We will learn to live together between the grove of olive trees: Homestay and some pictures

I absolutely love my host family here in Zagreb. We live on Zelinski 2 (dva). Yesterday, after taking a 3 hour tour de grad and an afternoon of watching the Death of Yugoslavia, we all marched down the street and into an unknown restaurant to meet the people we would be living with for the next 2+ months. Goga (the program coordinator, responsible for the homestays), took us one by one to our families. Petra, Dora, i Irena waited patiently for me.

Petra is 11 years old and knows a ton of English, and a bit of Spanish (!) and German. She amazes me. Since Irena is single, she does a lot of things around the house to help her out. She loves volleyball and watching American TV and movies. She loves Shakira and geography and loves to TALK. This girl talks more than anyone else I know, and she’s funny, AND she’s very sneaky.

Dora is 6 and is the cutest girl in the world. Honestly, I have always wanted little sisters (Mom, it’s still not too late), and she is just what I would only imagine as the best lttle sister in the world. She loves purple! And she is a very perceptive young girl. She is very coy and smart. I felt immediately comfortable with them. They brought me home and showed me around the house. They have a much nicer house than I expected after Goga told me the mother was struggling. She might be struggling but the apartment is very nice and very close to the center of town. It only takes me 15 minutes to walk to the SIT office in the morning, which is incredible (some students have a 40 minute commute).

I got plenty of sleep and woke up to some bred (kruh), cold cuts (salami and turkey), kava smlijeko (coffee with milk) and dzem (jam). They were listening to Michael Jackson and eating, it was a beautiful thing. All the music here is, as it seems, turbo folk (underground Serb/Bosnian music that people don’t like), or American music. We hung out for a while and went over to Borica’s house (where Grace is living, Irena’s mother’s house) only a few blocks away. PetraKentucky. Her family owned an inn on a 1000 acre plot of land in the middle of Kentucky. showed Grace and I pictures for over an hour. They love grapes and the Dalmatian coast, which is what I got out of that time. And they love each other, they are a very tight knit family. We had some cheese strudel and juice. At around 2, we all left for Ksenia’s house (Borica’s other daughter, Irena’s sister). They live outside the sister and Becca lives with them (they have 3 kids, 2 boys and a girl who are all very nice). They live in such a beautiful area. We drank champagne and ate amazing food—Borica is a great cook. After some home made wine and kava, we went on a long walk along the mountains until it started to rain. Becca and I had a great conversation; she has a really interesting background from when she grew up in

We went back and said goodbye. The girls are already hugging and kissing me a lot. I feel very welcomed and very ready to have this as my home for a few months. I have a key and plenty of love—it is all I need. Now I must sleep, I am very tired.

st marko's church. the flag on the right is the flag of zagreb, with the moon and the sun representing welcome all day and night long. the flag on the left is a combination of the flag of croatia, dalmatia (the coast), and slavonia (NE croatia).