I was going to write my next post about my experiences with local cuisine, but I’ve had an exciting few days with regards to my language progress, so food will be next time - with plenty of photos! Today: Language!

In the last three days, I have had four successful interactions in Croatian with people “out in the wild.” May not seem very important, but it gives me so much joy to be able to hold short, slow conversations with people in my target language!

On Sunday, during coffee fellowship time after church, I was able to ask the lovely woman who usually makes and distributes the coffee (and often sings with the worship team during the service, as well) what she does for work, and tell her that my mom is coming to visit me and that we’ll be going back to the States together. Then, over lunch with my friend and two ladies from the church I don’t know well, I was able to tell them a little about my writing. I was also, in these conversations, able to understand more of what they were talking about - not word-for-word, but enough words in context to get the general idea. Huge leap forward in any language-learning journey, and a delight when living in a place where you didn’t speak the language on arrival. I feel like in that one day my social circle expanded tenfold, lol.

Then today, I ran some errands and managed to have brief conversations with workers at the post office and grocery store, all in Croatian! (I did clarify something at the post office in English to make sure I was understanding her correctly…I was not.) These conversations were very brief indeed, but they were two-way conversations and my brain didn’t freeze up and refuse to code switch to Croatian. Very exciting!

You may think five months is a long time to be studying a language before being able to converse in it even a little, and it is if you’re studying in a traditional school setting. But I’m taking one-hour private lessons just once or twice a week, plus occasionally chipping away at units in the free government online course, and studying the vocab and grammar I learn from these two sources rather haphazardly. I also only started going to church in Pula in late January, and practicing every week or two with a new friend about that same time. Combine all that with the fact that, as a writer, I spend most of my time alone, and I really don’t have tons of exposure to the language despite living here. So I’m pretty happy with my progress. :)

That is all.

Here in southwestern Istria, the earliest spring flowers began blooming by mid-February. There are trees blooming and budding out. And at the end of the month, I noticed fresh flowers in the planter boxes on the waterfront.

The weather has improved, as well. There’s been a lot more sun, as noted in a previous post. But even when it’s overcast, we’ve had highs in the low 50s for weeks now. It’s lovely!

Last week, I spotted flower and vegetable seeds in the local grocery store!

So here we are. Spring in February! Meanwhile, back in Indiana they’ve had snow multiple times. I am both happy and jealous, lol.

Mostly, though, I’m glad to see the sun so often.

There are sunny days interspersed, though, like yesterday. The early morning was mostly cloudy, but the clouds burned off by lunch time and I had a very nice afternoon walk. The following photos are actually from a previous sunny day a little over a week ago because I totally forgot to take photos yesterday, but they’re representative.

I love to walk - I get great thinking done on walks. When I was in Zagreb last and walking to a store, I was imagining conversations between nebulous characters for possible stories in my head. I kept catching myself mouthing the words and making various facial expressions, which always makes me wonder what other people think if/when they notice.

Writers, am I right?

On yesterday’s walk, I was thinking about the premise and characters in my newest work-in-progress. As usual, I got some great thinking done on my walk, and on this occasion figured out a few things I’m pretty sure will end up being part of the narrative.

I’m a big fan of sunny winter days, and here in southern Istria the weather’s already warming up such that the sweater I was wearing became too warm as I walked back home, up the hill in the sun. I saw one of those absurdly large, fuzzy bees on my walk yesterday.

Spring is coming before I’m ready for it, even though I’m happy with the longer days and won’t be sorry for more consistently nice weather. I’ve been here four and a half months - more than halfway through my planned time - and I’m not sure how that happened so quickly. But I’ve got a new project I’m excited about and getting ready to draft, so all is well. Even on a dreary day like today. :)

It’s always nice when grammar, syntax and vocabulary start to come together, because that’s when you can begin having real conversations. So today’s lesson was very satisfying, but it also reminded me of my Arabic studies way back when I was in the Air Force.

At DLI (the Defense Language Institute), being able to use those tenses to talk about your daily life was one of the things that pushed a student into the territory of a score of 1 on the oral proficiency interview (OPI), as I recall. After 18 months of dedicated language learning and optional additional speaking practice a couple times a week, I got very used to this part of the exam.

By happenstance, I took a peek in one of my journals from my time in service today, and randomly flipped to a page that commented on this very thing:

[DLPT = Defense Language Proficiency Test.]

17 February 2010

Something great happened today: I passed my DLPT!! :) I took the OPI last week and I predict that I got a 2 on it (only need a 1+ to pass). On the listening and reading DLPT we need a 2 to pass. I got a 2 on the listening which we took yesterday; got a 2+ on today’s reading test. Not as high as I wanted . . . I just don’t do well on these tests! But that’s okay.

Almost done here.

I wouldn’t want to learn a language in a DLI-like environment again (I think I only got a 1+ on the OPI, btw), but the stress of that experience didn’t take away my love of languages, and I’m having a blast learning Croatian. :D

If you read that little poem to the melody of The Sound of Silence, well done. I wrote this little lyric in my head while walking out in the Bura (also Bora) wind recently, and it tickled me enough to record it on my phone so I wouldn’t forget it. Why this melody? Because I said out loud to myself, “hello, Bura, my old friend” and instantly thought of that song, which prompted the subsequent lines.

So yes. It is still winter and the Bura winds have hit hard a few times. Today is a rainy day in February, so I’m thinking back fondly on my time going to the Christmas markets Zagreb and Trieste (Italy), when the weather was nicer, so scroll on for my Christmas market photo odyssey.

First, Medulin’s parish church, center, and promenade were all lit up and fancy-looking:

Zagreb was gorgeous, it’s large old town lit up each evening, and boasting several markets. Most of the stalls sold food, so I got to try several new things.

Finally, I got to Italy for the first time in my life! I caught a ride with a few other expats to Trieste, where we enjoyed checking out two of the markets there before evening (and rain) fell.

I hope you enjoyed the photos. I enjoyed the markets where I took them! :)

We got to Kamenjak only a couple hours before sunset, but that was enough time to enjoy a short walk to the water and a small beach, and another shot but more technical walk down a rocky drop to see some dinosaur footprints.

The short hike down to the dinosaur prints and back up was fun, but bothered my feet. It’s been a while since I’ve hiked and all I have with me are ordinary sneakers, so if I want to do more of this sort of thing, I’ll definitely need to invest in some hiking boots.

