Yup, so here is a good picture I found of Andrija, one of the ACMT students I met at Fresh, along side who he really is.
I case you haven't seen the show. Here is the imdb page for Heroes. Andrija is a cool guy though.
Yeah, so I remembered some of the stuff that happened in the gap between posts! I went to see a movie. =D "No Country for Old Men". The movie was Okay, but the experience was something else. We got in for free because we have these neat culture cards. The theater was small, but very clean. Ian went to see "10,000 BC" but didn't have the same luck as I did. You see, the movies are in English, but with Croatian subtitles. So when it came time in the movie when the villians were speaking in their own language, the english translation subs were missing. Bum bum bum! No worries. Still fun.
Today I had my make up social change class. We took a test and presented our group topic. It went well. Suzanna and Andelo thought I was nuts wanting to get the students involved and excited about a presentation. I tried explaining my philosophy of presentations to them, but they didn't believe me. They thought that our classmates would be lulled in to a state of absolute boredom from now until the end of time. Or at least until the end of the presentation. I had more faith however. It turned out pretty good. A good job all round.
And man oh man, I know why he split up the class. They cheat cheat cheat! Like it's nobody's business!
After, we went over to the rocks down by the ocean to watch the sun set. I breathed in the salty air and let the crisp night breeze fall upon me.
I had a feeling this was going to happen. Because I haven’t written about stuff in a while, I am forgetting things. I am missing whole days of my adventure! I promise when they come back to me, I will write about them. In the mean time, here are some awesome days which have transpired recently and I remember quite well.
Hokay. So last week on Tuesday, the RIT kids were all invited to the Dean’s list reception. It’s this fancy dinner thing at a hotel. It was sweet. Really good food. Radiohead was there too! Well, not really, but there was this really good cover band there. When they started singing “Creep”, I felt like I was playing “Rock Band”. I guess that’s kind of a bad thing. So this ACMT chick was totally flirting with me on the line to get food. =D. She said I fit in and looked European. I felt cool.
After the dinner we heading over to the club “Cultro” for the after party. It was a quite a scene. I am proud to say that I danced. Not proud to say that I danced horribly. Suzanna commented at one point, “you really have no rhythm do you?” Regrettably, no. Didn’t stop me though! =) Everyone had a good time. Something I noticed which I had never seen in the states, was that they were showing naked women on the TV in the bar. I pondered this for a while, then I pondered it a little more, upon my third ponder, I concluded, yes it was quite different.
On the course of our journey, we stumbled upon my good friend Friday. That was the day we visited Ston (pronounced “Stone”). It is a small little village about an hour’s drive from Dubrovnik. An exquisitely beautiful place. The locals were very friendly in the small village. We came to the general consensus that the villagers were probably not used to tourists and in turn had a very different attitude than natives from Dubrovnik. There was this nice old lady who came over to talk to Stacy and I, for instance. I have no idea what she said, but she said it with a smile and I imagine it was something like this: “This place kicks some serious ass, huh?”. And it did.
Car ride there
Now before we got to Ston, we made a pit stop over at this place that looked like a labyrinth. There was this crazy fountain and some really cool artifacts and plants and stuff. Mad cool.
The Maze
After we arrived in Ston we had a lot of time to kill before the festival were they set sawdust on fire throughout the streets and along the wall of the town. Naturally we went exploring, but not before eating of course. Brad, Kyle, Teo, Tom, and I went to this seafood restaurant. Ston is supposed to have the best oysters in the world. We didn’t get any. The meals we did get were amazing though. I got spaghetti and seafood. The clams and everything were about 10 times better than the stuff I get at the local place at home (red moon). The best part of it all was that the meal was mad cheap. We had some awesome service too. I was happy, and so was my stomach.
Ston Part 1
We went to check out the salt mines around the town. That was fun. Then we met up with Axel and some of the rest of the crew for coffee and a hike up the wall there. Now, this wall was nothing like the wall around Dubrovnik. It was a lot narrower. Also, those things called “steps”, yeah, they don’t exist. There were friggin ramps up this thing. It was quite a journey. The view from the top was worth the trip though. =)
Ston Part 2
Now the real scary part was when we made the trip down. We traveled a different route. The steps… now actual steps if you want to call them that… were about half the length of my foot and the distance between each step was about the length of my leg. Now, being the tall strapping young lad that I am, I was a tad freaked out. Axel did lend a helping hand and we all made it down safely. Catastrophe avoided.
