croatia

So, here I am in a tiny village on the coast of Croatia. My hotel room is large, with a terrace that overlooks the Adriatic, which is down a series of stairs.

What am I doing? Well, I was hired to teach creative writing and debate to Russian children here for summer camp. The first two weeks of camp is the hardest, as I've got eleven 8-11 year olds and eight 12-15 year olds.

Half of the girls are named Dasha or Lera and half of the boys are named Vlad or Sergei. In the younger class there are two Vlads, and I had a contest to see who would be called "First" and who would be called "Second". (As someone with a very unusual name it causes me no end of amusement to nickname people by adding numbers to their names. I see it as one of my lesser qualities). Contest won, they now even sign their papers as First and Second, which I think is quite sporting of them. :-)
Naturally, I've really fallen for a couple of the kids. Specifically, the son of the music teacher. Yesterday I listened to him practice for more than an hour on the piano and couldn't stop crying (he doesn't know that), it was so intensely beautiful despite the slightly out of tune piano. (He just recently won the under 16 international pianist competition in Venice- he's 12). I've never met a true prodigy before, and he's one of the most gentle mannered, kind and considerate (old soul) children I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

The problems: Croatians don't speak English. They also don't speak Spanish, although I'm able to communicate with them in Italian with effort. Actually, they all see me and greet me in Italian, so that it took awhile to figure out that that wasn't in fact Croatian for hello. It's been awhile since I've spoken it, but we seem to get by with this funny mix of my Spanish/Italian and their Italian/Spanish as we immediately change the words we use to match the words being spoken to us. It's quite funny really.

Also, the people in this hotel are Russians. All of the computers are set in Russian, and keep changing back to it. The keyboards are a combination of Croatian or Russian that are set to either Croatian, Russian, British or American layout regardless of what may or may not be on the keys. What I really can't figure is how in some windows the "z" is in a Croatian layout and in the next window it's in an English layout. This is of course if there is any internet or computers running at all...which there weren't for several days.

Getting anything arranged requires hounding and repetition in 4 languages for days. To do laundry required 2 days of research and 4 people speaking a total of 6 languages before we found a matching language, and then we found out that it's 7 euros for a load. Four of us put our stuff together, and it was two loads. The cleaning staff decided that some of the stuff was too nice, and they wanted to do it separately and charge us for three loads...of course, the drier is broken, and they haven't got lines, so they gave them to us wet and we had to hang them all over our rooms and balconies. I thought that was rather cheeky, seeing as it was so expensive.

They also decided that since people were drinking the water from the water coolers that were out- that they should be removed. So they did. We had to take kids down to the town at 22.00 at night to get water because they were thirsty and the hotel has no water for them. They also disconnected the internet because people wanted to use it once it was up. This has been a constant battle with our leader trying to secure us internet usage for at least the teachers.

The water here is cool, but warm once you're in it, and very very clear. Not so many fish though- well, lots of little ones, and shiny ones but nothing like the Maldives. I think that perhaps I might be a little spoiled for snorkeling seeing as my first experience of it was two years of snorkeling in the Maldives. I lived on an island that was named by Asia Diver as one of the top ten places to snorkel in the world. I suppose it's hard to be impressed after that. I just kept thinking, "But where are the sharks? the turtles? the coral?"

Ah well. I'm having a lovely time despite the frustrations. It's beautiful and peaceful and I'm glad for the change. I needed it. The air here is everything that it should be in the Med. but it rarely is any more.

It thrills me to hear the sound of cicadas once more. I always hated them- but I love them too, because they say, "summer". I love sitting on the balcony at night and watching the stars over the Adriatic.

It's lovely and peaceful. There isn't so much as a bookstore in this village, but there are a few bars and restaurants.

I'm sending all of you lots of love. I won't check this much, I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you and get a taste of my warm sea air and cool sea breezes.