Here’s a final photo of the sea for you to enjoy, taken above the beach from earlier:

I love learning languages. It's one of my favorite things. I'm fluent in German and used to be proficient in Arabic. I've dabbled in Spanish and Swedish, and a little in Chinese and Slovak (which is also a Slavic language but I only learned some handy words and phrases so Croatian is still the first Slavic language I'm actually learning). I've also studied some old languages: Old High German, Middle High German, Old Saxon and Gothic (a dead Germanic language). I can partially understand Old English because of studying those other old Germanic languages. Someday, I aim to teach myself Old Norse. When I was in middle school, I made a list of the languages I wanted to learn, and although that's not my focus in life, part of me would still like to learn them - particularly Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish and Scots Gaelic, and Welsh.

Languages are fun!

But back to Croatian. One of my priorities right now is learning Croatian. I got a couple text books, signed up for a free government course, and started taking one-on-one lessons over WhatsApp video calls twice a week. I'm working through the book and the online course very slowly because most of my focus is on memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations I'm learning in my private lessons, but I am working on the languages from all these angles. It's tiring when I'm also trying to write, but it's fun.

Lots of studying going on!

The early stages of language learning are really fun. It's a lot of memorizing, but you make progress quickly and it doesn't take long to become able to string together simple sentences (however poor your grammar may be at this point). And you start to learn the patterns of the language, which is one of the most interesting parts for me. You learn your first few verb conjugation patterns and then each new verb fits one of those patterns, so each new verb helps you learn the pattern more and more quickly. Same thing with learning languages - the more languages you learn, the more quickly you're able to learn new ones because your understanding of language structures increases with each new language you study. Add some linguistics courses into the mix, and you notice things like the fact that, unlike in English, the voiceless stops in Croatian aren't aspirated (p/t/k). That immediately improves your ability to accurately understand (and spell) what someone else is saying, and your own ability to pronounce the language more like a native speaker.

My English to Croatian dictionary.

The more you study something and practice a skillset, the better you get not only at that particular thing but at related things, as well. And since such great strides are made in those early stages of language learning, you can see your progress not only in the language, but in your ability to learn new languages and to recognize languages' underlying linguistic structures. It's really cool.

The same thing goes for reading and writing (and I inlclude watching film/TV in "reading", thanks to the two film studies classes I took in undergrad). And so many other things.

What kinds of things have you studied and/or practiced enough to build that kind of cumulative knowledge and/or skill?

Me in Afghanistan.

16 August 2012

I had my 102nd flight today, and had a trainee, who was really sharp (yay!). After the flight I found out my tracker was completely deleted from the webpage. :( So, I had to figure out how to reload it, &  it wasn't quite working right so I had to call the computer folks to come help me figure it out. Finally we got it up and running. Fun, fun.

Oh! But actual fun! When we all went to dinner, I saw [name redacted] grab a couple diet cokes to drink w/his meal, and was reminded of Capt R's obsession w/the beverage & her having me grab a couple on the way out of chow one time. Knowing how much she's been working lately, I had everyone grab one on our way out, &  we took them right over to her at the office. You'd have thought it was Christmas, lol. :)

Sea bream is a local white fish, and Ližnjan was hosting this festival at a plaza on the water. To get there, I had to walk a few minutes to one of the nearby bus stops, take it two stops to the southeast end of Ližnjan, then walk for about 18 minutes per Google Maps. I bought two e-tickets for the bus ride there and back, and made my way to the stop nearest my apartment at about 1:30pm.

I successfully got off the bus at the correct stop in Ližnjan, and proceeded walking toward the shoreline plaza. I walked several minutes through the outskirts of town, then several more minutes through the countryside toward the harbor of little boats I could see down the gentle hill. The harbor had a long park, and in the middle of that park was the festival tent.

Beautiful harbor below Ližnjan.

The festival tent.

Outside the tent, vendors were selling candy and making popcorn and cotton candy, and two bouncy castle-type structures were being enjoyed by a number of small children. None of that held particular appeal to me, so I went inside the tent.

My attention was immediately drawn to a table set up near the entrance. On the surface were a couple of microscopes with elementary-aged kids looking through them at items from the sea, and at the far end was a man holding a little black, round sea urchin and talking about it to a group of kids and their parents. He had a small tub of seawater at his elbow, presumably containing additional local sea critters, and he had the kids' full attention. I have no idea what he was saying, of course, but it was cute to see.

The sea urchin lesson.

I skirted the marine biology lesson to check out the little vendor tables beyond. There were four of them, all selling goods produced in the area.

Vendor tables!

The first vendor was selling beer, which I figured out when I saw the sign with the word "brewery" on it, and the hops decorations.

The beer bottles were quite pretty.

I can't stand beer, so I didn't ask for a sample and instead moved on to the next table, which had a man selling wine (missed getting a photo - sorry). I considered asking for a sample, but honestly, I'm not a big fan of wine, either. Even when I've liked a sample in the past, I've ended up not drinking the bottle I got - either because I stopped liking it after five or six sips, or because I never ended up opening it because I know from experience that I'll stop liking it after five or six sips, lol. I simply have no taste buds for alcohol. I did consider getting a bottle anyway, to share with others or give as a gift, but these kinds of events tend to be cash-only and I had very little cash on me because of the short notice I had to attend, so I skipped the wine table and approached a lady selling olive oil.

Local olive oil from nearby Šišan.

The olive oil was available in 4 different sizes: 0.1 liters, 0.25 liters, 0.5 liters, and 0.75 liters. I was, at first, considering getting a tiny 0.1 liter bottle, more as a cute souvenir than anything. But the woman at the table spoke a little German and let me know the oil has won several top awards, so I asked if she gave samples. She poured some oil in a little dish and produced toothpicks and little cubes of bread from behind her table. I dipped my bread cube generously in the oil for a good, solid taste test.

Last summer, I visited Istria with my mom and oldest brother. We had enjoyed a particular brand of olive oil at a hotel, and went looking for the company's tasting room, where we were given little thimble-sized cups of oil to sample (which we were taught to warm with our hands, smell, and slurp like fine wine) and were educated about how you can tell if the oil is high quality - such as the fact that it should burn the back of your throat a little because it's full of antioxidants. This Šišan oil had a delightfully powerful, bright flavor, and I felt the burn in my throat - I'd found the local "good stuff". This called for a change of plans, and I bought a half liter bottle instead of the tiny souvenir bottle.

Half a liter of olive oil from Šišan.

I had a nice interaction with the woman selling the oil as she struggled to figure out how to close the bottle-sized box she packed it in for me. I tried out what Croatian I knew and could apply to the situation, and she responded with delight. Every new word I produced provoked exclamations of joy and admiration - instant endorphins for any language-learner. Croatia is one of those places where, if you're making an effort to speak their language, the locals are thrilled. I love it.