Ston Part 3
In our meandering, we also spied a church. This thing was seriously crazy. It was old a really cool. We walked up to the outside of the door and were all very quiet. We didn’t know if we should go in or not. We spoke in whisper, very gently. I peaked inside, “hey, there’s someone in there,” I said. “It looks like they are taking pictures… it’s Lori!” I guess I was so surprised my voice went above the comfort level at the time, and I was promptly shooshed. I thought it was cool that she found the cool places and was scoping them out as well. Dad says she has an eye for photography. I say she has two.
After finding the best place to scope our the fire on the wall. We waited. After nothing happened, we waited some more. Still nothing so we went for coffee. Before I could sip the first bit, we heard singing. Damn. I quickly gulped down the cup and laid the kuna on the table and was out the door. It was quite a sight to behold. At one point when everyone was walking away, I was reminded of an old Zombie movie. The fire on the ground only solidified my suspicions of a zombie apocalypse. This was not the case however, and no one of the group was bitten or eaten, at least not to my knowledge.
Dark part 1 - Waiting... and fire
Dark part 2
Dark part 3
Saturday. Assassin began. This has been fun. In case you are not familiar with the rules you can check them out here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_%28game%29. I suggested the game so we could have something to do in down time. We did wind up having a lot of that this past weekend because it was raining pretty hard. Here is a quick break down of how we played for those of you at home.
Everyone gets a card with someone else’s name on it. Then discreetly and without anyone else seeing, you “kill” that person by touching them with the card. This has to be done in a sneaky way in which they would not be expecting. You then get any cards they have accumulated from killing others and inherit their current assassination mission The game lasts until the last person is alive. This has led to some healthy paranoia within the group as you can imagine. Fun =D. Also, I feel I should mention too, that being CS majors, we discussed how we would set up the game for quite a while. Since everyone wanted to play, there could be no one to assign assassins and we couldn’t just have people pick out of a hat because the rotation couldn’t have any loops. Ian solved the problem by writing a program that would spam e-mail everyone their assignment. We all felt a little more at home. *sniff*. Now all we need is a creed.
So Monday, school was closed! A holiday. Amazing thing! Very different from RIT, where we start school ON labor day. We get no days off there. Only catch is that we are making up the social change class this Saturday. It’s not a big deal though. It’s at 4:00. Anyway, it was a fun day. I used it to finish up some work that needed to get done.
Tuesday, yesterday, we had our long day of classes. I had my first presentation in a while. It felt good to stretch my spokesman’s legs. The presentation was on Upcast/Downcast for XML. Everyone said I was very into it. I was glad. I have another presentation coming up in Social Change on the “American Dream and Pacification of everyday life”. It has turned out to be a very interesting topic, and I am looking forward to presenting on it and seeing how I can do in front of an audience of Croatians. This will be an interesting first, and hopefully not a last.
Today, Kyle, Tom, and I headed out to ACMT at around noon to get a head start on some work. Tom needed it more than us because his hard drive on his laptop died. He is a CS major without a computer. He is sad. I empathize. I was in a similar situation my freshman year. There is a little difference this time though, because we are on the other side of the world. He said he’ll attempt to find a new HDD. We will see what happens.
Man oh man, there was some crazy PDA (public display of affection – for you lingo newbies), around the lounge today. I was reading on one of the couches and all of a sudden, I hear this sucking noise. I look around for the source and I see these two Croatians eating each other’s faces. At first, I thought some zombie may have followed us home from Ston, but alas, it was just some trendy kids.
Later we went to Social Change. It was a normal day like all the others, until the professor mention the quiz schedule for next class. Half the class was to report there at 4:00 to take the quiz, the other half was to come at 4:30 to take the quiz while the first group hung around for a half an hour. Then the whole class would regroup at 5:00 for the rest of class. Being the computer scientist that I am, I was a bit confused by the overall inefficiency of this whole arrangement and expressed my concerns to the professor. He said this was to prevent cheating. I shrugged. “Okay”. When in Hrvatska, do as the Hrvatskans do.
By the way, USA calls this place “Croatia”, but natives say “Hrvatska”. The “h” is pronounced by hawking up a loogey like you would be you say “Chanukah”. I guess “Croatia” is easier for most Americans to say.
