Paris.

Its 2pm in Paris right now, I am about to go get some lunch with Pierre but it will be a little crowded on the streets because of the tour de france. I boarded the bus from Gorazde to Sarajevo friday morning at 6am. Bought my ticket to Paris around 8:30am and left at 9 exactly. First ten or so hours of the trip I did not talk to anyone. Almost completed a 400 page book. Then while waiting outside to get our passports checked leaving Croatia and entering Slovenia, I met Zoran. He asked what I was going to do in Paris, I said I had no idea, never been there, dont speak french, and dont have a place to sleep because the hostels I tried to get a room at where all booked. Fast forward through the next 20hours on the bus and I am at the Paris bus station. Zorans brother in law picked us up, they dropped me off at their friend Pierre s apartment who was going to help me find a place. After meeting me though he said I could stay at his apartment for free. We talked for a while, he showed ,e a bunch of pictures, I told hi, about myself. Then we met up with Zoran and some other friends and walked all around Paris. I got my picture in front of everything cool. Ate at McDonalds, the first one I have seen since leaving America. Later hung out by the river walk with a couple hundred people happy to be in Paris playing music and salsa dancing. Since the metro was closed we rented bikes and rode back to his place. I cannot believe how much I like this city.

The Candy Man Can Because He Mixes it With Love

I mentioned in the last post that some of the kids from english camp asked me for my e-mail address. Well one of the boys who asked stopped by the center this week looking for me. I had never talked to him because he was in a another group, I did not even know his name, but he said he wanted to hang out. I met him outside the center and he introduced himself, he is only ten years old but taught himself english from watching tv. He has been giving me tours around the city, he seems so much older and sometimes it seems as if he is treating me like a small child. For example he showed me the walking bridge yesterday, he doesnt know that I have walked across it close to 300 times since being here, he also explained that the bubble gum marks on the sidewalk were bubblegum. But he is really fun to be around, he took me inside the mosque which was very interesting and also pulled off a sly move by paying for mine and my roommates ice cream today at a cafe when we thought he was in the bathroom. It was very nice of him but it just seems wrong for a 10 year old kid to be buying guys in their twenties ice cream. Haha he just spreads cheer to everyone, he bought a bag of cappuccino flavored candy from the grocery store and was giving it out to people on the street, I could not help but feel like I was walking with a real life Willy Wonka. On a serious note,he is very inspiring to me. Today he showed me the exact location where his grandfather was shot six times by the Serbs stationed in the hills with sniper rifles (it happened to be about a one minute walk from where he lives). His other grandfather had his neck sliced and was thrown off a bridge along with 2000 other muslims in Visegrad, Bosnia. And when I think that my bedroom on the second floor is too hot to sleep, I think how he has lived his whole life on the 6th floor of a high rise apartment. I dont understand his fascination with me, or why he wants to hang out, he is a much more interesting person that I am but I am glad I got to meet him. It was sad today though when I told him I might not ever come back to Bosnia.
I went kayaking for the first time today down the river. It took us over four and a half hours to get back to our destination but it was a lot of fun. We would stop along the way to get out and swim, stretch our legs, use the bathroom, and empty the water out of the kayaks. Haha as if being splashed by the freezing water was not bad enough, when we would hit the really rough spots, the kayak would fill up with water and then you had to sit in it until you found a place to get out. I did not go swimming in it today, because I think I got sick from swimming it the river a few days ago. A friend of mine wanted to try to ride from the rock island to the bridge on a blow up pool raft that would cost 5 dollars at Wal-Mart. Was not the smarted idea ever but I gave it a shot. Needless to say we flipped it and had to swim for shore. The water was so cold I had trouble breathing. And then that night I woke up the chills and body aches. I hope I am not getting sick because tomorrow I am going to try to catch a bus across Europe and end up in Paris. My roommate is going saturday to Hungary to visit family, and another couple is leaving saturday to visit friends in Germany. I am excited for next week when we can all talk about how the trips went and see pictures. I decided on Paris because it is the farthest place the bus goes, takes about 2 days. Should be an adventure, picked out some books today that I am going to bring with me, I will need them for the ride, especially since my ipod is no longer working.