The next table held jars of honey and some tall bottles that I figured could be mead or honey liquor. I conversed with the woman there mostly in English, with a few Croatian words thrown in here and there. The bottles turned out to be brandy, which I passed on (again, not a fan of alcohol). But the honey intrigued me. I had bought a very small jar of it at the old town market in Pula, and I've found I'm eating more honey here than I do at home. So I thought I might buy one of these larger jars and asked what kinds she had. The woman was selling four types of honey: acacia, mixed, forest, and ivy. I asked about a sample and she let me taste all four with tiny little plastic spoons.

Top jars from left to right: acacia, mixed, forest and ivy.

The acacia honey and the mixed honey looked and tasted pretty much like the honey you commonly find in grocery stores in the US. Ordinary sweet, amber honey. The ivy honey was extremely floral. I've tasted floral honeys before at farmers markets, and this was very floral. Very good, as a taste test, but I know from experience I won't enjoy it on toast or in tea, but I considered getting it anyway, as part of the experience of living here. Then I tasted the forest honey.

I have never tasted honey quite like this before. A darker amber in color, its flavor was rich and complex, deep and almost tending toward a black licorice flavor before backing off into something more mellow. It was really good (even though I don't like black licorice, I do like Virgil's root beer, which has a complex flavor with hints of black licorice - and I liked this honey).

I was torn. All four were great-tasting honeys, but in the end, I decided to go with the forest honey. The flavor is robust, so it'll hold up well on toast, and it's unlike any honey I've had before.

[Incidentally, although the woman selling it translated that jar as being "forest" honey, Google Translate says medljikavac is honeysuckle - which does grow in woodlands, among other places. She hesitated over that translation, so I think she didn't know the English word honeysuckle but knew where the flowers were located. It is local honey, after all.]

Local honeysuckle honey.

Vendor tables visited and delicious liquids purchased, I asked if there were any food vendors and was told they were across the tent. I hadn't noticed because they didn't have any food or signage visible. As it turned out, there were separate vendors for food, beverages, and desserts.

Beverages on the back right; food to the right. (Desserts not pictured.)

It hadn't been that long since I'd eaten, but I had taken a walk to get to the plaza and frankly, there didn't seem to be anything else to do. It's a small festival for a small community, and although I know they had some events, the event page on the town's website didn't give any details beyond evening concerts. I think there was a spearfishing contest at some point, but I have no idea which day, what time, or where. I'll be better prepared next year, but for now, I was ready to sample the festival cuisine and move on with my day. My bus app told me there was a bus leaving from the stop on that side of town at 4:01pm, giving me about an hour and a half to eat.

I started with the seafood. They were selling - you guessed it! - sea bream and squid. You could get the fish grilled or filets with orange sauce, grilled or fried calamari, or the local version of kofta kebabs - all served with fries. They also had sides of fries and potato salad to be ordered. There was a young man taking orders who spoke English, so I asked for his recommendation. He recommended calamari or the sea bream with orange sauce. I prefer fish to calamari, so I got the fish with orange sauce.

They pulled aside the curtain so I could photograph the kitchen!

Calamari! And big jars of ajvar, presumably for the kofta kabobs.

While I waited for my food to be cooked, I went to the beverage table and bought a very overpriced cup of iced tea. After sipping on it for a while at one of the standing tables, I decided to check out the dessert vendor. I neglected to get a photo of the booth, but they were making crepes and fritule, which was a new dessert for me, so I decided to try them. They came in little disposable trays with your choice of toppings: Nutella and/or white chocolate sauces and various dry items to be sprinkled on top, like finely chopped nuts of various types, sprinkles, etc. There were also large jars of jam, but she didn't offer jam as an option, so I think they were only meant for the crepes.

Fritule with warm Nutella and a light dusting of fine coconut.

While I was getting my fritule, my number was called for the sea bream, so I hurried over, set my beverage and dessert on the nearest table, which was empty, and retrieved my entree. Since this was a nice, local experience, I filmed myself trying the food (should I post it to Youtube?).

My festival meal. 24 Euros for entree, shareable dessert and beverage.

The sea bream was very good - the orange sauce complimented it very nicely - and the fries soaked up the sauce, which absolutely turned them into another dessert. The fritule were quite chewy, and of course delicious with all that sugary sauce. There were a lot of them. I won't buy them again like this unless I have someone to share them with.

Between the orange sauce on the fish, the dessert fries and the actual dessert, the meal was exceedingly rich and filling. Very heavy, but delicious.

As I was eating, I double-checked the bus schedule, and I'm glad I did - it turns out the bus I was planning to take at 4:00 only went in the direction of Medulin. It only went two stops to the other end of Ližnjan. The next bus actually going to Medulin didn't leave until about 6pm.

I finished eating at about 3:00, so I had a choice to make: hang out in Ližnjan with nothing to do because I didn't have the language skills and didn't know anybody and hadn't brought a book or notebook or my laptop with me, or walk home, which Google Maps told me would take about an hour to get from the plaza to my apartment. I decided the food I had eaten warranted a long walk, and I wanted to check out the route anyway - it's a relatively busy road and the two towns are almost connected at their edges, so I knew I wouldn't be out in the middle of nowhere, but I wasn't sure how safe it would be to walk along that road. Mom had video called on WhatsApp, so I called her back to have some company on my walk.

Pretty bird in an olive orchard.

As it turned out, the walk was easy. Once I got to that main road, there was sidewalk all the way to Medulin. And fun fact: I walked through more countryside between the end of Ližnjan and the plaza than I did between Ližnjan and Medulin - they are very close to each other.

And that was pretty much my Saturday! I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed experiencing it. :)

The photo is dark, but this was my room in Germany.

September 6, 2001

Today in school was very interesting. First, I had English for two hours. We read two texts aloud. (We took turns reading.) At one point in the first text, the teacher asked me to read. He said, "Do us a favor" after he called my name. So, I read a few paragraphs. When I was done, there was a little bit of quiet laughter, and several kids let out their breath - I had read pretty quickly. :)

After English, I had two hours of Gemeinschaftskunde - something a little like social studies. During the first hour I could understand what the teacher was saying pretty well. During the second hour I was pretty much completely lost. It started with a girl reading aloud a page of text. She went WAY too fast for me. I knew then how the kids in my English class felt when I read.

Next I had "Musik" (music). Basically it seems to be music theory/appreciation or something. Today we wrote what instruments we play, what kind of music we listen to, what composers & pieces of classical music we've heard, and what we hope the course will deal with.

Then, we were handed a piece of music (one page). The song was called "A Groovy Kind of Love."* We listened to it, then we figured out (as a class) what the different chords were. It was interesting. I was wondering the whole time if the other kids have had that kind of work before, because they seemed to know half-way what they were doing.

Music was my last class of the day - the chemistry/biology teacher is still out - and apparently the theater class met yesterday somehow, so there is none today. So, all I have left is choir in a few hours.