Now for an update on the apartment situation. Zoran made this awesome powerpoint presentation for us on some cool apartments within the area with actual washing machines. Woohoo! I will be living with Kyle, Ian, Stacy, and Leah in the five person apartment labeled number 1. It has a piano. How sweet is that. We need to go check it out, but the landlords of all the apartments seem to be a lot better than this dude.
Map of apartments
Pics of apartment
I leave you with a few words from Kyle Marcotte, of the Kyle Marcotte Show.
The Kyle Marcotte Show - Episode 1: Living Life on the Edge
Adio!
P.S. Ian posted pics of "The Matterror", an epic meal involving 9 eggs and everything in the fridge. Here they are:
So Ian’s website has content on it now, so a link has been updated. A link to Lori’s flickr account has also been put up. Nawce pics. All of this has been added to the feed too of course. I also added a link to my youtube account for the videos. I have uploaded a bunch more if you want to check them out =). I’ll link them each at the bottom of the post.
So, Saturday was our welcoming party at the Living Room. That’s a club. They set it up to look like a living room. Sort of. It was pretty cool. There were these kids who rapped. I wasn’t sure if I couldn’t understand them because of their accent or because it was just the style, but whatever. Chilled with some native girls and chatted about school and such. I had a pretty good time.
Yesterday was such a lazy day. We all mozed around and I tried perfecting some magic tricks. We played Bull Shit. And it was fun messing up Kyle’s plans for card domination.
In the future, I am going to have to have plans for days like this. If not, I feel like I’m just wasting a day. And then when it comes time to blog about it, I get sad =(. No worries though. Everyone needs a break now and again.
So I missed out on the market a few days ago. Turns out there is this better one over by the docks. They have peppers and tomatoes and better stuff than the other market that I went to had. More food from the locals. I must go there.
As for today, Kyle and I awoke to find the cleaning lady making her rounds not on schedule. This was a pleasant surprise because we thought our laundry would be getting done too. Though the apartment was cleaned when we got back, no such laundry luck has been found by anyone. =( We contacted Zoran about the situation and he is looking into it.
After an epic Croatian history lesson this morning, Kyle, Stacy, Tom, and I heading over to a “fast food” place over in old town for lunch. I got a sandwich with peppers and cheese and pickles and mustard and omg heaven topping. It was decent… just kidding, it was awesome. We all ate it over behind the cliffs of ACMT. Wonderful view. We need to get out on that peninsula soon before I grow insane with anticipation.
We are going to discuss future outings with the whole group tomorrow. Some of the options include: the top of the big mountain and this town called “stone”, where they are having this festival were they line the streets with sawdust and then set it on fire, “back to the future style”, or so I would imagine. Sounds sweet. Also on the list is visiting the bridge that we can see from the apartment. Supposedly you can bungee jump off of it =D. Can’t wait.
Tonight, Kyle and I achieved greatness in the kitchen with the birth of a cooking masterpiece we call, “The Matrerror”. It includes fried potatoes with onions and mixed vegetables and peppers in one giant mass of scrambled eggs. It was basically, potatoes and eggs on crack. All we needed was ketchup. That aside, it was so good that more than three bites would put you in a comma. In the future, it will need warning labels because people will be passing out from awesomeness poisoning left and right. Yeah. Ian took pictures. You should bug him to put them up. I will link.
All in all, it has been looking good for Dubrovnik so far. Our presence has yet to make a significant impact on the social and economic status of the city as a whole, but things look promising.
Adio!
P.S. Watch some videos
My amazing arrival video + commentary part 1
My amazing arrival video + commentary part 2
The laundry rig + explanation
Visit to Old Town Part 1
Visit to Old Town Part 2
Awesome Cliffs part 1
Awesome Cliffs part 2
The City part 1
The City part 2 + graveyard!
P.S.S. I miss everyone at home and at school. I love ya guys.
Thursday… some crazy stuff went down. First off, Kyle and I woke up early to do work. Now take a moment to look over the previous sentence. There are several interesting words like, “early”… “work”… “woke”… “I”. The internet in our apartment is kind of loopy and not very reliable, so we figured we would head over to ACMT early and take a look at some of the notes for class. Despite our plan being riddled with quirks, it managed to pan out.