English Camp and my ipod are both done.

Somewhat of a sad story, this week I went to turn on my ipod and the screen was just white, I have tried a lot of different things to get it to work but the screen is always just white. Its sad because I use it a lot here because I spend a lot of time alone. What else is sad is that I could find another ipod here if I looked hard but I would not have the money to buy all the music I want to put on it. So I am hoping for some type of miracle, but if not I will just have to adjust to life without it.
Yesterday was the last night of English Camp, and overall it was a huge success. Outside of some minor problems with the boys in our group, I think everyone that came had a great time. Last night and Thursday night we allowed their parents to come and see what they have been doing all week. It was cool to see how many showed up with cameras or video taped their children with their cell phones singing and playing the games. My friend Isaac and I wanted to take some of our group out to get pizza during the day with a translator but the only time that worked for all of them was at night, so we planned to meet at the center around 8:30pm. Haha all the boys showed up on time but we forgot that the translators were only at the center during the day. So we took them anyway, it would have been hard to explain to them that pizza night was canceled when I dont know how to say that in Bosnian. It went a lot better than I thought it would have and by the end of the night I was glad we didn't have a translator. It forced me to use all the words I have been learning and hearing in conversations, it was also fun to figure out words using hand motions. For example they taught me words like "hot" and "cold" by doing motions like touching the pizza and then touching their drink. It was a really good time, one of the boys knew the word "Catholic", he said it and pointed at us in the form of a question, I tried to explain to him that i was not but then he asked "Muslim?" and I said no. That would have been the only time I wish we had a translator, but even if they think we are Catholic, at least we showed them that people other than Muslims can be nice. Because after the war most of the children have only heard negative things about people who are not Muslim.
Early this morning the whole team from Georgia and the two teenagers from London left. I woke up to say goodbye to them all, everyone here is going to miss them. It was interesting to see them leave because any other time I have been out of the country, I have been with a short term team and I never really understood the impact I had on the people who would be there before and after our trip. We were truly blessed and thankful for each person that came, we would have not been able to do the camp without them and it was also great to hang out with other people that spoke English. It does feel different though now that they are gone, I cannot believe how fast their two weeks here went by.
I walked across the river today to the small rock island called "the beach" where everyone hangs out. The river water was freezing, I am not sure how the people here swim in it. If you want to know how cold it is, our friend visiting got in up to her knees as a dare at night, stepped on a piece of glass or something and didnt even realize it because her feet were numb. About 7 minutes later we were on our way home and she says "my foot kind of hurts", she lifts it up and her sandal is covered in blood, she had a deep cut on her big toe. It ended up being o.k. but it was crazy how quickly her feet went numb and how long it took for her to get feeling back, even though she was only in the river for about 1 minute. I also saw someone jump off the bridge today into the river, even if it was bath water I would not do that because the area you have to land in is very small, if you land anywhere else it is too shallow.
I have been getting a lot of friend requests on facebook from the younger kids that came to camp, I am not sure how they even found me. What else is funny is that some came up to me and asked "email? please" while holding a pen and paper. I am trying to figure out how I will even know who they are when they e-mail me because each one of them were not in my group so I dont know their name. Plus they barely spoke English so I am wondering what they will type to me. Probably the craziest thing that happened this week was on Thursday night, a boy from our group named Amar was saying something to me in Bosnian, and his friend Azmir translated it wrong to me on purpose. Then they said some things to each other in Bosnian and a small fight broke out. Isaac and I were right there so we stepped in after the first couple kicks, but a punch was thrown while we were separating them, and then some large rocks were picked up. They both had to be sent home for the night, but we have talked to both of them since and they seem to be friends again.
Looked at the pictures from my family's vacation to the beach, haha I was really wishing I would have been with them except for the picture of my uncle John carrying a million things from the house to the beach. That is one thing I dont miss, that can feel like the never ending walk when you are holding boogie boards, beach chairs, shovels, buckets, etc.. haha. I do miss sand as well, the beach today was all rocks, its very uncomfortable to lay on.
Time is still going by really fast, and I feel like I wont be ready to leave in a few weeks, I cannot imagine how it felt for the people who came for 2 weeks. There are new and exciting things each week, I am really thankful I have been able to stay this long. Still planning on visiting some other countries before I leave, was looking at bus tickets today, will be cheaper than flying and I would also like to take the bus so that I can look out the window and see more of the country then I would in a plane. Not 100% sure as to where I am going though, my goal is to just see new places, which should be easy because I have only been to one of the neighboring countries. Best of luck to everyone reading this.

