Finished work on Brac, on to "break time" then more work!!

My last week and a half in Croatia has been a whirlwind. Phenomenal to say the least.
Found myself in Pucisca, on the island of Brac for ten days. I wrote earlier that we were attending a stone carving school…it was the experience of a lifetime!!!
My days in a nutshell: Breakfast consisting of very strong espresso, cheeses, bread and amazing Greek yogurt. By 8 am---pounding all my frustrations out on a 1’x1’ chunk of limestone. We use every tool imaginable… my grey pants turned white, limestone was constantly in my eyes (no, not healthy). By noon---a swimming break! Run to the hotel, put a bathing suit on, run downstairs and jump in the water until lunch. After lunch---we go to a local coffee shop or church and draw, measure, draw, and draw some more. (cut up hands and swollen and bruised knuckles of course ☺ ) By afternoon---we drive in a truck up the hill to the local stone master’s home. He is probably around 70, and he almost cried when he took us up there.
Here’s his story: His parents lived up in the hills at what they call a “secondary settlement”. It was used as a safehaven during the Civil War, but also as protection during WWII because apparently the Italians would ravage and burn the islands. Stone construction was the only thing that spared his family. He hasn’t lived up in this country home since his parents passed away, but has kept the land in the family and they grow olives and make wine and olive oil.
Our job: To learn dry stone masonry from him and fix a wall so that his farm would be functional and protected again. We finished in exactly 3.5 HOURS!! ☺
Because we finished early: HE GAVE US THE TREAT OF A LIFETIME. We had a farm “cookout” at his house. His whole family came to roast a lamb, and serve us a 6 course meal that took 4 hours to finish.
Best part was the company we had!!! A Catholic Croatian priest,
After finishing his wall, we all felt quite prepared for our next few weeks on Drvenik Veli, where we will be doing field work on our own….not really anyone to look to for direction except our professor who is also learning the ropes!
A few more days in Pucisca meant field trips, more knowledge, and FINISHING MY STONE CARVING. I succeeded in making flat and textured surfaces on all four sides of my block. Then I did two profile edges…kind of hard to explain, but let’s just say this:
As a fan of ancient architecture and handcrafted materials…I have a NEWFOUND APPRECIATION for the sweat, pain and toil put into EVERY sculpted stone ANYTHING.

AFTER TEN DAYS: SCHOOL FINISHED! For the next four days, Liz and I had a “vacation”. All to ourselves, no responsibility, no sore muscles at the end of the day…
What to do with ourselves? I’ll tell you ☺
To save money: we stayed within the country. Bonus=Croatia is amazing and I don’t know why I would leave anyways.
We took a 4 hour bus ride to Dubrovnik, southern most part of Croatia. Went through Bosnia for a bit, that was interesting and the food was mmmm, to be honest, exactly the same. ☺
In Dubrovnik we stayed at this adorable guesthouse with a cute family…we walked half an hour into old city, where we definitely admired the architecture…but also were desperate to find something fun to do.
Our first day of vacation: TOOK A CRUISE. A $40 all day cruise…it was MORE than worth it. Included a gourmet grilled fish meal which most Americans would pay $50 for…and all you can drink anythings, including the best wine in Croatia. I’m not much of a wine fanatic, but I do know that when I watched the Croatians mixing the wine with water I FOUND OUT WHY. It is SOOOO RICH and dark here, you don’t drink anything straight. Wine is cheaper than water…so you never drink straight water. (Unless your Sonia!! ☺ )
The cruise was just what we needed…amazing food, stopped at 3 protected islands that were GORGEOUS…
Next day is when the fun began!
We were trying to catch a ferry to Korcula, an island where our next hostel reservation was. Everyone we talked to said there was no big ferry that went there, only small ones. We showed up early in the morning with our 30lb backpacks and waited, waited, and waited for someone to show up. Boats came and left, no ticket man came, we finally found out that the HUGE cruise liner sitting right in front of us was leaving in ten minutes…to where we needed to go. ADVENTURES! ☺
Finally on Korcula, Liz and I both instantly fell in love with the island. It’s the perfect mix of everything we have experienced so far: amazing, historical architecture, less tourists, cheap, and GORGEOUS.
Our apartment is up a TINY staircase down the street from Marco Polo’s house!! We went on a tour of Marco’s house….let me just say, that man knew how to choose a view!
This brings us to the end of my “vacation” and back to school. We have one more day here to enjoy Korcula…I already want to come back someday!
BACK TO SCHOOL/REALITY: We leave for Drvenik Veli: Population 120.
Population age and occupation: 40+, 99% of which are fisherman. (ok maybe a bit of an exaggeration…but I don’t think so!)
We will do field work (meaning, FIX THINGS), recordation of a ten home village…and try to find a focus for our cumulating project. I hope to focus on rain water entrapment and the landscape and topography…but we will see what there is to discover!!!
This trip has been amazing for discovery!!