After a while we met up with the rest of the gang and did class things. During class, the door opened and a women in a black suit walked in and interrupted Axel mid-sentence and asked to speak with him outside about “the situation”.
O_O
Turns out it was just about the housing situation. So after class some ACMT people came in and said that they were also not happy that we weren’t getting what we were promised from the housing “agreement”. No one signs any contracts in this place… Anyway, they talked to the landlord and he has agreed that the cleaning lady will do the laundry starting Monday I think. They put a bed in Ian’s living room so he could graduate from a couch. And ACMT is buying us towels because the landlord says there is a severe lack of them even though Kyle and I found the treasure trove of about a hundred of them downstairs. We will see what happens.
Kyle and I went to he grocery store later that day with the intention of buy cold cuts. Now this is scary for several reasons. One being, everything is written in Croatian and I didn’t know what any of it meant, and the other being I knew it had to be ordered via the metric system. Neither of us knew how much to get. The lady behind the counter was helpful enough though and I managed to guestimate. She asked how much I wanted, so I asked how much people usually get. She laughed and said she didn’t know, how much did I want. This continued for a little while before I finally settled on a quarter of a kilo (250g) of smoked ham. A good portion. I was proud.
After that little adventure, we headed over to Fresh (the bar) for a special event. It was mad cool. We hung out with some Croatian people and had some pretty insightful conversations. Girls are hot.
It was an interesting night. Some guys found girls, some girls found guys, some girls found girls.
We headed over to a dance club called Fuego afterward but no one was there. The party supposedly starts up around 1:30am. I was mad tired though, so Stacy, Brad, and I headed out so we could catch the bus. We hung around for it for a little while and when I finally came by, we stood up and it flew by.
We started walking and were about half way home when Ian calls me up from the apartment asking where we were. They left after us and were able to catch a bus. Nuts.
So the morning after, I wasn’t planning on going out with the photo kids to check out the wall at 9. Kyle woke up at 8:30 and asked me if I was going. I debated for a few seconds and then rolled out of bed in my shirt and underwear and stated that I was ready to go.
After putting pants on, I finally was, and we booked it to the bus stop. We were running crazy late, but that was Okay because so was evil Zroan. (just as an aside, ACMT Zoran is “evil” and RIT Zoran is “good”. This has nothing to do with them. It’s just something we say to tell them apart when speaking about them).
We all finally got together and we were ready to embark on the journey. Now, the “wall” is the big stone wall 1.5 miles around the top of the old city. You know how in the old days they had the draw bridge into the city and they had walls. Yeah, this was one of those. It was an amazing view everywhere we went. View points everywhere. We crawled into little spaces, above everything. We looked down upon places we had admired from ground level and found new appreciation for how awesome they were. It was a crystal clear blue sky day and it was perfect. And I didn’t have my camera. =P I had forgotten to charge it the night before and I was a little upset. It did give me chance to take everything in though. It took us about three hours or so to get all the way around because we kept stopping and admiring. Evil Zroan gave this awesome speech about the history of the city and I wish I had recorded it because it was really interesting. But some of the highlights included the name of the main street in the ciry “Stradium”. Some Italian dude came over and was used to the narrow streets of Venice and called the main street in Dubrovnik “big and ugly street”, and the name stuck. I thought that was great.
After the wall excursion, Kayla, Anna, Lori, Kara, and I went to get some food and free ice cream. Awesome and awesomer.
Later, we all went over to the beach and chilled. The sun was setting and it was really cool. There was no sand, there was small rocks and large rocks. I skipped a few on the water. I was happy. Sandals didn’t work too well, perhaps rockals next time.
By the way, there is this driving course next to our apartment, auto camp solitudo. It is a park with stop signs. It’s really funny, and awesome.
As soon as I got back, Ian, Kyle, Tom were like, “We’re doing laundry at Axel’s now!”, so I’m like “Okay!”. I grabbed some clothes and threw them in my bag and we went to Axel’s. Carol, his wife, kept feeding us food, and it was delicious. The dogs are awesome too, they think they are tough stuff, but they are really just little fur balls.
When we returned, we scoped out the awesome clothesline hack that brad put together to dry clothes. I filmed it. Okay, so this clothesline is made from ethernet cable, coaxial cable from the TV, a laptop lock, and a belt. MacGyver would be proud.
