A Year in Review

Today is the last day of 2013! Here's my personal highlights reel with a photo from each month.

January: The Yes Abroad applications were due (but technically I handed mine in during 2012 because I'm such a nerd and I always do things way to far in advance)

February: My family, my exchange student, and I went to Florida

March: We had IPSE weekend and I met a bunch of lovely people!

April: I learned that I was going to Bosnia and Herzegovina and I was so excited I almost passed out

May: AP exams, prom, a visit with a good friend of mine and a Sara Bareilles concert!

June: The end of school, saying goodbye to my exchange student and the Pre-Departure Orientation

July: My friends and I saw a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

August: I arrived in Sarajevo!

September: School started and Sarah and I started to teach English.

October: Bosnia made in into the World Cup, we went on a school field trip and then it was Halloween!

November: Thanksgiving with my host family

December: Well there was Christmas, Common App, and my birthday!

I hope everyone has a good New Year's Eve and a happy 2014!

A Very Merry Expat Christmas

In all honesty I was expecting to spend the holidays wallowing in homesickness this year, but once again Bosnia blew any expectations I had out of the water, even my Christmas Eve was spectacular.

Christmas Eve started off terribly. Sarajevo has been blanketed in unprecedented amounts of smog for the past few day and on Christmas Eve the conditions were almost unbearable, which made going to school that day even harder. The school day wore on and I wasn't in the "holiday spirit", I had a paper due and biology lab and by the time I got to my last class of the day I was feeling less than cheerful. My last class was Geography, which is normally one of my favorites but I just wasn't feeling it that day. Due to a long biology lab I was running a little late to Geography, and I walked to class with the attitude that all I had to do was make it through one more period and then I could go home.

My smog selfie

Before opening the door I took a deep breathe and trudged in, but the sight I saw was not one of the average Geography class. There were cookies and Coca-Cola bottles everywhere, and Christmas carols were playing. I was awestruck. What was happening? Then I heard my geography classmates yell "MERRY CHRISTMAS EMMA!" and it hit me. MY GEOGRAPHY CLASS HAD THROWN THE AMERICANS A CHRISTMAS PARTY! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! My teacher welcomed me inside and steered me towards a plate of cookies. The cookies had been decorated so that they spelled out "Emma", I'm not ashamed to say that my eyes welled up with tears, it was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for me. Also, giving me food is the fastest way into my heart. My geography class is absolutely the best.

The plate of cookies my class made me!

Our wonderful class!

Later in the evening I headed back out into the smog to go to dinner with one of the other Americans, Sarah. We went to her host aunt's house and hung out there with her family until about 10 pm in the evening. After we walked to a big Cathedral in the center of Sarajevo to see it all lit up and decorated for the midnight mass with the other Americans and then Sarah and I went back to her house and called it a night.

The inside of the Cathedral

The next morning, Christmas Day, we woke up and exchanged gifts. Her host parents also got me a gift which I thought was very sweet of them! After some breakfast we took a walk up to Bijela Tabija (a large fortress overlooking Sarajevo) to see the view because the smog was all gone and the air was totally clear! Then Sarah and I parted ways and I went home to Skype my family. Merry Christmas everyone! Sretan božić svakome! I hope your holiday season was as wonderful as mine was.

Moja Mali Jelka!

My little Bosnian Christmas tree!

Thank you to Katie Wells one of the YES Abroad students last year for leaving this at her/my host family's house! Read her blog from her YES Abroad year here (http://katieelise27.blogspot.com/)

On the Road Again

As the title would suggest, yesterday the YES Abroad crew took another group trip out of town. This time around our destinations included Gradačac, Srebrenik, and Tuzla. It was an exhausting trip, but only because it was tons of fun.

