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.