So now we are all in Kayla and Anna’s room checking out drawing with Teo. Some damn cool stuff! It’s neat seeing someone work who is artistically inclined.
People Phrases - week1: Teo: Makes minds bleed from drawing and musix at the same time Kyle: Throws things Tom: O_o Where is my Coffee!? Brad: MacGyver Jr. Kayla: Ice cream tycoon Leah: Variable who’s value can be changed but not accessed directly =O Lori: Crazy sneaky pictures Anna: Yonder! Into the sunset. Don: Did I just teleport? Kara: Skipping rocks like its nobody’s business Ian: Isn’t allowed to flirt anymore Stacy: Laughaholic Good Zoran: Coffee should be seen, not drank
I have some video uploaded to youtube. It wouldn’t take all of it though. I’m going to have to cut some of them down. Here are some of them to keep you entertained. I will probably sprinkle them back throughout the previous posts, but for now, they will remain here.
Some introductions
Hills behind ACMT
School, day 1
The docks
Random fun with the camera 1 Kyle eats human flesh!
The stop in Germany. Check out the Royal with Cheese!
View from balcony and such WARNING: Long and boring!
Kyle, Teo, Kayla, Anna, and I woke up early before class to head down to the market in old town to check it out. You know, a whole bunch of people out by the docks selling fruits and vegetables. Pretty cool, but as we spoke more with the natives, it seems that the good stuff really isn’t in season yet, going to have to wait a little while longer for peppers, basil, and tomatoes. We did pick up some lemons, potatoes, and onions though. Can’t wait to try um out. Fruit of the land. Mmmmm.
Then we went over to the bus station to pick up the passes. Everyone else had theirs but when I asked about mine, the lady couldn’t find it. She got on the phone with the people “back at the main station” and the consensus was that my paperwork had been lost. She said I would have to go back later and redo the paperwork. Okay. I went back a little later and my pass had been found. Woo! So now I have a sweet Dubrovnik bus pass. It has an RFID chip in it so I figured I would be Bad Ass (BA, if you will) by leaving it in my wallet and holding it to the senor. I did, and it was.
Had class with Axel. It was pretty cool. I think it will be enjoyable. After the first class we went out to lunch with him. It was an interesting experience having a drink with my professor in between classes, not bad.
After the CS classes we had Environmental Science. Our teacher is pretty much a European version of Dustin Hoffman. No joke. I like how he could pronounce the name Kznqquzlzzilfloz just fine but had trouble with Kyle. Good attempt at “Kilay” though. So, needless to say we were pretty beat at the end of the day so I went to bed early.
Then today I didn’t have a plan. It was the first day I didn’t have a set time I wanted to wake up at. Kind of scary \actually because I felt like I didn’t want to waste a day. Well it turned out okay in the end. I wound up waking up around 11 and Kyle, Leah, Brad, Ian, and I walked over to the hills and mountains around the back of ACMT. They are pretty freakin cool. They overlook the ocean and there is this peninsula out there. There are some great views out there and we found the perfect place to swim. We all agreed that we could pack lunches every once and a while and have picnics up there between classes. =)
Kyle and I split up from the rest of the group after exploring cause we needed to get to Social Change class. So, btw, change is constant. Thought you should know.
After, I went out for coffee with some kids from the class who are in my group. They are really cool. Suzana and Andelo (pronounced Angelo) and also… I think “Zisu” was another kid’s name. When we spoke about rent, they were extremely surprised. Apparently we are getting severely ripped off. We should be paying about half of what we are paying now. Suzana even called up her landlord and asked about open apartments and gave us an awesome quote for a place there. So they said they would be more than happy to show us around the place. The other people and I have been trying to get in contact with the people in charge to see if some kind of negotiation of lower price could take place because promises are not being kept. =P I’ll see what happens.
Anyway… chillin now. Didn’t want to party tonight because we have class in the morning. We will party tomorrow night =). Andelo and Suzana said they would show us all the hot spots the locals go to. So we are all looking forward to it.
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Back to the story... as for last night, we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant. It was pretty good. We came back to the apartment and started Geekin it up with our laptops in Ian's room, where the only place we can get internet is. That was what my cryptic post was about before.
