I am having a hard time believing that I've been here for 5 weeks already, since it feels like my plane touched down about five days ago. But time flies when you're having fun, and I've been enjoying every second here.
It helps that I've started to make some friends here. Along with Georgina and Gregory from my class I can now add Ines to my list of friends here. Ines is from Spain and works remotely so a few weeks ago she packed up and moved to Serbia because why not. She certainly has an adventurous spirit and it was because of her I got invited to a Halloween party! Ines, her friend Katia (who is from Mexico, will attend school in Germany next semester, but is here now to get the COVID vaccine), and I went to a costume party. It was SUPER fun to make my costume. It took me a while to get all the pieces together and I love any chance to go to my local craft store (which is only a block away from my apartment!). Katia and Ines went as Velma and Daphne from Scooby Doo and I went as a Ladybug! I unfortunately don't have a picture of all three of us, but below is a good one of Ines and I (plus a lot of my costume! the antennae are my mom's handiwork!)
Now I will say, that it's exhausting to make new friends. Putting myself out there again and again really makes me appreciate my friends back home. Luckily I have lots of fun activities at home for when I need a break from small talk and get to know you games. Aside from Netflix and my Kindle full of books (Currently reading All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slater!) my cross stitching has taken off, my current project being a Ninetails from pokemon, as pictured below. I also have been trying my HAT at embroidery. That pun will make sense in about two seconds because my first embroidery project is on a baseball cap! I'm trying to stitch the pokemon logo on it, but unfortunately had to take out all my progress and start again, so not much to show you on that front.
I've blown through Pokemon on my Nintendo Switch, which is probably why my crafting has reflected it so much. In addition to my homework I also have a copy of Calvin and Hobbes, the Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat collection of comic strips in Serbian. We have this book at home and I've read that so the translation is fun and familiar.
Plus, when my mom was here for a week we did a ton of crossword puzzles together. Speaking of which! Mom visiting was so much fun! We did touristy things like seeing the St. Sava church and visiting the old fortress, but mostly we did local stuff like buying a microwave, and taking a bus to Ikea, shopping at the farmer's market and trying new restaurants on my street.
We explored the district of Zemun, which is across the river of Old Belgrade (where I live). It had the most adorable river boat cafes called a Splav. There are more splavs in the spring time, so I'm planning to back in a few months and check them out some more! But there's really nothing better than a little bit of family after a long time being alone. Mom's visit was exactly what I needed and I'm so excited for my dad to come out at the end of November.
Classes are really good, they're probably my favorite part about being here. I'm finally getting a hang of the Cyrillic alphabet and the grammar is pretty forgiving in the Serbian language, which helps a lot. What is tough for me is that nouns, adjectives, and pronouns will have different endings depending on case, number, and gender. So like the word "my" can be written/pronounced as "Moj" "Moja" or "Moje" depending on the word that follows it. And if there's an adjective added it also has to match up. For example in Serbian, brother is "brat", and I would say "Moj lep brat" to say "my nice brother".But sister is "sestra" and thus a feminine noun, so to say the same thing I'd have to say "MojA lepA sestra" about Lil! It definitely keeps me on my toes!!
The last noteworthy addition to this post is that I now carry cat treats in my purse because there are so many kitties here in the city, and I always wanna have something to give them!
Its almost Splav season!!!!