I think that I will be okay (for now.)

Wednesday night was when Croatia played England at soccer in England, so we all went to a bar and watched the game. Croatia lost, 4-1, but it was still fun to watch. I was really hoping that they would win, and the streets would be a crazy party. But everyone watching was very quiet, except when Croatia scored that one goal. I really hope to see another match before I leave. Apparently the rivalry between Zagreb and Split (on the coast) is very heated, and games can get violent. Is it wrong that I would kind of love to see that?

That sign is right outside our hostel, and that building behind it is what we look at everyday. Apparently an old folks' home. The hostel is right next to a chocolate factory so it always smells like burnt chocolate around here. Tomorrow, we meet our host families. I'm pretty excited. they go really out of their way to match us well with host families so I think it will all work out well. So far, my favorite part of Zagreb is all of the dogs that people have. I see a ton of dogs every day, ranging from a huge, horse-sized, fluffy white one on my first day, to a lady sitting in a cafe with her tiny Chihuahua sleeping on her lap, to an adorable, yellow Lab puppy that a man was trying to train to sit and stay on the pedestrian street. Of course, I feel the need to point out every single one to the people I'm with, and I've been trying to take sneaky pictures of the cute ones. Perhaps that will be my ISP topic: "The Canine Population of Zagreb."

2 DAYS TO GO!!

So pretty much going into the final stages at this point. It's Friday and I leave on Sunday. I'm kiiiiiiiinda freaking out. The packing is the worst part. My suitcase can only weigh 45 pounds and it currently weighs.... 70 pounds. And I don't know what else to take out. How does one pack for 4 months for 70 degree to 30 degree weather? In a suitcase less than 50 pounds? I just don't know how anyone can do it.

Finally got a list of all the people that will be on the trip, and have been Facebook stalking. It's a group of 11 people, all girls! That's kind of weird, but it's cool. They all seem really great so far, although most of them seem much more... worldly than I. I'm really looking forward to meeting them.

I just found out about a week ago that I've been accepted to be a student correspondent for Global Post, an online news source that covers global news via independent correspondents living in different countries all over the world. They've started a Study Abroad page for students to contribute and talk about their experiences abroad. Hopefully I can keep up with that blog, this one, and all my school work.

Regardless of how nervous I am, and how hard packing is, I'm excited. I can't wait to see Zagreb and meet all the people in the program and my host family. Mostly though, I can't wait until the 12+ hours of traveling are over!