We woke up early this morning and went down to get Croatian phones. I am in the process of setting mine up now. I get 100 kuna of minutes to start off with which is about 90 minutes of local talk. For calls to the US it's 6.22 kuna a minute. I don't have to pay for calls to me though. They don't use up the prepaid minutes. The whole thing phone and all cost me about 280 kuna (~$60). And I can recharge the minutes.
Here are everyone's different digits at the end of the number: Anna - 20 Kara - 21 Zoran -23 Chris - 27 Tom - 28 Leah - 42 Don - 47
We hung out in Old Town for lunch. I got footage of the place today. Really good footage- more on that later. I had a prechute sandwich with a tomatoe paste and cheese. Tasted like heaven. We ate it over by the peer. It was an incredible view. Then we got this crazy good ice cream. The guy did a whole bunch of tricks with the scoops. Throwing it up in the air and such. Quite impressive. I got it on film =). We got to talking to the workers and it turns out ACMT students get a discount. 5 kuna instead of 7. Sweet. About $1 for kickass ice cream.
Then, Ian, Kayla and Ana and I went exploring by the ocean. We found some crazy stuff. We climbed up these stairs engraved in the mountain and took some awesome footage and pics from the top of these cliffs down the cavern and ocean. Obviously one of the coolest things in the world.
So we went to Zoran's presentation today. He spoke about some Croatian culture and some do's and donts of living in a European country. It is going to be a weekly kind of thing. At the end, he told us to get coffee.
This guy totally messed up our order at the coffee shop though. I'm pretty sure he did it because he knew we were American. Whatever. Next time we will go with Good Zoran.
After that, I decided to check out the class that Stacy, Kyle and Don were going to- "Social Change". I liked it so much I registered for it. As soon as I heard what it was about and that there was going to be a group presentation I was all for it. Totally excited. I am in a group with some other ACMT students so as to get out of my social norm. This is going to be really exciting.
I tried uploading my videos to youtube today from the school and they are too big. It's starting to upset me now a little actually. Ian has informed me of a different way to upload. Ill try it out.
We got back and made speghetti. I boiled a couple of eggs in the sauce. It came out freakin sweet. The bakery bread is really good. Gets stale after about a day though. We fixed it up though. Stacy saved the day by suggesting to toast the bread. We have pannini make in the apartment so we did. And it was delicious.
Ahh, so now we are down in Ian's apartment, yet again. Chillin. Many have gone to bed, tired from an exuasting day. I will join them soon.
The plan for tomorrow is to wake up early and head over to the market in old town to pick up some crazy fresh vegetables with Teo and Kyle. Head on over to the bus station at 9 to pick up bus pass. Take the bus back, put away veggies and then go head to class! Whoa. I have Programming language skills at 10-12, XML at 2-4, then environmental science from 4-6. Crazy eh?
Check um out. I was going to take stills from the footage I took on my video camera but they are not coming out well. I'll probably upload the footage tomorrow at school. Its cool. Teo is going to help me shrink down the files so they will be "youtube legal". Once that is done, we are in business.
I would like to comment about the weather here. Its very unpredictable. One minute it will be sunny and hot, next it will down pour. Hot. Cold. Rain. No Rain. Crazy, but cool.
I had the coffee here for the first time today and I have to say it was better than anything I have had in America. We went down to the harbor and checked out the boats. Very cool. We saw a fish thing that the locals call a "dick head". It was like this red gooey thing stuck on a rock. Interesting.
I think the plan is to check out a jazz club tonight and eat out at a place that doesn't serve Pizza. =) Should be good.
Okay, so yesterday I made eggs. Very different advertising than in the states. I don't think I've ever seen a carton of eggs with a picture of the inside of a cracked egg before. Kind of turns you off, no? Also, there were 10 eggs in the carton. When I pointed this out to Kyle he commented on the metric system.
Dropped off paperwork for the bus pass yesterday. Students get a bus pass for a month for 80 kuna. Which is a pretty good deal considering each ride usually costs about 10. (BTW, I don't know if I mentioned this before but 1 American dollar equals about 5 Kuna)
Next, we went to "Old Town". I didn't bring my camera with me because I knew I would be coming back. I just wanted to take everything in the first time. As soon as I crossed the drawbridge and entered the city I could have swore I was in the game "Assassin's Creed". No doubt about it, there was some white cloaked guy jumping rooftops.
