Remember that time...

Remember when the US economy decided that a nose dive wasn't enough; no, no, it needed to roll down the hill of economic decline at top speed. If I was into theories I'd say it's because I'm moving back to the US. And will be job hunting.... oh glory.

Got my ticket to San Fran - 15 October I'll be there. Was in Novi Pazar last week exploring some of southern Serbia (accompanying Casse on a business trip). Some fortress ruins, old mosques and churches, a grandiose hotel that looked like a honeycomb and a spaceship mushed together - definitely different. And a long car ride through gorgeous mountains. As always, my photos are behind my writings, but I'll get there. Promise.

Now reading a bunch, teaching less. Ran into old friends on the street yesterday - they were having coffee and I joined. I like the small big cityness of Belgrade, something I'll miss. T minus 15 days and counting I suppose. Bizarre.

Hither, thither and yon

There and back again (as a famous hobbit once said). My dad (a.k.a. Bear) came to visit these past 10 days and it was marvelous, wonderful and all those other superlatives you can think of. Including busy. The saga began with lost luggage (fortunately it wasn't his clothes but a present for a friend of mine), continued with complications with getting back to the airport the next day to fly to Italy. Thankfully everything worked itself out and thus we could dedicate ourselves to walking.

And walking.

Did I mention we walked a lot? Finally got to see inside of St. Marco's church - splendidly beautiful. Bear had the camera, so when he posts photos I'll link them here. Reading Ruskin's The Stones of Venice also gave added insight. A full couple of days, but glad that we got to adventure in two countries (taking almost every form of transport possible during the course of the jaunt: car, plane, boat, train, bus & foot. What did we miss?)

Belgrade adventures included lots of meat (no surprise there), walking (ditto), and meeting friends (who now understand that my craziness isn't a total accident). I'm becoming quite the tour guide, if I could figure out how to make a business from it I totally would (and then I'd have work here in the summer! What a novel idea!). We even got to mosey around Museum night Saturday - my third one in a row! - mostly to watch the people, although there was also some great art.

Sunday we went with Cassie to Topola (driven by Miša who's quite the character himself), got to see the gorgeous church (mosaics were a theme of this visit) and sites connected to royal family. Our luck held as we left the last museum just as THREE tour buses pulled up filled with elementary school kids on excursions. Lunch at roadside restaurant contained perhaps equal parts grease and meat (although still good), and once again we were lucky with the slow service since it meant we avoided the major HAIL storm that blew through Beograd and left lots of wreckage (gushing waterfalls, large chunks of ice everywhere, tree limbs down, things broken).

This morning had us up at 4:30 (after a late night over last drinks of hot chocolate with Julia and Uroš at Bre cafe), but we made it to the airport for his 6:45 flight. Woohoo! I'll be heading back to Indiana myself next Tuesday, 27 May. Time is flying like mad... must be spring for real.

Climb every mountain...

So finally I've got photos of Kop posted. Enjoy them! I could use some of the cool right now, that's for sure. No word yet as to my fall schedule so I'm being patient and spending my days reading, writing, studying Serbian and English grammar. Trying to be on vacation is hard at times. And I mean that seriously. Although I'm getting used to it...

Kopaonik

After getting moved into my apartment, I headed for the hills (literally) for a job as an English teacher at an English summer camp for kids 8-16 on Kopaonik mountain in southern Serbia (I'll pause here to ask what preposition goes with mountains in English since this isn't something I've done much of in English. Is it I was AT Kopaonik? or ON Kop? I'm banking not IN Kop - that sounds too odd.) It was 2 weeks room & board with pay at the end - I was suspicious about the amount of work the woman said I'd be doing, but, hey, it's an adventure.

The first one was getting a taxi to Sava center to catch the bus- a friend said I could text for one, and I did, but when I got down there there was nothing at all. So waited a little bit but running late - headed to Bulevar and hailed one (which is hard to do at 7 a.m. on a Saturday), banking that I know enough Serbian to tell the guy if he tried to rip me off. I'd been told it was vital for me to be on time, and yet when I got there not even everyone was there yet - it was a sign for how the next weeks would go. Very chill more than not.