Blood, sweat, and tears...but it's all worth it in the end. :)

As I said, this week we are attending the only stone carving school in the country, learning the skills of the original stone masons. It's awesome to learn from them...but extremely painful! between blisters, cuts, sweating constantly, and chips of limestone flying, we all have had our moments.

But yesterday made it all worthwhile. We are now starting to build a dry masonry wall for an old stone mason...he's kind of too old to do it himself. ;)
We drive out to his olive tree farm...and hike out to one of his farm walls that has fallen down. With his Croatian guidance (thanks to a translator) we are able to move slowly along!
It's so FUN and it's such a blessing to be able to serve the locals. He said it will keep people from coming and taking his olives that he makes into olive oil!! WHICH I WANT TO BUY!! ;)

Other than that, we walk and draw during our free time, try to figure out how the work here is going to relate to our work on Drvenik Veli...which is unclear at the time. So I will update as that comes up!! :D

alright so!! :) a little frustrated cuz I just typed a whole blog and it didn't work. :( for some reason, everything is in Croatian. ;)
Long story short: I LOVE this program. :) it's hands on, and is getting my excited about what I am passionate about in ways that school in the US never did. I appreciate handmade stuff so much more now! those romans sure knew what they were doing ;) haha.
but really..this place is wonderful.

Last week: spent 4 days in Trogir, a small island town on an old castle. it's crazy amazing. First freak out moment was realizing that we were going to be in hostels, sharing a room with the six guys and girls from UO. Was a little weirded out by that at first, but it took just a few minutes to realize that I couldn't feel safer and that hostels really CAN be a positive experience. Ours was amazing, and met some great people too, sitting outside on the balcony late at night since class hadn't started yet. :)
In Trogir we met the local officials that we would be working with. Jasna, a woman not much older than us students, is the local preservationist for her entire region and has WAY too much expected of her but is never given any help from the government. So that is why we are here! :)
What was really sad was to hear various presentations about the political and international VERY DETAILED framework of preservation. the people of this country dont WANT their buildings preserved! Yes they see the value in them, but they don't want to pay the money or offer the time to help. it is truly sad. Jasna will fight and fight and fight with the locals about the need to leave their old villages alone and not destroy them with modern technology...but no one listens.

We went on various tours of palaces and cities, it was quite the whirlwind involving drawing talking and LEARNING! :)
We also had SOMEEEE fun i guess. :P we went to Krka National Park, which definitely is worth it...it's the Plitvice Lakes of Croatia if you look it up online. :) It was amazing to see those waterfalls.

But needless to say, by the end of our time in the cities, we were all ITCHING to get onto the small islands where we would be working.
In Pucisca, on Brac, we had no idea what to expect and I am still in awe.

We are attending a stone carving school for ten days, where the last mastercraftsman of the country are. There's nothing else like it in eastern europe!
We live next door in a hotel, with 30 mine engineering students from Zagreb who are brilliant and we love bouncing ideas off eachother.
I met one guy who really made me think, with all of our talks about America...I realized that these people know all about us...not always in a bad way, but they understand our country and yet we are totally oblivious to them...?
His name was Mario, and it was quite interesting to hear his story he is Italian...born and raised in Bosnia but with the war they had to run to Germany and then Switzerland. They finally moved to Croatia when the government stopped looking for his dad.

SCHOOL: we go to the stone masonry school at 8 am, and until 1 pm we are dripping with sweat in a studio with no airconditioning or fans...but rather, wide open south facing windows so that tourists walking along the water can stare in at our pain and torture. :)
OUR PROJECT: We are each given a huge chunk of 5 million yr old limestone that we are to carve down into a square or rectangle. harder than you may think. Our instructor doesn't speak english so the monkey talk is quite entertaining...but this man is like a machine and we all stare in amazement when he comes over to help us and stone chunks go flying. It's day two, and we are living on ibuprofren, lots of water, have multiple blisters bruises and cuts...blood smears on the stone add character. :)


MORE TO COME WHEN WE FINISH! :)