It Begins!

Well, our UPC Deputee girls, Karuna and Whitney, arrived here in Croatia on Sunday, without a hitch. I guess there was a ton of security in the airport and around Zagreb for their arrival - you know, they're kind of sketchy. Just kidding! No, actually, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, arrived in Croatia the same day, so that's why the security was tight. But Christine and Tihomir had no trouble finding them and they made it to Fuzine safely, but tired from their 24+ hour trip. We are so glad to have them here! They have been here only 2 days and are already hard at work and making great contributions and helping prepare for EDS, which begins on Sunday. The first of the additional members of the EDS leadership team will arrive tomorrow, and the rest will get here on Friday and Saturday. Then we will have 2 weeks of EDS, followed by prep for ROM and then 3 weeks of ROM. Basically, the arrival of Karuna and Whitney signalled the beginning of the hectic part of the summer. But I know it will be a great summer! I have been responsible for some of the participant details for ROM, and just looking at the applications of this year's participants, and talking with some of them via email, they sound like an amazing group of people. I am sure EDS will be the same. God is good. (Oh, and for those of you who know him, Andrew has joined us in Fuzine, too!)

Shopping for supplies in Zagreb

Me, Brajna, and Tea

Me, Karuna, and Whitney

Me, Brajna, Tea, Karuna, Whitney, Ivona, Justin, Christine, Tihomir

Christine and Tihomir

Fuzine

What a Week!

We finished the Fuzine Youth Festival yesterday. What a week! It turned out to be a great experience. I think the kids really enjoyed it, and perhaps even learned a bit of English, despite the difficult time they had focusing because it was the last week of school. Yesterday was actually the last day of school for them because today is a Croatian holiday (Anti-Fascism Day). We had a celebration where each class performed some kind of presentation. The preschool kids sang (2 of my favorite songs: "Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee" and the shark song), and were so cute! Maja's and my class (3rd and 4th grade/3 i 4 razred) chose their presentation all by themselves. They coreographed a dance to "Jailhouse Rock" - it was amazing! We were so proud of them! The older kids did skits about being kind to others (Acts of Kindness was the theme of the week). We also had a really fun campfire/s'mores/movie charades night with the team. Way fun! All in all, it was great, and I am glad I got to be here for FYF. Today, it was back to work on EDS and ROM preparations. We get the weekend off, though, and Brajna and I are going to the coast tomorrow. Yay! Then back to work on Monday, and basically we will be working for the next 2 months until ROM finishes. The Deputee girls will arrive in Croatia on Sunday! We are all excited to see them!

Fuzine Youth Festival

Today was the first day of the Fuzine Youth Festival. My co-teacher is Maja, and we have 3rd and 4th graders. Today was basically a getting-to-know-each-other day, but I think the kids learned a little English and had some fun (they got to plant flowers!). There were, of course, a few kids who weren't too into it, but the majority of them were really excited and seemed to be eager to participate. The cool thing is that in our class we have two children of one of our students from the Fuzine Community School of English - and also they're our neighbors! Brajna and Esy have a couple FCSE kids, too. I love that we are getting to know whole families! I think that the best part of today was how funny the kids in our class thought it was when I pronounced their names or tried to speak Croatian. But I am glad that I can provide comic relief. :) I entertain my fellow team members, too. Hmm. I have learned some new phrases in the past month: "evo ga!" "jel da" and "ima puno stepenica" come to mind. That last one means, "we have a lot of stairs," and was said to me and Maja by an older gentleman as we were walking back from the school today, up the long flight of stairs from the lake. We must have looked tired - but in our defense, it was partially from spending a couple hours with kids, not just from walking up the stairs! Actually, it turned out to be a fun day with them, though. I was a bit hesitant because I never think I am very good with kids - especially when there is a language barrier. But these kids didn't mind me, and I was surprised to find myself saying things in Croatian that I didn't realize I knew! It's amazing how well you can communicate using just a bit of broken English and a bit of broken Croatian! The theme of the week is "Kindness," and each day we have a different focus. Today was "being kind to our environment," tomorrow is "being kind to our friends and family," Wednesday is "being kind to the disadvantaged," and Thursday is "being kind to the world" (e.g. people from different countries). I think it's a great theme. Tea worked really hard on preparing materials and curriculum outline, and then each set of teachers just tweaks it depending on the day and grade level. The other teachers have been fun to get to know. There are, of course, me, Tea, and Brajna, and our friend Maja who came to ROM last summer, our friend Zima who is our neighbor and was a student in FCSE, two of Brajna's friends, Sanyesz and Esy, who are Hungarian but living in Vukovar, and three other Americans: Jeff and his son Austin, and daughter Emily, who are from New York. They are a pretty fun group of people. Yesterday, we went to the coast and just spent time enjoying the beach and each other's company. What a way to start the week! We came home feeling both exhausted and refreshed at the same time. Please pray that God would give us all energy through this week, and that this will be a great experience for the kids from Fuzine, Lic, and Vrata.

