One thing about moving some place new and having the option of filling your days and constantly meeting people often results in two things: no time to reflect AND no time settle. I feel like a cup of freshly poured turkish coffee: the grounds are still floating everywhere.

"We knew they had freckles"

Recap! Just the highlights.

monday: Ariel Acrobats! Thats right, when the ribbons hang from the cieling.

tuesday: concert, alt rock electronic-ish depech mode ish croatain rock band

thursday: jean shopping.

friday! Croaticum field trip: sight seeing included neanderthal musuem in Krapina, a castle, and church THEN, and embassy halloween party.

Saturday: 11-4 mare and marko-coffee +games+halloween poster+lunch then another halloween party with party games! Acting out scenes from horror films.

Sunday: Mirogori <3

Monday: Cake+Masa birthday and Mirogori again....

This is what i look like these days. just kidding! It was my attempt at a halloween costume, ever seen the Craft!? I hope so!

Mirogoj Cemetery on All Souls Day, Nov. 1st. Oldest (i think?) cemetery in Zagreb, built first in 1876. The arcades, where all the famous, well most, are buried/entombed.

Mirogoj Cemetery on All Souls Day, Nov. 1st. Oldest (i think?) cemetery in Zagreb, built first in 1876.

Finished Birthday Cake! All home made from scratch, including the whip cream letters.

This girl just had a birthday!! Happy Birthday Masa!

Amela and I baked her an early morning cake, you know its frindship when you only sleep four hours just to bake a cake... well not any cake, chocolate cake (made with turkish coffee+dark chocolate+coca powder+yogurt) with rum infused gnache. Not to brag, but it turned out perfect-o...Torte od cokoladu!

Mirogoj Cemetery on All Souls Day, Nov. 1st. Oldest (i think?) cemetery in Zagreb, built first in 1876.

Mirogoj on Oct. 31, night before all souls day, lots of candles but few people.

Church at sunset.

JUMP!

Some of my classmates from Croaticum, counteries represented: Austria, Italia, US of A.

It's fall.

My favorite part of the Neanderthal Musuem. "And after the world was on fire, it rained" or something like that, the tour was in Croatian.

Seeing is Believing.

Sometimes you read things that ring so true to the moment. I hope I am getting better at croatian. On that note, a bit of poetry, straight from our friend Italo Calvino:

"And then listening to someone who is translating from another languge involves a fluctuation, a hesitation over the words, a margin of indecision, something vague, tentative. The text, when you are the reader, is something that is there, against which you are forced to clash; when someone translates it aloud to you, it is something that is and is not there, that you cannot managage to touch." -68

"The pronunciation of that unknown language, deduced from theoretical rules, not transmitted by the hearing of voices with their individual accents, not marked by the traces of use that shapes and transforms, acquired the absoluteness of sounds that expect no reply, like the song of the last bird of an extinct species or the strident roar of a just-invented jet plane that shatters in the sky on its first test flight"-69

this is a creepy photo, but mostly i want you to note all the cds at this club, would you see this is in the states? I don't think sooo...

on the bus back from hrelic, Bella and I bought a childrens enclylopedia to practice our croatian.

paljacinke u beograd. what i have been dreaming about for a year and a half. mmm.

sitting under an awning in a zagreb cafe, having a beer, discussing the rain and the role of facebook with our sweet and kind waiter.

this is a painting i saw, and basically this is what everyday in Zagreb is like, rainy and drury. At the least the trams are warm and toasty.

I never thought everyone would love silly bandz so much, I've been giving them out like crazy. Here the deer has eaten the kangeroo and mr.squirrel is saying "i thought you were a vegetarian!" Strasno.

A view of my office from my desk, lovely, don't you think?

telephone booth after riots in belrgade.

United Colors store after riots in Belgrade, many store fronts had broken windows the next day.

Strnage art in contemporary gallary in Zagreb. I really like the wax figures and also why this lady is in the same room as this creep chunk of wax baby. hm?

a slug. the path to my dorm building is a slug graveyard in the mornings.

An old photo from house-hunting, masa and puke green curtains in a lovely-but-small apartment up the hill.

So this is mostly a photo update, because I've been slow at uploading my images.

running out of titles.

Dobro Jutro,

#1. Belgrade is on the front page of the NYTIMES global edition.

heres a direct link in case they update: the offical news!

There isn't much to report here. Made some headway on my research, no interviews yet but a narrowing of research, a clarifying of ideas. I've meet with several professors now to work through my project, trying to tweak the issues, the questions. Hopefully it pays off. So yesterday was work, and coffee, and class, followed by some warm "cooked wine" at a cafe. Fall is lovely when the sun is out. On that note, the sun was out all day yesterday and seriously lightened my mood, why does the weather have such control of our emotions!? Ive also become a cappacino drinker.