---------

Well, I had choir. How I got there is quite interesting. I left at about seven o'clock, and the bus beat me to the bus stop by about ten seconds, and left without me. I sat down to wait for the next bus, but then I looked on the information board and saw that the next bus didn't come for another twenty minutes. In addition, if I took it I would in all probability be late. So, I literally ran back home and got my bike. Then I rode like the wind, not wishing to be late.

I arrived breathless and hot and sweaty, but a few minutes early. A girl named Stephie, who is also in my English and philosophy class, put me next to her. So, I sit at the edge of the alto section; Stephie is a 2nd soprano, and the girl to my left is an alto. I am singing alto.

We got music (each of us have our own copy, and we get to keep it, both of which are nice little facts); we're singing "Greensleeves." We worked through the lyrics (in English). When the teacher was done saying the words, Stephie's mom (sitting two seats to my left) asked me if he had said it all right. I told her, all except one word; discourteously. A minute later, she announced to him that she had asked the American, and that one word was wrong. So then I had to correct the teacher. :|

Other than that, it was great. I love choir! :)

It was dark riding my bike back, but light enough to see okay.

*Note: this is a song by Phil Collins. Most of the music we studied in Musik class and most of what we sang in choir was American and British popular music from the 1950s-1980s.

This week, we've had blustery weather again. It's mostly been rain, though tonight some gusty winds from the southwest kicked up. I haven't gone out much - just short walks to the grocery store and what-not. But I have gotten my share of fresh air by taking advantage of my excellent covered patio.

View of part of my covered patio and beyond, from the uncovered terrace.

Fun story: the patio and uncovered terrace are as big as my actual apartment.

So far, I've found the building on two sides, the half wall on a third, and the trees just beyond the fourth protect the patio pretty decently from the winds. I've been able to sit out there and work in the blustery, as well as the gorgeous, weather.

This Monday, when the rain was heaviest, I had a special guest on my patio all morning, who I decided not to disturb:

What's this? A small orange cat curled up on a cushioned patio chair.

There are at least three small cats that regularly pass through this area: a gray tiger stripe, a black cat, and an orange cat. They generally pass by too quickly for me to get a photo, so I was happy to capture the image of this cat, who was curled up in that spot all morning and into the early afternoon (I got closer to take this photo and it raised its head in attentiveness).

Incidentally, this is what my dining room table / work desk looks like at the moment, part of why the bigger table out on the patio is nice to work at sometimes:

Messy desk - computer setup, Bible, agenda, and Croatian study books.

Things will get tidier once I've learned Croatian and can put those materials away - and I am working on it!

So even though I've kept close to home this week, I haven't felt cooped up. Big covered patios are the best.

The beach!

It was a nice walk. The campground takes up most of the space, but it's open access and grassy and full of tall, well-pruned pines and the coastline is rocky and the sun was low enough to cast some color over the landscape. At the tip of the peninsula is the Kašteja Forest Park, a round bit of land that very obviously used to be an island. I debated walking around it and decided I might as well, since I was there - next time I decide to go that far, I'll be riding my bike.

View of the campground.

Rocky shoreline.

There weren't a ton of people around, but I did cross paths with a few; mostly couples enjoying a rest or a picnic off the path on the rocks near the water, their bicycles propped in designated cutouts in the path. I saw two different couples walking dogs, and three or four individuals on bikes. But relatively early on in the park, I came across a man filming himself, with his phone on a tall tripod and his bike parked nearby but out of frame, the water and the mainland in the background. He was doing a little dance to some music coming from his phone.

Ah, I thought. An influencer - or a would-be influencer. Huh.

It's surprising, really, that I haven't encountered an influencer in the wild before. I don't make very many videos, myself, while out and about, and although I occasionally post to YouTube, I do so to share the videos with family and friends (and yes, anyone else who might stumble upon it), and so that I can save them while deleting them from my phone so I don't have to pay for additional storage. I do think about having a "real" YouTube channel where I talk about writing and books, but I can't imagine myself making what was clearly one of those TikTok dance trend videos - that's just not me. But I respect the gig and it was somewhat entertaining to watch, so I waited quietly for him to finish before walking by so as not to ruin his take and force him to start over. It didn't take long - I think these things are usually 30-60 seconds - and I was on my way.

The funny thing to me was that he clearly had no idea I was there, even when I continued walking up the trail and passed behind him. He was so focused on the dance while he was doing it, and on his camera afterward (presumably to review the footage). Absolutely locked in. No situational awareness at all. I'm not a terribly observant person, but as someone who was taught situational awareness in basic training, I found this very amusing.

Oblivious influencers aside, the rest of my walk was uninterrupted. I passed by two bunkers on this island-turned-headland. The internet suggests they were built during WWI by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which controlled this area at the time. The bunkers, as visible above ground, are small, only big enough for a few men. I don't know how far, if at all, they extend underground. They are, unfortunately, not accessible for further exploration. I love seeing this kind of thing - I've been interested in bunkers since I got to explore the ones at Fort Warden in Washington state when I was ~12 or 13 years old, and the existence of two in the forest park is partly why I decided to press on with my exploration every time I considered heading home.

The first bunker.

A peek inside the bunker.

In the end, my walk took me along the edges of the whole peninsula and up to the medieval windmill. I walked to the store to buy a couple bread rolls since the stores are closed on Sundays, and was home by dinner time. It was quite a long walk, and my feet were definitely hurting long before I got back to my apartment, but I'm glad I went while the weather was so nice - it started raining on Monday and will continue pretty much all week.

Boats in the harbor at Medulin.

First, street decor. There are a few key intersections in town. Some of them feature large olive trees, like this one. I love olive trees.

Very large olive tree in the center of a traffic circle.

Second, the olive orchards. There are at least two of these small orchards in town.

Large black drum with spigot on boards set atop smaller steel drums.

Ripe olives on the trees.

Harvesting!

Olive trees can also be found in many a private yard. Sometimes they're planted along the street almost like a privacy hedge, sometimes they're in a mini-orchard with other fruit-bearing trees.

In addition to olive, people here grow pomegranates, figs, apricots, limes or lemons, flowers, and more. Here are a few examples:

A pomegranate tree - they're quite pretty!

Apricots!

Purple flower-bush/tree against white rock ediface.

I believe this is a fig tree (can't really see the fruit in this photo, sorry.)

Meanwhile, down at Vižula Archaeological Park, there are flowers, a small garden, and plenty of trees.

Sandy gravel path through the trees.

Part of the cultivated garden area. Roses and what-not.

Pretty yellow wildflower, similar to snapdragons.

Pretty blue and white wildflower.

Pretty purple wildflower.

The path again through trees, one with a limb arching over the path.

Finally, there are some random plants around town:

Cacti!

Red berries of unknown variety. Must learn what this is...

These red berries seem to be rosehips. Turns out they make nice jam!