Gospodja??

We have a group of elementary school kids in the house right now, because the Croatian school system requires them to have five days of "school in nature," and Fuzine is a perfect place to meet this requirement. Anyway, I was walking down one of the hallways today, and several boys came up and started talking (really fast!) to me. Needless to say, although my language skills are improving somewhat, I had no idea what they were saying. I looked at the one who was standing directly in front of me and said, "Ne razumijem hrvatski" ("I don't understand Croatian"). He looked at me like I had said, "ice cream is falling from the sky," or something equally as bizarre. "Ne razumijes hrvatski?" ("You don't understand Croatian?") He looked at me and blinked. "Govorim engleski" ("I speak English"), I replied. "Gospodja govori engleski!" he informed his compatriats. I smiled and continued on my way, laughing to myself. I was laughing for two reasons. First of all, because I get this reaction often here. I don't look all that different, so people just assume I am Croatian until they hear me open my mouth. Second of all, I have never been called "Gospodja" before. It's like being at home and being called "Ma'am." Makes me feel so old.... Joj! (Croatian for "oi vay!") Later in the evening, as I was working on some ROM preparations on my computer in the office, two girls took up positions by a post in the hallway outside the office door, which was open. I could hear them speaking quietly to each other in Croatian, but didn't really pay attention until I heard them say, "engleski." Well, duh, of course I knew they were talking about me. I just smiled, but kept working. So cute though. I heard one of the girls say in slow, deliberate English, "how are you today? Excellent!" Hopefully the kids who come to our Fuzine Youth Festival next week will be as interested in me and in speaking English as the kids here this week are!

Back in Croatia

Alright, well I have been back in Croatia for a few days now, and that time has been spent enjoying walks by the lake, doing laundry, watching TV in Croatian, and getting myself mentally ready for the next few months, which promise to be quite eventful.

Zagreb
On the way back to Croatia from our trip, we got stuck in heavy traffic, and I missed the train back to Fuzine. But no matter. I found the info for the Zagreb hostel I had booked for September, and ended up staying there 2 nights. The first night I was there, I joined several other guests to watch the football match between the Croatian national team and the Russian national team. It was a qualifying match for Euro Cup 2008, and it was not a very lively game because neither team scored, but it was just fun to be in Zagreb and watch. And the hostel was about a block away from the stadium where the match was being played, which was kind of fun. A couple of the guys at the hostel walked down just to look at the stadium, which, when we had driven by earlier, I had seen was packed. We had also seen many men in red and white checkered shirts stopped for a drink at rest stops along the highway back to Zagreb when we were driving back from Bosnia earlier in the day. People in Europe get really excited about soccer, something that has taken me awhile to get used to, but now I really do enjoy watching the matches, too.



I didn't do much else in Zagreb because the day I was there happened to be a national holiday and everything was closed, and it was raining. However, it was successful in that I took myself to the movies (and managed to buy a ticket for the version of Shrek 3 that was only subtitled in Croatian, not dubbed!) and had a very delicious teriyaki chicken dinner in Zagreb's (as far as I can tell only) Asian restaurant.

Adventures with laundry
First of all, I think that it should be reiterated that I should not be allowed to do my own laundry on machines I don't know how to use (and can't read)... Although, when we consider the fact that I did 5 loads of laundry and only changed the color of 4 items, and shrunk 2 things, I guess it wasn't that bad! Suffice it to say, however, that I will need to do a little shopping in Rijeka or Zagreb to remedy my current situation. I have been left sweater-less, as my previously too-large sweater will now fit a very small child... Ah, well.