First we went to Gradačac where we went to a fortress known as "Kula Zamja od Bosne" or "The Tower of the Dragon of Bosnia." The Dragon of Bosnia refers to a Bosniak general who found against the Ottoman Empire and the new reforms implemented by the Sultan in the early 1800s named Husein-kapetan Gradaščević. The tower was very cool and it probably would’ve offered us a great view but it was so foggy that it you couldn’t see anything more than 10 feet in front of you. The setting still made for some good photos though.

This is the group dynamic in a nutshell

Next we piled back into the van and drove to our next destination, the Srebrenik Fortress. This was honestly one of the coolest places I have ever been in my entire life. The fortress was first mentioned in a charter in 1333, which means that this fortress was over 3 times older than the United States of America. Europe, man, they have a lot old stuff. The fortress looked like something straight out of Lord of the Rings, it was insane. When we got there it was bright and sunny so we spent some time walking around the ruins, but when we turned around to leave fog started to roll in, and when I say roll in I mean you could actually see it approaching, we were that high up. By the time we were walking back to our car there was so much fog that you couldn’t even see the castle anymore, it was like it was never there. Craziness.

 Before, when it was sunny

 It's going...it's going

It's gone

Our final stop of the day was the Northeastern city of Tuzla. After Banja Luka and Sarajevo it’s the third largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its known for its salt mines. It even has a salt lake that you can swim in during the summertime. In Tuzla we went to a portrait gallery that had works from local painters including the famous Tuzlan painter Izmet Mujezinović. I’m not usually someone who can properly appreciate art, but I really loved all of the pieces that hung in this gallery. Once our visit to the museum was over we stopped for some tea and started on the road back to Sarajevo. 

I love any trip out of the city we take because even though Bosnia and Herzegovina is a much smaller country it's landscape can feel just as varied as that of the United States. Granted, you're not going to find any deserts but you'll find salt lakes, palm trees, mountains, fields, and more.

Well there are only 9 days left until Christmas so I'm sure I can go back to posting more often soon!

Thanksgiving Take 2

I know that the real Thanksgiving was on Thursday, but I didn't have any time then to celebrate it with my host family so we postponed our plans to today. The dinner went very well! My host mom helped me make chicken drumsticks and a turkey leg along with some green beans and roasted potatoes. Needless to say, it was delicious!

Sretan Dan Zahvalnosti!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here in Bosnia it was just your run of the mill Thursday, but a few of my friends at school wished me a Happy Thanksgiving and it really made my day. Despite a long day at school, a math test, and some English tutoring the atmosphere still felt quite celebratory, which is good because I have plenty to be thankful for. I won't list all of that below because, honestly, you'd be here reading all day, but since its my 3rd month here I'll try and pick just three things I'm thankful for. Here we go

1. My family, both my biological one and my adoptive host one, all of you have a special place in my heart
2. My friends, at home and abroad
3. American Councils, YES Abroad, and the US State Department for giving me the fabulous opportunity that is my year in Sarajevo

Sretan Dan Zahvalnosti everyone, I hope it's a good one.

My 100th Day in Bosnia!

Today is officially my 100th day in Bosnia and it was incredible! The snow continued falling throughout last night so by the time I left for school there was at least 6 inches on the ground and its still snowing late into the evening today. After we finished our classes for the day, Riley, Luke, Sarah and I went up to my house and played in the snow like little kids.

I just love my neighborhood!

Riley fell in the snow

Happy 100th!

Pada Snijeg!

It snowed for the first time in Sarajevo today and we didn't have school because it's Bosnia's Statehood Day so I had all the time in the world to enjoy it.

It was really just a light dusting. but I was still pumped

Stretan Dan Drzavnosti! (Happy Statehood Day)

Initiation

I've been initiated into Bosnia's public transportation community today, its official. I caught some jagweed trying to pick pocket me on the tram, but despite my rage I didn't stress because I knew the only things I had in my bag were my math notebook and some delicious treats from the grocery store. So even if he had succeeded the only thing he would've come away with was a deeper understanding of logarithmic equations and maybe a twix.