Black/blue berries of unknown variety. More to learn...

And here's a close-up of some really cool pinetree bark.

I love it when pine bark is has orange in it.

It'll be interesting to see how the landscape changes through the seasons, but so far, I'm quite happy with the autumn flora on offer. I hope you enjoyed seeing some of what I see.

Aside from the town itself, there's an archaeological park at one end of town that I walked around in about half an hour - a pretty little round peninsula with some excavated Roman building foundations and a couple small Roman quarries. And, given that this is Europe, there are at least three children's playgrounds around the park. On a nice day, this is a great area to walk around.

Excavated ruins.

A path winding through the trees.

View of the Medulin harbor from the park entrance.

On the coastline on the other side of town, there's a harbor full of boats - many of which can be rented for a fishing trip or an expedition to one of the nearby islands - and at the far end of the harbor is a restored medieval windmill. I love this windmill an inordinate amount because unlike the stereotypical windmill, Medulin's has sails instead of blades - canvas sails! I've never seen a windmill like that before, in person or in historical illustrations.

Medulin harbor and village.

The windmill! With the sails!

Another rare feature of this former fishing village is one of Croatia's few sandy beaches. It lies across the narrow peninsula from the windmill, and is not very long, but quite pretty with a lovely view out on the Adriatic. I've only made one visit to this beach so far, but will be going back very soon. I also plan to walk the length of the peninsula and see the bunkers at the far end, on what looks like it used to be a small island that was eventually connected to the peninsula, like several such places in the country.

Sunset on a beautiful fall day at the sandy beach.

Medulin isn't so much a place for sight-seeing, like Pula, but it's quiet (at this time of year) and pretty - and I can walk anywhere I want to go. I like I'm going to enjoy my time here. :)

I took the 9:51 bus from one of the stops near me and got off the bus on the edge of old town Pula a little after 10:00. My visit to the computer store was quick, easy, and successful. Then I looked up stationary and office supply stores on Google Maps and walked to the nearest one. I asked about index cards and they said the didn't have any; I should try a nearby bookstore. When I got to the bookstore, I noticed there was a paper goods store next door, so I decided to try there first, but they also sent me next door to the bookstore. The bookstore, not surprisingly, also did not have notecards for me. They apparently had pre-printed ones for Croatians learning German, but not blank ones or pre-printed ones for learning Croatian. So I went back to the paper store just to see what they had that might be close. I did find a plastic-wrapped stack of papers a little smaller than 3x5" index cards I'm used to in the States, but I couldn't tell if they were card stock or just regular paper. I bought the stack anyway - it was the closest thing they had.

I had quite a bit of time before the first afternoon bus back to Medulin, so I wandered around, munching on a slice of pizza from one place (€2.50) and an apple strudel-thing from one of the many Mlinar bakeries (€1.20). While sitting and eating the pizza slice, I noticed the store across the street (Gulliver Production) advertised "Printing Embroidering Made to order". This gave me an idea, and went inside to see what they sold and what their prices were like. I had planned to bring a mug with me from home but left it behind in favor of bringing another book, and the price of the mugs was quite reasonable, so I got myself a custom mug for €12!

Isn't that cool?! I only had to wait 30 minutes for it, too!

During that 30 minutes, I remembered I wanted a pencil holder, so I popped into another paper store I'd seen and found one.

Once I had my mug, literally hot off the press, I made for the bus stop. There, I ended up talking for several minutes with an older man who asked me what time it was. Neither of us spoke either of the other's languages, but we managed to communicate a little - if nothing else, I understood that he went to a school that offered German, Italian, and two other languages (I don't remember which), and he studied Italian - and that he was waiting for the bus to Premantura, across the water from Medulin.

My bus came before his, so we said goodbye and I headed home to spend the rest of my day in Medulin, mostly on my computer.

And that was today's little adventure!

From my first travel journal, in 1992. I was eight years old when my family embarked on a trip around the United States that would end up lasting about 13 weeks. I've left the original errors for your amusement.

Let the Adventure begin! We've just arrived in Burns. We ran out of gas in the middle of no where, not knowing what to do! Dad had to flag someone down. Now we've got to Idaho. We saw the Snake river it was very nice. We entered Boise Idaho. We found the Boise K.O.A. We saw ligtning, fork and sheet in the mountains.

From later in the trip: a photo I took of Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park

The next big adventure I went on was to Germany, where I spent my senior year of high school as an exchange student in Hamburg. We arrived in-country in early August and had a few weeks of language camp, and unfortunately, I didn't bring that journal with me to Croatia. I do, however, have the record of my first full day at school:

September 3, 2001

Today was the first day of school. It was quite interesting. I went early so I could get my schedule. As it turned out, the schedule wasn't ready at all. So, I went with a Mr. Limberg to his first hour geography class. After that, I went back to the office to wait for Mr. Feindt, the man who does all the scheduling. When he came, we went to his office, and spent the second hour making my schedule. I'm in the 11th grade here, so I got to make a few choices in my schedule. I'm trying a typical 11th grade course load for a week, then I can make the changes I want/need.

Say, for instance, that I would rather be in a twelfth grade English class. We'll get it fixed so that I can do that.

The schedules here are more like in college. On Mondays (so the schedule now stands) I have History for two hours (which I missed today) then German for an hour, Physics for an hour, and then a beginning course in Spanish for two hours.

Tomorrow, I have the first two hours free, then German for two hours, then Physics for one, then English :) for one, then a free hour, then P.E. for two hours.

On Wednesday I have Philosophy for two hours, then Chemistry for an hour, then an hour of Math and an hour of Spanish.

On Thursday I have my longest day: English for two hours, something that's supposed to be like Social Studies for two hours, Music for two hours, Biology for an hour, four hours free (I'll come home for them), then Drama for an hour and a half, then Choir for an hour and a half. Choir gets over at nine o'clock p.m.!

Friday I don't completely know about yet. During the first two hours I'm supposed to have some sort of computer class, but they don't have a teacher for it yet, so it might not work out - I don't know. I might have the first two hours free. We'll see. Anyway, after the first two hours I have an hour of Spanish, two hours of Math, an hour of Biology, and an hour of Chemistry.

Then, right after school on Friday, I will see Herr Feindt again and fix my schedule according to how everything goes this week, though I'll have to wait until Monday to find out how well I'll be able to understand the History class.

Today after school - but wait! I didn't talk about how my classes went!

German was ok. I didn't catch much of what went on, but I got some of it. The teenagers in Germany don't raise their hands like we do. They just rest their elbows on the desk and raise their forearm, and instead of raising their whole hand, they raise their index finger. It's very interesting.

After that was Spanish. That class actually started last Friday, so I copied the notes of the student next to me (during the break before class started). It was ok, though, because everyone is just starting out with the language. I'm definitely going to keep this class.

