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! :)