So ha.

An update on my pumpkin...

We ate it.

Halloween Abroad

So to be perfectly honest, when October 31st rolled around this year, I didn't expect to do anything special for Halloween, thankfully though, some of my YES Abroad family members had other ideas. 

After school on Halloween, Riley, Luke, Sarah and I made a spur of the moment decision to go and look for pumpkins. We had seen a girl carrying one through school earlier that week and had been determined to find one of our own ever since. Thankfully one of the large supermarkets in Sarajevo had a few pumpkins and we cleaned them out and made our way back to Riley's house to carve them. I would be lying if I said we didn't get a few odd looks from passersby, four Americans carting pumpkins around isn't a normal sight in Sarajevo.

Buying our pumpkins

Then we got to Riley's house and realized that we were going to make a terrible mess and we needed some newspaper so we made an impromptu trip down the street.

As soon as we set the newspaper down we commenced the carving. It was slow going at first.

But in the end we got the hang of it and had some beautiful Jack-o-Lanterns to show for it! After our little party I headed back to my house by taxi. Let me tell you, there are few things that will earn you more strange looks from people on the street than standing on the corner holding a jack-o-lantern in a city that doesn't trick-or-treat. It was ok though, I had a fantastic Halloween!

My masterpiece

Happy (belated) Halloween!

Improving My Balance

I have always been a bit of a nerd (a shocking revelation I know) and part of that means I take school very seriously. I may not always enjoy sitting through class, but I will always try to complete an assignment to the best of my ability, even if it doesn't count for much. Thankfully my status as a nerd has come with a lot of benefits, one of which was acceptance into the YES Abroad program. Other times though, it can get in the way.

Take this week for example, this week was the week of giant assignments in school. Everyday after school I had so much school and or college applications related work that I barely had time to go downstairs and chat with my lovely host family! I was so obsessed with my schoolwork that I neglected my host family,an action that goes against the core tenets of being a good exchange student.

Then came today, Saturday; I had planned to spend the day going to morning Bosnian class and then locking myself in my room to finish up a few big assignments, but when I got up this morning my host mother told me that the family was going to the countryside to visit her sister-in-law . She said that they were leaving in half an hour and they would return in the evening and I could come if I wasn't too busy. I hesitated, I was, as always, busy and my upcoming due dates loomed over my head, but I told her I'd be happy to go anyway. I knew that the academic in me wanted to stay home and trudge through the pile of work on my desk, but thankfully my inner exchange student won in the end. I wasn't, after all, sent to Bosnia to practice logarithms and study Bismarck, I was sent here to experience a culture.

Now this is not me giving you an excuse to blow off school. Don't do that, but maybe you should look up from your textbook every once in a while and experience something substantial. I know that tomorrow my pile of work will still be there, and I will have to work double time to get it all done, but I don't regret my decision to travel with my host family today one bit. I've learned so much about the culture during my visit to the countryside; for example, we are currently in Republika Srpska (a different state in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the demographics here are very different than the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Federation has Sarajevo, a densely populated city which is ethnically diverse, but has a large Muslim presence. The Republika Srpska is mostly hills and forests with a few tiny towns and its fairly homogenous with the majority of people being of Serbian descent. My host mother even calls it Republika Šumska, the Republic of Forests, after its immense amount of woodlands. 

So to all of the future exchange students out there (hint hint wink wink the YES Abroad 2014-2015 application is out) remember to balance your school life during your year with your at home life. School is important, it always will be, but don't let it interfere with your education. (Yes I am paraphrasing something Mark Twain once said.) Every once in awhile put down your pencils for a bit and go experience whatever fabulous culture you were lucky enough to get invited to participate in, you never know where you'll end up. 

You could be like me and get to take a photo in front of an awesome pile of hay!

Vidimo se u Brazilu

"We'll see you in Brazil!"

Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to the World Cup in 2014! The game was last night and they beat Lithuania 1-0. It will surely be a night I'll never forget, you could hear the celebration from even up where I live.