There were a lot of steps. We went exploring over by the residential side and were intrigued by a sign that said "Cold drinks, best view, this way". So we went. No drinks, but definitely a crazy cool view. All the time I was reminded of Disney World or other places that try to imitate this (and do a horrible job). I half expected Mickey Mouse to come around the corner and yell "Surprise! Hehe!" But he didn't =(
Later we had Pizza again. And again it was delicious at a different place. I have this sneaking suspicion that Pizza will become a very common thing. Though as we were walking back to the apartment I managed to remember the name of the restaurant that Tina had told us about. "Copa Cabbana". Now we have to find it.
Later we went back to Old Town to a bar called "Fresh". I liked the tip jar: "Tips for Fresh women". There were a lot of kids from ACMT there. We made friends with them and the people who owned the bar were really cool too. And I swear one of the guys looked just like Syler from "Heroes". He overheard me talking about this with Teo and he said he gets that a lot. At least three other people had separate conversations regarding the same thing. The place got more crowded as the night went on. I found that more people talked to me when I spoke with a Croatian accent. I think I have it down ;). All I had to do to keep most of the women engaged and talking was to agree with them. Go figure. I found out a lot about how Croatian culture was heavily influenced by Italy and how America is "too new" to have its own culture. I nodded at this point and sprinkled in a few of my choice phrases. My vocabulary has increased as a result of the experience.
Regarding the video. The internet connection here at the apartment isn't very good and uploaded the files was pain staking. So I am going to do it at school.
Laters.
P.S. I had breakfast this morning on the terrace overlooking the beautiful world I'll be calling home for the next 3 months.
I have crazy amounts of video that I have to upload. I want to upload it to youtube or something and then embed it in my posts. Dubrovnik is really a beautiful place. My camera has not been greeted with very warm feelings thought seeing as how it shows we are "Croatian N00bs". In fact, almost every shot I have includes audio of something to the effect of "Put that thing away Chris!". This statement would sound funnier if I had a child's mind, but I don't. =)
Yeah, so the flights were long. But the thing that killed me the most was the layover in Germany. Man oh man are people friendly to Americans! /sarcasm I got too many rolled eyes to count. I met up with Tom in Frankfurt after attempting to use my backpack and coat as a makeshift pillow (doesn't work). We hung out and got on the flight to dbv. Flight was decent, and I missed my cookie. Apparently there is this crazy good cookie that they serve and I fell asleep during serving time. Now my experience will forever be scared.
We wound up walking around the first night taking in the sites and shopping for food. The bread is kick-ass. We came back to find the outlets in the wall were kind of sunk in so the freakin adapter wouldn't fit in all the way. luckily, most of us have smaller adapters and we daisy-chained to larger ones. It works. I filmed it so you'll know what I mean. Gotta put that up.
I went to bed at 9 and woke up at 2am. I was wide awake so I flipped on the TV and the Sopranos was on. Really bad quality and with Croatian subtitles, but still entertaining. Went back to bed and woke up early to meet with Zoran.
Everyone gets ready and is waiting outside for about 20 mins and Zoran pulls up, gets out of the car, walks up, puts his hands in his pockets typical Croatian fashion and says "What's the plan then?" He jested of course. We went to the school and to a coffee shop. Got some hot chocolate which is crazy creamy chocolate. It was delicious. We got bus passes in the works and got oriented. Just a small tour of the 5 story school. We went out and walked around a bit. Went into this graveyard. It was really cool. The graves had hooks on them in case you wanted to open them up I guess. The art was amazing in there. Again.... I took crazy good video.
We wound up getting pizza and in was Pizzalicious. You eat with a fork and knife. Not much of a stretch for me since I was doing that anyway. They served the forks and knives on a plate though, which I found odd.
We checked out a few other different places, all interesting and unique. The mall, more food spots, a lounge were kids ran amuck and the parent smoked cigarettes while they played. That would never happen in America. Some kid would surely be abducted.
We got back to the apartment and chilled out. We totally rigged some internet. I am very happy about that. I helped get it working with some linux firmware on my router. You see, there is this stupid thing that ISPs do in Europe and they require you get 2 year contracts. I don't know if we all want to split all that money for the internet for 3 months... but it would prolly not boil down to that much. Still, it has become a bit of a problem. For now we are amplifying some random signal through the router to the apartment.
I am happy.
I am tired too. So much done. Oh boy- need to upload that video. Later. Later. Sleep now.