So, after school I made a bunch of vocabulary flash cards for Spanish - 28 to be exact.

Tomorrow is my late day so I get to sleep in a little. Yeah!! So, guten Nacht!

03.09.01

-By the way, last night I finished reading Mark, so tonight I'm starting in Luke. 03.09.01

I'm not sure why I didn't write about my Physics class that day, but I probably didn't follow anything that was going on. More than any other class, I sat in Physics with my excellent Bantam pocket dictionary and looked up words the teacher used that I didn't know. Long after I had stopped doing this in my other courses, I continued doing it in physics, lol.

Incidentally, for some reason I've thought all this time that I was with the 10th graders, because students specialize more in 11th and 12th grade, and I would have a more stable core group of classmates with the 10th graders. But apparently I was off by a year!

Me in Lübeck, Germany, later that year.

I didn't journal my experiences in China in a book at first, and I'm not sure where the electronic journal entries went, but I did hand-write about our trip to Tibet while we were there.

January 19, 2008

Yesterday we set out for Lhasa via Beijing. We left our apartments at 8:30 and were driver to the train station in Baicheng by the travel agency manager. After that unforgettable conveyor belt experience in Beijing in August, imagine our surprise when we bypassed Baicheng's conveyor belt and went to the "soft seat waiting room." There we found really really comfortable chairs. They felt like sitting on a pillow. A western pillow.

We got on the train with no trouble and found our tiny but comfortable compartment. I had one of the Ritz Handisnacks Ben sent me. It was disturbingly good.

There was a small heater in our compartment, but it didn't do much until late late in the night.

We arrived in Beijing at 2:20pm today. The travel agency had arranged for us to be met at the train station by a driver and a translator, who would take us where we wanted to go in Beijing during our 7-hour layover in their "bus." We figured they meant "van," and asked for clarification. They confirmed our understanding.

But the two women who met us were not tour guides, nor did they have a motorized vehicle of any kind. *sigh*

Long story short, we took two taxis to the hotel Taka, Naomi's boyfriend was staying at. We sat there for about an hour and a half, until he got back from his tour of the Great Wall. (He, by the way, had a driver with a vehicle. He made his arrangements with a Japanese travel agency.)

So, we all trooped downtown in two taxis to eat dinner and walk over to the train station. Here we had to do the whole conveyor belt thing, but it wasn't as bad as the other Beijing station in August. Then we went to the soft seat waiting area, but it was crowded, so we stood the whole time (perhaps an hour and a half).

Then we got on the train. There are four of us now, so the tiny compartment is even more cramped, but it's also much newer and cleaner feeling. There are also little TV screens at the foot of each of our beds, electrical plug-ins, and what I'm hoping is heater control. We're right next to the dining car, so that's also a plus.

On another bright note, Taka came bearing gifts - maple syrup and maple butter and mustard for Janice, a Germany pastry thing for me called Baumkuchen, and various other scrumptious items.

So all in all, we're pretty happy right now on our first of two nights on the train to Tibet. :)

Me in Baicheng, wearing a brand new winter hat I bought from one of the vendors behind me.

Lhasa, Tibet - temple in the foreground; palace on the hillside in the background.

From my time in language school in the Air Force: I spent a month in an immersion program in Jordan.

27 September 2009            6:00 am local time

Here I am in Jordan. The trip yesterday was very very long, of course. Six of us met in front of the library and took a bus to the San Fran airport. We flew from SF to Chicago, then a 12-hour flight from Chicago to Amman. I slept most of the trip, but did manage to stay awake for a movie (The Proposal). It was okay, and Sandra Bullock's acting was, as usual, excellent. Best part of the movie.

At the airport in Amman we got visas (10 Dinar each) in our passports. Customs was the easiest I've ever seen. It consisted of glancing at our visas & taking our H1N1 reports. After that our luggage went through another scan.

We were met by a shuttle driver who took us to [our lodging - name redacted - a large building with apartments and common areas]. On the way out of the airport I saw 2 armed guards, a couple police who checked our driver's paperwork, and, at the airport entrance, a Humvee with a big gun and a third soldier ready to operate it. Pretty good security, I'd say!

[Our lodging] was a pleasant surprise - I'm not sharing a room with the other two girls but rather an apartment. There's two two-bedrooms attached to a big living room, a bathroom (w/shower w/low water pressure) and a little kitchenette w/fridge/freezer and a microwave.

On the main floor is the kitchen, dining room, sitting area, office, and library, then downstairs there's a computer lab w/free internet, & laundry services for a reasonable price.

Last night the six of us who traveled together went out to explore a little and got some shwarma, Arabic bread, hummus, veggies & a diced veggie mixture. It was great and the guy gave us some Falafal free! :) Total cost for feeding 6 hungry travelers: 15 Dinar (~$28).

The other two arrived later, I took a shower, unpacked a little, sent an email to family, tried to call w/a card, and read a little of the Mysterious Benedict Society book 2, which I started on the trip.

Didn't sleep so well last night - first night in a new place & rather warm apartment. Woke up for good @ 5:45. We're all meeting up downstairs at 7:00 for breakfast & to get organized; then it's off to the first day of class (hopefully just tours - we're all pretty tired).

There was a good deal of English in our conversations last night - everyone was tired and the brain just doesn't work as well after a huge long trip that lasted a grand total of 25 hours, from the time we left DLI to our arrival at [our lodging].

Me under an archway in the ruins of the Amman Citadel.

In the summer of 2010, having graduated from language school and cryptology school, I moved to Augusta, Georgia. Here's my first entry there:

7 July 2010

Today was my third day in my new apartment. Last night my washer leaked everywhere - Daniel the maintenance guy brought his shop vacuum over - I had already mopped up a bunch of it with towels (my few, & the guy's downstairs). So I met a neighbor! He's Nate in the Navy doing Farsi.

Today I got my couch - it looks great. Then I made myself dinner: pork chops cooked in that Dole orange peach mango juice (with cream added to it & some salt & pepper; it also served as a sauce), and sauteed vegetables (celery, bell peppers - green, yellow & red - and some diced onion with a little salt & pepper). Very good. I have enough for tomorrow's dinner, too. Then it was strawberry shortcake for dessert. Quite nice.

[I should perhaps mention that I was running a lot at that point in my life - burning lots of calories, lol.]

On a leisurely hike in Georgia.

My most recent stint living overseas was in Slovakia. Here's my first journal entry from that time:

12 Sept 2019 - Thursday

The church bell just struck 3 times to indicate it's a quarter to the top of the next hour, though my cell phone says it's only 7:40, but Tomáš did tell me the church clock is not always acurate.