Busy busy busy

This past weekend was probably the busiest one I've ever had. I'll give you the day by day breakdown.

Thursday - I'm starting with Thursday because we did something out of the ordinary after school. The American Councils staff occasionally sets up activities for the YES Abroad kids to do to enrich our cultural understanding of Bosnia during our year here. Our activity this time was to go to the Gazi Husrev-bey's Medresa in Old Town which is an Islamic High School in Sarajevo and learn about the upcoming islamic holiday of Eid, or as its called in Bosnian, Bajram. One of the classes at the Medresa gave us a presentation about the religous significance of Bajram and how it is celebrated in Bosnian. Afterwards, they gave us a tour of the school and we all went out for coffee and tea. It was a very fun evening.

Friday - This was the real start to my fun, but busy weekend. My school schedule was pretty strange. I had one 8:50 class and then nothing until 3:10 so I went home and hung out with my family. Then once I got back to school the Ministry of Education in Sarajevo had decided to start the Bajram holiday early and shorten the rest of our classes on Friday and give us the coming Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off from school! At around 7 o'clock on Friday I went out to dinner with some friends and then at 8 I went to a cafe to watch the Bosnia and Herzegovina vs Lichtenstein game. It was really fun, even for someone like me who doesn't consider themselves an avid soccer fan because as soon as Bosnia scored a goal the whole cafe would erupt in cheers and I would shout a long with everyone else even if I didn't totally understand what was happening. Then I went back to Sarah's house to sleepover because we had to get up super early for another full day the next morning!

Saturday Part 1 - My Saturday started bright and early at 6:00 in the morning so that Sarah and I could be in front of our school by 6:45. We made the mistake, however, of trying to call a cab at that hour. Let me be the first to tell you, they're ALL full. Sarah and I hadn't prepared enough time to get all the way down her hill, then take a tram, then walk so we sprinted down her gigantic hill all the way to the taxi stand where thankfully there was one taxi free. Once we were at school and on the bus we were on our way. My geography teacher had been kind enough to invite all of the Americans to join her homeroom's trip to Jajce, a historic city about 3 hours away from Sarajevo. The ride up there was beautiful there were all of these wonderful fall colors on the mountains. I took way to many photos.

Saturday Part 2 - Once we got to Jajce we had a lot of sightseeing to do. We went to a museum or two, climbed into some catacombs, and walked around a fortress I'm about 90% sure is hundreds of years older than the United States of America. After the sightseeing we got back on the bus and went to lunch on this restaurant by the lake and had about two hours to just chill out. The YES Abroad kids walked around and eventually found this really cool area where all of these little mill houses rest on a river. It was exciting because it was a scene from one of the first photos each of us had seen when we decided to go to Bosnia with YES in the first place! Needless to say, it was a pretty crazy field trip and not at all comparable to anything I've done with my American schools. 

Look what I found!

Saturday Part 3 - The bus from Jajce pulled back into Sarajevo around 8 o'clock. Sarah and I were at her house by 8:15 and were in a taxi headed towards Zetra Stadium to go to the concert of a Croatian singer named Severina by 8:30. I had a great time and the concert even though I didn't know any of her songs, but it was fun because a ton of people from my school were there.

Sunday - There's not much point in posting about my Sunday but I figure it would round out my weekend nicely. I mostly sat around Sarah's house and relaxed. (my host family was out of town for the weekend so I stayed her for almost 72 hours straight) Later in the evening the YES Abroad crew (minus Emma Fencl who was in Serbia with her family) went out for a slice of cake to celebrate Etienne's birthday. It was a nice,  relaxing ending to a busy weekend. 

This could be you!

The YES Abroad application for the 2014-2015 year is out now! Get writing!

http://www.yes-abroad.org/

Back to the old grind....