I'll not go into the nitty-gritty of daily life except to say that I had 2 classes a day, one in morning and one in late afternoon, then evening activity and meals that I had to be present for. My colleagues were are nice folks, a couple had worked the camp before so knew the ropes. There 2 guys for sports and 2 other ladies teaching English. Most of daily life happened in Serbian (even though the camp was advertised as English immersion) which was good for my listening comprehension at meals and things, although I'd stop and make sure I was getting everything when it seemed necessary. At one point it dawned on some of them that listening and understanding takes a lot of energy which is why I didn't say much often (a new role, yes). The kids were a good group over all, they were from all over Serbia and Montenegro along with some ex-pats back for the summer. I had the most advanced group in English and we had a decent time although I didn't think much of the textbook I was given and it seemed like a lot of review for them, oh well. I worked with what I was given and didn't have to be too mean usually. Although I did scare them when I went off after someone whined "It's not fair" about how I didn't want to hear those words in my classroom again. Grammar exercises were probably my most reoccurring threat and when they were good I'd tell them stories (like "okie-dokie bye for now" one that's a Qualls favorite- they liked it).

But enough pseudo-fussing; Kopaonik is a gorgeous place. It's the place to ski in the winter and is basically a resort village/town at the base of the ski lifts. I forgot to mention but our campers were in mini-apartments with 3 beds, kitchen stuff, bathrooms, whole shebang- not a cabin or tent in sight. A bit different than Bradford woods. In the summer there's tons of hiking to be had, whenever the weather was good I'd go on a solo tramp somewhere (we also took the kids on a ramble the second day that was pretty great). Made it to the top of some of the lifts, the best day was when I went to the highest point twice in one day (over 2000 m up). Lots of woods as well, often I'd go read or write somewhere before heading back down into 'civilization' to teach. There are wild blueberries and raspberries everywhere; I ate a lot of them on my rambles. There's nothing better than a slightly sun-warmed sweet red raspberry, I tell you what. And yes, I hummed "The hills are alive" every so often. It was an irresistible urge.

Speaking of food, apparently I was WAY allergic to something I ate because in the first week I broke out in a HUGE rash all over my body. I was one big red itch, very unfun. We had an on-call doctor who was a lovely woman, she checked me out and gave me some meds. And when that didn't work - the next evening I was even worse - I got a shot of something much more hardcore. I discovered during this ordeal a new level of Hell that Dante forgot - you wake up at 2:30 a.m., your body one bit burning itch you can't scratch because it will do no good (and since you're not sure why it's spreading you don't want to risk it moving around more by touching). You can't get comfortable enough to try and fall asleep, so you toss and turn looking for a position that offers at least a modicum of ease. And to top it all off there's LOUD turbofolk blasting from the café below, filtering in to make your bed of pain that much worse. (I was ecstatic when the shot made everything go away after a day or so).

The second weekend was rainy and cold, although we did get a short hike in to a geyser en masse. It felt like November - I can't ever remember needing to wear multi-layers under a sweatshirt on the first day of August before. Went swimming a few times, enjoyed the sauna a bit as well. Read a whole lot - Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue is excellent by the way. I think my colleagues didn't know quite what to make of me - often they went to while away the morning drinking coffee. But there were mountains calling my name.

It was nice being in nature and I did like the kids - they were creative in funny ways. We had a costume ball and a group dressed up as the Taliban, did a sketch involving GW that, while somewhat tasteless, was done in English and pretty well done for all that. I saved the day with blockbusters - thanks Nick! - a few evenings; we also had skits for the last night which were hilarious. The middle group went shopping and then had a negative brush with Madonna, mine did a Pizza Hut commercial involving the Terminator and a silly news broadcast about people water-skiing because of the rain, a massive outcry due to a pizza shortage. Entertaining. After one class I was swarmed by kids wanting me to come and teach in their primary schools since I was "cool" and "interesting." Flattering to say the least but I'm hesitant about high school kids and discipline there - listening to my colleagues at schools here doesn't make me want to get into the little ones in a mass kinda way. They wrote some heart-wrenching essays as well- most life changing experiences, people they admire. I was impressed.

Alright, that's enough babble. I was ready to come home by the end, really and truly. I've not gotten paid as promised and that makes me mad (but isn't that big of a surprise). But being back in Beograd is great and I'm hoping I can go back to Kop in the winter to ski with some friends because that would be totally rad.

Topola - countryside, churches, kings

Two Sundays ago saw me leaving the metropolis for pastoral calm. My new friend Eric succeeded in borrowing a car, so we'd decided to go do some outside of Belgrade sight-seeing. I'd heard of this cool church from some people a few weeks ago about 50 km or so south of Beograd so we met at noon to head to Topola along with my friend Dušan (local expert since his mother's family is from the area).