A week ago today, I was given the official go-ahead to get my plane ticket and move to Slovakia. Two days earlier, I had found out the school had interest in me coming for this school year, even though it had started on Monday; two days later, I was on a plane. I had asked the school about me coming this year the week before, when it occurred to me that I was available - I had originally been thinking maybe next year could potentially work. But here I am. Apparently the first couple weeks of school here are quite chaotic, so I'm just adding a bit more to the chaos - but in a good way.

I flew United Express from Indy to Newark on Saturday, then a red eye from there to Vienna on Austrian Airlines. I was not impressed by the Newark airport. I was impressed by Austrian Airlines - "the charming way to fly," lol.

We got to Vienna 40 minutes early, at 7:30 am. I had the quickest and easiest passport control, baggage claim and customs experience I've ever had. Then I got to [wander] around for 4 hours until Tomáš was able to pick me up at noon. He came with his oldest son and we drove to Bratislava, where we had lunch and then dropped his son off at the dance boarding school he attends there.

Tomáš and I kept each other awake by chatting about my background and the school, and a little about the castle ruins we passed here and there, then by me learning and practicing some Slovak pronunciations from the highway road signs we passed. I think the cadence will be hard to get used to - the first syllable is always the one that gets the emphasis, but there can be long vowels later in the word, and enough syllables for secondary emphasis.

Me in Old Town Martin, Slovakia, in the pedestrian zone, wearing a homemade mask kindly given to me by a colleague shortly after the pandemic shut everything down in March.

I hope you enjoyed this survey of early days in new places from the journals I grabbed to bring with me for this purpose. I did! :D

My first real experience with culture shock was when I went to live in Germany in high school, although truthfully, it wasn't much. I already spoke German fairly well and northern German culture isn't so far removed from Northwestern US culture. Yes, there are a lot of country-specific things, like the course schedule at school, but those are not difficult adjustments, so I didn't experience tons of culture shock. Honestly, I had more reverse culture shock on my return hone. That German bread. I missed it.

But later, I moved to China to teach English. I don't speak Chinese. And the Chinese culture is a few more steps away from the American culture than Germany is. That was a much bigger adjustment. Moving to Slovakia wasn't too difficult after living in China and serving in the Air Force (actually, nothing has been terribly difficult after being in the military), but it wasn't as easy as living in Germany because I didn't speak Slovak and was pretty much on my own.

I've only been in Croatia for a week and a half, but I believe my past experiences have made this move much easier than it would have been, were it my first or even second experience living overseas. However, there are always bumps in the road, no matter how experienced the driver (pretty lame analogy, but I'm going to keep it).

Here are the bumps I've experienced so far:

1. I experimented with Bolt, a local rideshare company like Uber, and I misunderstood how the pricing worked. Thankfully, I had enough cash on me to pay my driver, but for a minute there, I wasn't sure.

2. I've also experimented with the bus system by taking the bus to and from Pula. I used an app my landlords showed me to figure out timing and stops, and to buy my tickets electronically. When you do that, you get an email with two PDFs: the ticket itself, and a receipt. For some reason, both documents have a QR code at the bottom. I recently went to Pula to pick up a couple things I couldn't get in Medulin, and when I tried to get on the bus back home, my QR code wouldn't scan. I finally had to step off the bus so it could continue on its route, and without about ten seconds realized my mistake: I had been trying to scan the receipt QR code instead of the ticket. sigh I had to wait 50 minutes for the next bus.

3. Getting my credentials. Well. I got my citizenship, but I need an ID card. I went to the municipal police station in Pula to get it, but they didn't have my citizenship on record. They sent me to another government building on the other side of Old Town, and they didn't have it either. They gave me a phone number to call in a month to see if it was in the system yet before coming back. I can stay in the country for 90 days as a tourist anyway, so there's plenty of time, but it's odd to know you're a citizen but not be able to get proof of it at a regional office.

On the other hand, I made a delightful, accidental discovery my second day here. I went an had lunch at one of the few restaurants still open (there will be even fewer when the shoulder season ends), and picked something that sounded good - an Istrian pasta served with arugula, prosciutto, and a cherry tomato. Sounds good, right? And it was. But here's the thing. The sauce? White cheese sauce. The noodles? Actually long dumplings. I had basically ordered Spaetzle (a German dish, though the dumpling-noodles are typically shorter and/or thinner than these were) with fresh vegetables, lol. So for my first meal, without trying to, I found Istria's mac 'n' cheese. Good times.

Next time you make yourself some mac 'n' cheese, or have trouble with public transit or government offices, I hope you think of this blog post and that it helps you smile. :)

30 hours of traveling. A new airport. I'm in Medulin. More tomorrow.

Medulin in evening light on a cloudy day.

It took me the next three days to recount my journey from Indiana to Istria in Croatia in my journal. Here are the highlights:

Sunday morning I loaded up Dad's Escape and left for the airport in Indy just before 8:00. I got to the FastPark lot, where we had a reservation, at 8:45 and didn't have to wait long for the shuttle - I was still getting my stuff in order when it arrived - so I made it to the airport quickly, where I was happy to check my two large bags - my blue one I got before going to Slovakia and my big Air Force one I'd forgotten was still under Mom and Dad's house). As always at Indy, it didn't take long to get through security, so I had quite a bit of time before boarding began for my 11:50 flight. I went ahead and got breakfast at the HT grill/tavern - a delicious breakfast sandwich with a side of not-great hashbrowns.

...

The flight from Indy to Charlotte was on time and smooth. I had a couple hours in Charlotte, which remains a nice airport, with rocking chairs in the atrium & a few other places, but I couldn't get connected to the internet for some reason.

The flight to Frankfurt also left on time. It was not a full plane, so I had an empty seat next to me. One guy in the center, 4-seat row, had all 4 seats to himself and got to spend almost the entire flight horizontal, as I would have liked to have done, but I was happy to at least have the middle seat in my row free. The flight had some mild turbulence, but nothing much.

...

I slept as I usually do on aircraft - in and out. I was very tired when we landed in Frankfurt. We got there 40+ minutes early because of a nice tailwind, but that meant the passport control folks were not ready for us - when we first got there, they only had a couple people working. It was about 6:40.

...

I picked up my three bags at baggage claim carousel 42. Then began the great saga of checking in for my flight to Pula.

First, I had to get from the terminal I was in (Terminal 2, I think) to Terminal 1. This involved taking an airport train, and getting up two escalators w/my bags (I took the elevators back down - wasn't going to attempt that on an escalator). It was then a bit of a hike to the Lufthansa check-in counters - and there were a ton of them, almost all just for dropping off tagged luggage.