Its been a while. ( Disgusting Monday)

This is my first time on a computer in a long time, a lot has been going on since adventure Thursday (by the way-the pictures of the cave and waterfall are up on facebook now. And the person who took them is named Jo Maslen, she said anyone can add her as a friend if they want to see the entire album). Finished the first week of english camp tonight, it has been going good. We had a couple and their two kids arrive last friday, they are helping out along with two teenagers from England and 10 people from Georgia. I have really enjoyed being around other people who speak English, they have been such an encouragement to everyone here. Monday was the first night, we had about 180 kids because we allowed some of the ones who signed up on the waiting list to come. And during what we call "promo time" before camp actually started, I did the most disgusting thing, I have done nothing more gross my entire life. When I volunteered for the game, they did not tell me all the details.

Myself and another guy stood in front of all the kids and we each had someone standing behind us under a sheet. I had my arms behind my back and my partner had his arms out where people could see them. And the start of the game was not bad at all, he washed my face, tried to brush my teeth, tried to pour and feed me a bowl of cereal, shave my face with a fake razor and whipped cream. All the kids were laughing really hard and it was a good time, but then the game took a drastic turn for the worse. One of the staff came out and they announced on the microphone that they were going to now show everyone where ninjas and samurai warriors got their power (Chinese theme for camp). He then took a huge bite of a banana, chewed it for a while, then spit it into a cup. Then he swished some milk and juice around in his mouth and spit it in the same cup. Then he had a few big spoonfuls of peanut butter and honey, chewed them up and spit them into the same cup with everything else. By now people have already left the room and most look sick. No one was laughing. They stirred the cup up with a spoon and then poured myself and the other guy playing the game a cup and we had to drink it. Do to the fact that Bosnians are very concerned with preventing illness to the extreme where they never wear shoes into a house or allow cross breezes, none of the kids thought we would actually drink it. And none of our fellow staff thought we would either. So guess what...we did. It was completely nasty. I have seen people do less gross things for large amounts of money, and I did this for free. Whats really funny is that the woman who was in charge of the game, apologized after saying "Zac - I am so sorry we used a banana, I forgot you dont like them" She was dead serious too. I told her the banana was not the problem, it was the fact that it was chewed up by someone else and spit in a cup. It could of been the best ingredients ever and I still would have felt sick. I was surprised that I was able to drink it without throwing up, I was almost certain I was going to puke it all over the front row of kids. I do feel like I have gained some respect around here by doing it though haha.

English camp is much different from adventure camp for multiple reasons. One is that there is almost 4 times as many kids and also they are much younger. The crowd at adventure camp was teenagers who wanted to hang out and have fun, they also spoke fairly good English. The English camp kids dont come to hang out with us, and for some odd reason, a lot of the boys in my group like to not listen to myself or the other captain. For example, I ask them to walk up the steps, and they run up the driveway towards the road. Or we ask them not to touch each other in music class and the one punches the other one in the face. We just need to remember to have extra patience when we are dealing with them. Tuesday we got to visit a boy, his mom and dad are actually housing 4 of the people visiting. We sat and talked about everything, we also went out to ice cream with one of the kids in our group, she was very shy, so it didnt go according to plan. We would ask her questions like "If you could have any pet as an animal, what would it be?" - Her answer "I dont know - Im allergic to some animals ". Or "what is your favorite thing to eat?"- Her answer "I dont know, I like a lot of food". So I could tell she wasnt big on answering questions and I did not want her to feel like we were interrogating her so I asked her if she had any questions she wanted us to answer or any information about us that she wanted to know. Her answer "No". Haha we are visiting a boy Monday though who loves to talk, also love to touch our faces when he is trying to emphasize a point. A little creepy but it will be fun, he wants us to play ping-pong with him after.

