This morning when I talked about Sunday’s adventures, I titled the post “Day 4″ While it was true that I was writing it on Day four, I was actually talking about day 3 happenings. So…let’s get on with the REAL day four.
We started the day with an orientation of what Kent, Cheri, Hrvoje and Jill are doing here in Croatia. Their main purpose is to begin to build real, significant relationships with the national Croatians. Along those lines, they’ve created an NGO to teach English to local Croatians. Croatia is currently in negotiations to join the EU and expect to become a member by 2011. The EU requires (strongly suggests, actually) that all their member states greatly encourage all their citizens to become fluent in at least three languages. That situation opens up a great market for people who are looking to become conversational in English.
Another thing we found out is that one of the greatest values of a short-term support team such as ours is that our mere presence is a great encouragement to the long-term team that is already here. It isn’t easy living in a culture, place, and language that is completely removed from the one you grew up in. It takes a while to build up significant, positive relationships and sometimes it is just nice to be loved on by people.
After lunch, the team split up and went different ways. Marcus went with Kent to play football (the European kind). Marcus and Kent ended up on opposing teams. Marcus usually plays defense, but for this outing he went forward and kicked a shot-on-goal that hit the top cross bar and shot straight down to the ground directly behind Kent who was playing goalie. Kent assures us it didn’t go in. Marcus kinda smiles and says he’ll be the better man and not press the point.
The ladies, Jenna and JoAnn, spent the afternoon at the English language school with Cheri. They started out talking in a group and then Cheri had them pair up and play a cliche-matching game. They each had a list of cliches in each language and they had to figure out which Croatian cliche matched up with which English cliche. It was a bit challenging because the cliches weren’t literal translations but meaning for meaning translations. The ladies had such a good time that even though the classes ended at 6pm, they didn’t stop talking until almost 8pm.
Knowing that I have no natural (or unnatural, for that matter) talent for football, and that I am definitely not female, I opted to attend a men’s study with Hrvoje. I met some great men there who are really having their lives change in a positive way. I was impressed by one person in particular who was really applying what we studied to his current life situation.
By the time we all got back together it was already 8pm. We all went out for a short grocery shopping trip and walked around Trogir a bit before heading back to the apartment for dinner. We’re all winding down and journaling now–it’s the quietest it has been all day.