Things to consider: going to zadar or staying in Zagreb for the weekend? Seeing the band Carbiou in Ljubljana?

I got a package from my parents :) in it was my favorite slippers and my bath robe, oh the comforts of home!!!!!!! Hvala svoja mama i tata! (thanks mom and dad :))

Today I saw this movie: The Last Beautiful Thing .... and it was fabulous!

I've been here one month now. Oh my. It makes my stomach grumble.

movies.

Zagreb Film Festival! So far I've seen these:

sex & drugs & rock & roll

colony

plus some croatian shorts.

chestnuts and rain and another week slipping by

blogging is rather hard to keep up with, I need an extra two hours a day to write, record, edit, and really think about having a blog in order to relate some kind of thing resmebling my everyday life here, thats why sometimes i resort to the beloved form: the list, time tested, to the point, and often satisfying, the list is a rather useful friend of mine.

1. An update on Belgrade: I spoke to my Professor I had run into-she apologized for the situation, for not having the ability to offer me company to enter the parade, she explained that i had interrupted a conversation in which she wanted to enter and her companion did not. Then it got a bit crazy. I realized my concerns about going as a spectator, as a colonisist are mostly unfounded... afterall I just spent a over year writing and thinking about public acts of protest, art, and re-imagining public spaces for political purposes in Belgrade-this was basically the realization of the written materials I had been pouring over for months. When I think about in that framework, I must admitt, I regret not going. C'est la vie.

2. I finally feel like I am living here, not just a zombie here. I have friends, I have things to do, I have people invested in me being here. There are familiar faces in the cafes. This is in part due to a new endevor: hanging out with Mare and Marko, two kids who spent a year in the US two years ago when their father was on a fulbright. They live in a lovely light and airey apartment and Ive been there twice now, each time we speak in english, about life at Notre Dame and drink turkish coffee followed by something sweet, the first of which is a crotatian speciality: crumbled chestnuts with chocolate pudding and a dallop of whipped cream. mmm.

Marko and Mare and I played headbanz, a game we sold at the toy store and make believe and a funny easy version of banangrams. I gave some silly bandz and I told them all about Walt Disney and his boyhood home. They were impressed, I think we really hit it off. I am going to be spending a couple hours with them every saturday morning to practice their english and hopefully to continue to eat snacks and drink turkish coffee. It was nice to be in a home, not an apartment or a place where students sleep but someone's real home that they have invested in making it feel cozy cozy.

3. Amela and Masa moved into their apartment! Congrats! Their first grocery trip involed making a new friend, who invited us to tea at a nearby cafe. We agreed but said we wanted to go eat dinner first, so we headed back to the apartment to whip up simple pasta and head back down the street for warm cups of tea only to find ourselves literally trapped in their apartment building...maybe we didn't get the key?...but the front front door is supposed to never be locked?..lets go knock on grandpas door, the grandpa of the people who own the apartment... never! never in 20 years! he said, this door has NEVER been locked....and people were trying to get in and we were trying to get out and grandpa said its like a prison! eventually somewhere in the building the key was found but the mystery was never solved.

We were free but a half hour late to meet our new friend, who luckily was still waiting. We went to a near by cafe, ordered our teas and dove into a full frontal assualt of a complicated conversation in mostly croatian. I caught bits and pieces and masa and amela translated, I interjected though when he mentioned Italo Calvino (who I already mentioned earlier I am curently reading). We spoke of how Invisible cities is a perfect book to read when travelling, then of the former yugoslavia, then of love, and always of runing. He was interesting and if i had more time I would dive into the interesting things i caught, about traveling through region, being yugoslavian, nationalism, manipulation, all things that always floating around in the air here somewhere, sometimes hiding, sometimes not.

In general, the conversation only spurred by desire to really imerse myself in the language, I feel like my inability to speak is always a massive brick wall, I can only hear the murmers on the other side and sometimes people dig holes underneath or pass notes on paper airplanes over the top.

4. Sunday mornings, herlic again and rain and clouds. Too icky to really dig through the rummage piles, instead we ate greasy cevapi and beans baked in clay bowls, sitting admist some middle men smoking (whom which i imagine talking over the buisness details of a cars sale, for there are many cars forsale at herlic)

5. Now I am booksa, looking forward to dinner at a prof. house, thinking about all the work I should be doing, so many emails! So many articles! Or maybe too few?

Well, time to get working.