The weather here has been nice lately, its good to see the sun. There have been people swimming in the river a lot lately. A few nights ago I was hanging out with some guys downtown, and some where messing around on a guitar but my friend and I were talking about just random things. Anywhere from pet fish to how American carpet is glued to the floor in most places. When all of a sudden my friend got really annoyed, and said we had to leave. I asked him why we were leaving and he said our other friend was getting on his nerves. I was completely lost because the dialogue they had was not in English. But he later told me that the guy told him I was just asking those questions because I was making fun of how Bosnians live. It made me feel bad because that was the last thing I was trying to do. But I can understand why he felt that way because he was only picking up bits and pieces of our conversation and his English is not very good. I wish my friend would have explained to him the truth instead of just getting annoyed and leaving. I would not have come here this summer if my goal was to make fun of how they live.

Time is going by really fast, I cant believe I will be going home in a few weeks, I know saying goodbye to some of the people I have met here will be hard. I have had two boys ask me when I planned on leaving, when I said August the one said "What will I do when you leave, you must come back". Its strange how I never considered things like saying goodbye to close friends when I was planning to go on this internship. It will be a sad day, because I dont know if I will ever see these kids again. I am looking forward to going home, I wish I could be on vacation with my family this week, I miss them.

Adventure Thursday

Today was a long day to say the least. ( I apologize for miss spelled words ahead of time, I am in an internet cafe and the keyboard is different from American ones)Woke up around 6 to meet the team at the center for a short meeting before the kids showed up. Then we loaded up the vans for 2 hour van ride to a cave none of the leaders had ever been too. My van was all boys, and they hooked up their mp3 player to the radio and blasted music I could not understand. I am pretty sure the volume was as loud as it could go. That I could handle though. It was about a hour in when the boy next to me threw up in a plastic bag, the driver did not stop because our van was in the back of the line, so he held it between his legs. Due to the fact that Bosnians are afriad of cross breezes, only one window in the van was open, and it was the drivers side. I happened to be in the back seat on the passengers side. To make things even better he proceeded to talk to me, about a inch away from my face for the rest of the ride. If I had a pack of gum with me, I would have let him eat the whole pack. We did eventually make it to the cave though, and it was really awesome. I had never been in a cave like that, we walked about a quarter of a mile into it, it was verz cold inside. Looked like something out of a movie. After the cave we had lunch, the team brought hot dogs with them, I am not sure what they were made out of but I ate one. It was the first one I have had since being here, normally when I ask people what they are made out of and they answer "I dont know", I proceed to order something else. But it was the only option and I was starving.
On the way home we decided to stop at the second largest waterfall in Europe, it was beautiful, but there is a reason not many people go to see it. The van ride up the mountain was extremely difficult. We kept getting stuck, and then once we finally got to the place where you park, it was about a hour hike into the woods. The path was super skinny, slippery/muddy, and steep. But walking down it to the waterfall was nothing compared to the walk back up the hill. I am glad none of the kids are quitters, haha because I am not sure how we would have got them out. By the time we made it back to the van everyone was sweaty, whats funny is that the boy who sat in front of me on the ride forgot to leave his sweatshirt in the van and wore it instead of carrying it. So he was extra extra sweaty. Try to guess what it smelled like in our van on the long ride home. We were supposed to get back around 5 pm to give everyone time to clean up before the last night of adventure camp, but the hike to the waterfall took way longer than anyone could have guessed. Back at the center we had pizza since it was the last night, and showed a slideshow of all the pictures taken during the 4 weeks. It went by really fast. English camp starts Monday though, when that is over we are going to try to take the kids kazaking.