I'll preference this by saying that my friend Tijana had a birthday party the night before (A super fun time with a black and white theme, salsa music. I got to wear my new dress.) and that'd I'd walked a friend home in the wee smalls of the morning since he was not able to himself. What makes it even better was that when I was walking back homewards I passed these people sitting outside a cafe drinking coffee as if there was nothing else more normal to do at 5:30 a.m. One said something to me in Serbian, I asked him to repeat and then finally had to pull out "Izvini, učim srpski." "Odakle si?" "Ja sam iz amerike." "Stvarno?" "Da." "You must come and have coffee with us." My half-hearted protest went unheard, and I sat where I was told to, drank my espresso with milk and listened to Serbian with some English mixed in. Cool crowd - a singer, the cafe owner, various friends. I got home and to bed around 7 a.m.... just fantastic.

So there I was, mostly awake and bouncy at noon. We figured out the way there, took a bit of a scenic detour when Dušan missed a turn and finally got to Topola. After stopping for coffee and chatting about educational systems (I'm telling you, learning all the time) headed to the church. It's completely done in mosaics inside, incredibly beautiful. This is the seat of the Serbian royal family, the uprising against the Turks happened around here as well (although don't ask me for dates- I was never good with them). In the church's crypt are the tombs of various royals, saw the first king of Serbia's grave and subsequent family. I just loved the walls, the mosaics are quite finely done with this vivid lapis blue and other colors.

We poked around the rest of the grounds, stopping by a little museum with artifacts about King Aleksander and Queen Marija (a total fox in that 1920-30s way), tramping through the woods a bit to find a gorgeous view over fields and hills - looked a bit like Indiana when all is said and done. Was wonderful just to be out in green again, I'd not realized how much I missed it. There was a funny moment when we went and found the wine house - it was full of contemporary art. No drinks for us. Then down the huge hill to a little church (not decorated so much), another small museum with Serbian history - Turkish uprising, peasant life (looked a lot like stuff from Conner Prairie or another pioneer town), moving Karađorđević's body. I worked on practicing my cyrillic, wished that Nemenja was there to make the history seem real (he's my official Serbian history teacher). After circling the town looking for food got some grill, the men had tea and continuing our rambling conversation before walking up the hill again, driving back to the city.

Driving through the Serbian countryside we could see the effects of a changing society - people are moving more and more to urban areas since there's not so much work to be had in the villages. The highway reminded me a bit of Highway 40 through Indiana; little towns that saw their prime years ago, now are worn down and faded. I won't wax sociologist here, but I still contend the country is pretty much the same worldwide (and not just in the way that it's almost impossible to enter as an outsider). It's comforting in an odd kinda way.

Easter

I spent Easter weekend (Catholic and Orthodox were on the same Sunday this year) in Valjevo with Milica, a colleague, and her family. It's a medium-sized town southwest of Belgrade, about hour and half by bus, pop. 100,000 or so. It was my first smaller town in Serbia and I had a great time. We went out the first evening to Brooka (cafe/bar) and I think I met most of Milica's high school class. The place was so full I didn't see the inside at all, everyone was standing outside and talking, talking. It was great also meeting so many members of Milica's family; everyone was completely welcoming (but that's what Serbia's known for after all). We spent time cafes along the river, walking around the town (there's still a section that looks quite Turk), hiking a little in the woods... it was good to get out of Belgrade just for a little while. Learned about local history, there are tons of statues and landmarks people were more than willing to explain. One local hero was supposed to be so tall he bathed his feet in the river when sitting at the top of a high hill; reminds me of Paul Bunyan stories a bit - based on a real person but myth now.

I also randomly met a family who'd been living in Chicago (cousins of Milica's friend Katarina who now lives in Italy). The nine year old daughter wowed a room of college graduates as she and I chatted about things like Harry Potter and jelly beans in totally American English. It was funny to hear the idioms and "like" every third word. The funny part was the English teachers who were green with envy - we all want to speak like a native. I have issues with my Serbian because no matter how fast I try to go it's still not to the level of my French or English (naturally) and it's irksome to drop into this inarticulate being na srpskom. But must practice and so I do (Valjevo was a definite immersion, my listening comprehension is light-years beyond where it was a month ago). Her little brother did an excellent performance of "what's cookin' good lookin'?" while lounging in a door frame (he's five, a complete clown).

Once again, the world is small.

I drove back to Belgrade with one of my students from Millian school. She and her husband are architects, turns out he designed the Belgrade Philharmonic and French Cultural Center, both really cool interior spaces. I've already said the world is small, so won't repeat myself. Again, I'm always thankful for the kindness of those I meet; it makes adventuring that much richer.

A fun Easter thing I learned was how eggs (jaje) work here. People dye them in mass quantities, often putting flowers or plants on them before to leave pictures. Then you crack eggs together, pointy side to pointy side, then flip them over. You don't want your egg to break (because then you loose). So always look for strong looking eggs. People bring them when visiting friends, family - lots and lots of eggs were eaten last week.

But they don't have jelly beans. No place is perfect afterall.