Back in Beograd

Now that the jet-lag seems to be mostly gone, I think I can string enough sentences together to actually write something pseudo coherent. But be forewarned...

The rest of my time stateside was mostly a whole lot of fun - Minneapolis was a blast even if it was colder than, well, cold. I met excellent people, got to walk on a lake (how cool is that?), learned that I'm not good at guitar hero but still decent at foosball. Returning home meant facing the not-as-fun task of cleaning out most of my room so Barb can turn it into an office. Still, probably should have been done a long time ago and I was able to see/chat with lovely folks to split up the time. Also read a whole ton of things glutting myself on basically unlimited English book access. A small joy that unfortunately is a downside of living abroad - what I can get my hands on is a bit bizarre at times. And anyone who likes books should read Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan. It's funny and reflective, she makes good points about work and literature that I appreciated a whole bunch.

Coming back across the Atlantic was a bit more eventful than I'd planned. For one my flight time changed and I'd never gotten an email telling me so, thus rushing up to Indy. I also traveled with a friend's trombone - it got to travel up in first class closets, lucky thing that it is - although it wasn't too much of a hardship (I also had no close connections). In DC I ran into Anna, a fellow American who was a colleague in the spring, she's back in Belgrade on a language learning grant for the semester. We used the long layover in Munich to catch up. Small world. Even funnier is that another friend runs the NGO that gave the grant.

The other unlooked for excitement came on the plane to Munich Thursday. I was trying to sleep and started thinking about some notes that I wanted to write. This prevented me from sleeping so I decided to pull out my computer and start typing. Turned it on and then everything froze. Odd, I thought, so pushed to restart. Except that then it wouldn't boot correctly, got this blinking question marked folder. In airport later looked at a manual on Anna's computer and tried to fix to no avail. So the first real thing I did after getting home and being welcomed by dear friends was find an Apple store. And then learned a few hours later that my hard drive was toast. To-ast. And that it was going to be a decent chunk of money to fix; but I had no choice. Then on Friday morning my befogged brain cleared a smidgen and I got my Applecare number from Barb; went in to pick it up and asked if it was covered. They had to ask basically everyone in the store it seemed but apparently yes! Apple comes through again! So I now have a bigger drive and I didn't have to pay for it (although I suppose they could still call me later demanding my first born or something). The next hurtle was figuring out how to get the backup I made before I left to load since it now has a newer OS... oh, the joys of technology. But everything seems to be in order now and I didn't loose anything that I can tell. Whew. Lesson: ALWAYS get extended warranties.

This weekend also saw me back in the classroom for two groggy hours - thankfully my teens were mostly kind to me (I wooed them with stories from my travels, breaking the golden rule of keeping "teacher talking time" to a minimum). Sunday I went to Zagreb with Bodin and some of his colleagues to return an instrument (gotta love these orchestra types). Even though I'd vowed to stay out of cars for awhile it was good to see some countryside, actually walk around city center (even if that wasn't for very long - the lunch at his friend's place took longer than anyone anticipated and thus we only could scurry a bit in the center before hitting the highway again). There was a funny moment when Roland introduced himself to everyone and a little later asked me where I'd learned English. Everyone laughed when I said I'm American, that's how (he's a tuba player from Hungary). It was yet another multi-national, multi-lingual extravaganza. My Serbian still exists (yay!) and I'm playing around with the idea of starting lessons again just to get things regulated a bit more.

So there you go, I'm back mostly catching up with friends and settling back into Beograd life. The next nine months promise to be anything but boring; here's hoping everyone has a grand new year (since it's still January we can still wish happy new year, right?) and that we all do better about keeping in touch!