I went to a kiosk to check in, and the system couldn't find my reservation. I was directed to a couple places before I found the support counter, where I got my boarding pass - but for some reason had to go to a luggage kiosk to print my bag tags. It only printed one (I'd added a second checked bag a few days before). So then I had to find another counter (took a couple tries) that would print my other bag tag for me. But then they couldn't take my bags because the Air Force bag was of a style that wouldn't go through their normal baggage system. So I was directed to the excess baggage counter - where I was directed to a man across the walkway - where I was directed to a woman at the end of a cordoned-off area - where I was directed to wait, then to the counter I'd been headed to to begin with.

...

I finally got to talk to the guy at the excess baggage counter. He was very nice. He printed the second bag tag for me, and I explained I'd gotten an email asking me to check my carry-on (complimentary) because the flight was going to be full, but that my carry-on was a little overweight, and he was very nice to let me take a few things out until it was "close enough" and put them in my satchel and AF bag.

Finally, I had gotten rid of my luggage and could head to security with my now very heavy satchel by which time I was quite sweaty from lugging those bags around from counter to counter for so long. They have an automatic entrance to the security entrance, where you scan your boarding pass and get let through these little glass doors (think a modern subway "turnstile"). I scanned my ticket and the screen behind the scanner turned red w/an "x" and a notice to "see agent for early access" - that's how early I was, lol.

There was a lady standing behind a podium nearby on the other side of a glass half-wall. I went and asked (in German) who I needed to see to get early access. She took my boarding pass and scanned it herself and let me in. :)

------

The Frankfurt airport is huge. It could have better signage.

After going through security with no delays, I spent the next couple hours wandering around the area of the airport my gate was in. I got a few items at a bakery, and fumbled trying to book a hotel room inside security so I could take a nap - eventually I went exploring instead and stumbled upon the NapCabs, which I decided to book even though it wasn't cheap:

------

I generally just wasn't feeling great. I wanted to not just nap, but lying down.

It was a good decision.

I booked a NapCab for 3.5 hours. The first couple hours, I woke up after about 50 minutes, but then I slept hard.

After my nap, which went from about 11:00 to 2:30 total, I went to the bathroom to wash my face, but the Frankfurt airport doesn't have paper towels in any of their bathrooms - just the air dryers. So I used the little napkin from my bakery purchase to swipe at the grease on my face as best I could.

...

The wandering continued until close to boarding time. Then the flight was delayed a little less than an hour, then again. Instead of leaving at 4:50, we left at about 6:00, or a little later. Instead of landing at Pula at 6:25, we landed at 7:21-ish.

The plane was an Air Dolomiti plane (Lufthansa partner airline). After 11.5 hours in the airport, we finally boarded. Pre-boarding. Group 1 (First Class). Then Groups 2-5 all at once, lol. We tromped down the hall & down some stairs and outside to a bus!

Let me tell you. That bus drove, I think, completely around the airport and beyond, past what looked like administrative and maintenance buildings and semi truck cabs, and finally, there was our little plane all by itself. We boarded quickly and took off. The emergency exit door right behind me had a high-pitched scream during takeoff and landing - couldn't help wondering if it was sealed, lol. (The plane, incidentally, had been delayed for a maintenance issue). The seatback was hard as a board. Thankfully, it was only a 1.5-hr flight.

------

The old church in old town Medulin.

When we landed in Pula, it was dark outside. We walked outdoors from the plane to the terminal building, which seemed about the size the Redmond, OR airport used to be before its big remodel and additions years ago - a small airport. There was nobody manning passport control, since it was a flight from another EU & Schengen country, so we just collected our bags and walked out of the customs area. I took a cab to a short term rental in Medulin where I'd be staying for a couple nights before moving into my apartment.

And with that, my 30-hour journey came to an end.

Olive tress and church spires.

When I was in China, I came up with the perfect title for my future memoirs: What Was I Thinking? Confessions of a Casual Adventurer (the subtitle has had some variations over the years). I definitely had some "what was I thinking" moments as I prepared to move overseas last month, during the journey, and in the first two or three days in-country. All to be expected. Less than a week after arriving, I'm already feeling pretty settled in, but I know I won't really feel at home until I know the language. More on that later.

In the meantime, let me explain what's happening now - or rather, let me sum up.

I have moved to Croatia. My last name is Croatian (albeit with Americanized spelling because that's what they used to do when someone immigrated to the US), and a few years ago my dad discovered we were eligible to apply for citizenship because of our ancestry. He had already been to Croatia several times after tracking down our relatives there, but I hadn't. I wasn't sure I wanted to put in the work (and money!) to apply for citizenship in a country I'd never been to. So, long story short, I went to Croatia with Dad during spring break (I was working on a master's degree at the time), met the relatives, and explored Zagreb, the old family farms in Lika, and the Dalmatian coast. The relatives are super nice, the people everywhere were warm, the language sounded great, and the food was delicious - satisfied that I could be happy living there, I applied for citizenship! Earlier this year, in the spring, I found out my application had been approved.

Thus was introduced the question, when should I go live there?

I always figured I'd move to Croatia within five years of getting citizenship, were I to be approved. Once I was approved, I thought I'd move in the next 2-5 years. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought why wait? I don't own property I'd have to sell or rent. I don't have a husband or kids to consider. And although I loved my job and my volunteer work with Civil Air Patrol, I'd become much busier with both over the last year and, as a result, hadn't done any worthwhile writing in ages. As a Croatian citizen, I didn't need a job in Croatia or digital nomad status to move there. And with the cost of living differential, I realized I could afford to live there without a local day job - I could write full-time!

Almost every novel I've published was drafted when I was writing full time. Random Walk? Researched and drafted the year I moved to Indiana and lived with my parents so I could write full time. The Red Door? Drafted during the pandemic after coming home from Slovakia. The Ethics of Hope? Written in 2021, before I started my MAT program and my part-time day job. Even Standard Candles was written primarily in the summer, when I was working but not taking classes - and I wrote at least a third of it when I took time off from work to go on a writing retreat.

Four novels in five years. I am not a fast writer. I couldn't have done that without those periods of time I was focused solely on my writing.

So I've moved to Croatia. I'm renting an apartment for the off-season, in a small tourist town near Pula in Istria. After that, we'll see. I might leave for tourism season and come back next fall, or I might extend my lease and stay put (it might be fun to see how crazy it gets here in the summer) - or I might go elsewhere. Who knows? For now, I'm just excited to be here, to spend at least the next several months just writing and learning the language. And in this blog, I'm going to bring you along for the ride.

I'll be sharing journal entries from this and other adventures I've gone on, and cataloguing life in Istria - from surviving the bura winds to where to find good olive oil. And if you want to be kept updated about my writing, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter, The Uplink.

In my next entry, I'll tell you all about the journey here, which was not without its drama, as these long journeys tend to have.

Until then, hvala for reading, and have a great day!

-RML