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!