Back in Connecticut I spent a lot of time around little kids, I babysat all of the time and I even taught Sunday school at my local church. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed spending time with children until I got to Bosnia and I never got to interact with them! Luckily though, that all changed today! Sarah (another YES Abroad exchange student) and I started teaching English at her host sister's elementary school this afternoon.

It was great! The kids range in age from 7 to about 11 so teaching them English is quite a task because for some of them its too easy and for other's its too hard, but hopefully we'll be able to customize the lessons going forward. I loved it so much and honestly I can't wait to go back next week.

The Teachers!

My First Time Out of Sarajevo!

Yesterday I took my first trip outside of Sarajevo. It was crazy to realize that I had been in this country for almost a month, but I had only ever seen 54.6 square miles (141.5 square km) of it. We started our trip early by meeting up in front of the National Museum at 8 in the morning.  It was really chilly and super foggy and I worried that my long sleeve shirt and scarf would be too thin, luckily though it warmed up.

It's hard to believe there's a city down there!

We all piled into a van that our coordinators had arranged to drive us around for the day. It was only a two hour drive from Sarajevo to Mostar, but it felt like being in a different country. Sarajevo has a continental climate, so our foggy, chilly morning was pretty average, but on our drive through the country we went through a mountain a suddenly the weather changed to a gorgeous, bright, and sunny day.  It was crazy! We were now in a Mediterranean climate, but still in the same tiny country, I was in a state of disbelief. It was awesome.

Crazy Right?

Upon first glance Mostar looked like the outskirts of Sarajevo, it was surrounded by a beautiful landscape, it had some war damage, and there were plenty of people walking around,  but once we got out of the car, we noticed the atmosphere was a little different here. None of us could quite place what it was until our coordinators explained the incredible amount of ethnic tension that the city of Mostar had and that we were currently in “no man’s land”, it was a divided city.  The Croat and Bosniak populations that lived there went to different schools, and had different soccer teams, and learned different languages in school.  It was a big adjustment from  Sarajevo. In Sarajevo there are occasionally ethnically-charged incidents, but for the most part all of the ethnic groups there co-exist without many problems.

We headed into Old Town Mostar. It was a really gorgeous part of town and reminded me of Baščaršija in Sarajevo. The first sight we saw was this really beautiful mosque with a minaret that we were allowed to climb up. The mosque rules asked women to cover their heads out of respect, and let’s just say the first couple times I tried to wrap my scarf around my head, I did not look nearly as graceful as the ladies I see walking around Sarajevo. After the minaret, we headed to an old Ottoman house turned museum/hotel, the Stari Most bridge, an overlook down by the river, and then we were off.

On top of the minaret, this is attempt number two at scarf wrapping

Stari Most bridge

Notice any similarities?

                

Our next stop was Blagaj. Blagaj is the location of a Dervish Tekija which sits on top of the Buna River, it’s gorgeous. The Dervish community consists of a group of Muslim men who have dedicate their lives to poverty in order to learn humility, and the Tekija is where they live.  The whole area was absolutely stunning, it was impossible to capture how amazing it was in photos, but I tried my best.

Sorry guys I tried

The final stop on our journey was a tiny, artistic, town called Počitelj. It was basically built into the side of a hill, and like everything else in Bosnia, it was beautiful. Our stop here was fairly quick, we had some coffee and tea, hiked up to a beautiful fortress, took some photos, and then had some more tea. Počitelj is home to an international artist community and its on the list to possibly become a UNESCO World Heritage site. I think this idyllic little town was my favorite stop of the day, it was so peaceful.  

The ride back wasn’t too long, but once I saw signs pointing us to Sarajevo, I caught myself thinking “I can't wait to get home and sleep in my bed.” I’ve only been in Sarajevo for a little less than a month but I feel like I’ve been here awhile. I learned a ton about Bosnia’s history, climate, and culture on our short little day trip, but what I took most to heart was the fact that Connecticut was no longer the only place in the world I called home.