Update 6/18/2007 - Brajna was just showing one of our FYF volunteers how to use the laundry machines, so I went along to see what she said, and hopefully rectify my mistakes the next time I do laundry. Apparently even though I was aware that the machines were using Celcius, I didn't register that when I set them. Ajoj! Turns out that I boiled my clothes... 90 degrees Celcius works out to something like 195 degrees Farenheit. Crap. I'm lucky I only screwed up a few things!! Well, at least now I know for next time.

Hrvatski Radijski Festival
Many of you may know that I have a (minor) obsession with Croatian pop music, and that I use learning the language as an excuse to listen to it. Well, imagine my joy at discovering that the Hrvatski Radijski Festival was aired on live TV this past Saturday night! Of course, I was thrilled and enjoyed every minute of it! Especially since it is the CD of last year's HRF that I listen to most. Lovely. See: www.hrf.hr

Upcoming events
Now we are getting ready for the events that make this place so, well, eventful, during the summers. Next Saturday, we begin the Fuzine Youth Festival, which is coordinated by Tea. It will be a week-long English-language program for the kids from Fuzine's elementary school. And it promises to be a lot of fun. The Economic Diplomacy Seminar (EDS) will follow soon after, and then ROM (Renewing Our Minds) will consume most of the rest of the summer. Karuna and Whitney, this year's UPC Deputees to Croatia, will be arriving somewhere around the beginning of EDS, and I am so excited for them to get here! I am definitely looking forward to all of these events, and to see the work God does here and in the participants' lives this summer. We would appreciate your prayers.

ROM Regional Trip

Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo/a, Montenegro, BiH

Balkan Prayer Breakfast

great friends

lots of driving

May in Croatia

One of the reasons I came to Fuzine this summer was to help teach English. The Fuzine Community School of English turned out to be a great success. Brajna worked really hard on developing the curriculum and the students loved it. In the reviews they said they learned a lot, and that they can't wait until the next semester! There were more than 30 students in 3 classes. We had a low-intermediate and an upper-intermediate group that Brajna taught, and a beginning group that Tea taught. I got to help with all three groups, which was a great way to meet lots of people who live in Fuzine and the neighboring villages, and to see how different levels of students learn. Some of my favorite moments during FCSE were seeing the students enjoy using their new language skills, and spend time with each other during the special events we planned. Movie nights were a favorite. We even had one movie night where we showed a movie in English with no Croatian subtitles! We planned a picnic for one day and we were going to take everyone down by the lake, but it rained so we stayed at the house and played English games. It was so fun, and the students loved it! One other funny memory I have is of the low-intermediate group. There is a restaurant in Fuzine called Bitoraj - everyone who has been to Fuzine will know it, it's the yellow one right in the middle of "downtown." Well, the owner (also the current mayor of Fuzine) is remodeling and expanding it to be a four-star hotel, so the staff are on break until it's finished. So, he paid for all of his employees to take our classes, and the low-intermediate class was designed especially for them to learn vocabulary for the hotel/restaurant business. Brajna had made flash cards of different useful phrases. One of these cards read, "Here is the front desk, and this is Louise." Lousie continued to show up in their conversations, and I think that if they ever have a guest named Louise at Bitoraj, the staff is going to have a very hard time controlling their laughter!









Another fun thing I got to partake in was watching Eurovision. Apparently this song contest has been going on in Europe since the '50s, but the first time I heard about it was this year from my friend Crystal, who was living in Belgrade, Serbia, for the last year and a half. Crystal told me that Serbia's candidate was good, and it seems that Europe thought so, too, because she won! Which means that the final show next year will be held in Belgrade.

We had lots of rain in May, and some intense thunder and lightning storms. I actually enjoy them, as long as I don't have to be outside in them. A couple times, Brajna and I had to do errands in Rijeka, and got caught out in the rain.



One morning, after a big storm, we looked out our window, and found that the storm had damaged the tree outside our window. Poor tree.