Mostar

I shouldn't have sounded so negative about school starting. I always kind of dislike the first day of school. It feels like it carries too much weight - like if you screw up on that day, the rest of your module is shot. So far, though, my students seem pretty dang nice and hard working. For the first time, I have a group of repeaters, meaning they are taking the intermediate level a second time because they didn't pass the previous module. The repeaters get a bad rap as being all of the unmotivated and disruptive students, so I was a little nervous...picturing spit wads getting caught in my hair and chairs unexpectedly flying across the classroom. But shoot, they seem great so far. No spit wads or flying chairs. Knock on wood. As a person who sucks at learning languages, I'm pretty sure I'd be in the repeaters' class, so I think I can relate. 

Another reason why going back to school was difficult is because of places like Mostar, Bosnia, where I was wandering around just over a week ago. Where I would gladly wander around all day, rain or shine, for the rest of my life. 

Here are some of my favorite Mostar bits...

• A train ride through the lovely Bosnian mountains and about 39 tunnels, give er take 10. None of the pictures of the view out the window turned out, but I kinda liked this one. If you've been with this blog and my flickr page for a while, you might recognize a lil similarity with Romanian trains. I love trains.
  
     
• Stari Most, or Old Bridge. Mostar is famous for this bridge. It was built in the 16th century and worked just fine for 427 years until it was blown up in 1993 during the Croat-Bosniak war. It was rebuilt and reopened in 2004. Everybody we met talked lovingly about this bridge. The way that people in Reno used to talk about the Mapes. There was a video playing in the museum bookshop that showed Stari Most being blown up. The bridge is there, a few people run across it, and a few seconds later there's a red flash and a loud explosion, then a few more explosions, and 427 years of a city's pride is turned to dust and swept away by the river below. I'm glad they rebuilt it.
  
      
• Rain! I normally don't dig walking around all day in rain, but it didn't bother me here with my trusty umbrella and rain appropriate shoes. I'd say it actually added a bit of a dreamy effect to the city.
  
   

• Coffee Shop Lady. I should have taken her picture, but I didn't. I took a picture of her coffee, though. She sat down at our table and showed us how to make proper Bosnian coffee, then gave us two extra cookies. Because we were American and Americans love cookies. She told us she couldn't speak any Turkish, but then taught us the Turkish vocab for everything on the table. She hung out with us and treated us like old friends and I didn't really want to leave, but you have to at some point. 

 

• Stairs. Climbing stairs in pretty much any city is almost never disappointing. Here's what we found at the top of one set of Mostar stairs. Mostairs. 

  

  A house growing some trees.

  
  

    

  
  

  

  See-through old buildings and churches

  
  
  

  

  and some Nine Inch Nails

• And finally, graffiti. 
  
  
  
  

Up next: Dubrovnik, Croatia. Mostar and Dubrovnik were my favorite parts of the trip and I wish we could have spent more time in both cities. But that's how I feel about most places.