Well, this evening we went to meet some of our neighbors. We had met her in the hallway and so we said…let’s go there. We took our gift of a chocolate bar (you always take a small gift the first time you come to someone’s house in Serbia) and went down.
Her husband answered the door. I had to pull out my cheatsheet, but I managed to say something along the lines of:
Good Evening (Dobro Vece) We are Matt and Cyndi (Mi smo Matt & Cyndi) This is our daughter Lydia (Ovo je nasa cerka Lydia)
They invited us in. We tried to say hi, thank you, etc… After lots of nodding and smiling, we sat down to some orange (I think) marmalade, water, and spoons (you take a spoon of marmalade–VERY GOOD–eat it, then drink the water). We made some pointy talky, found out they had a daughter living in Belgrade who would be in on Saturday (and she teaches English at a university there!). They made some phone calls and had a neighbor come over who speaks some english. We did more pointy talky. Eventually, right as we were getting ready to leave, the neighbor’s son came over. He speaks english very well, and through him, we confirmed what we thought we knew about the daughter, said thanks, and that we needed to leave because it was Lydia’s bed time. Overall, we were there about an hour or so.
Eventually (once google video gets on the ball), I’ll have a video to show you of the man playing with Lydia and singing a tune. It was neat.
In the meantime, we will be going back sometime Saturday to meet with them and their daughter. Pray that we are sensitive to them and their situation. Pray for opportunities to share our witness with them.
[Update 05-14-2008 08:42:04] Google Video finally has the video posted. Here it is:
There are two alphabets in use in Serbia (and that means two different alphabetical orders). One is a latin based alphabet and the other is a cyrillic based alphabet. The mp3 above is in the latin based order.
Well, we have been here in Serbia almost two weeks and wanted to write a short update that would kind of sumarize everything.
We left Dulles 27 April 2008. We had so so so so much stuff. We took up two of the Smarte Carte things they have at the airport. After I figured out how to manuver those through the airport, we were ok. God was watching over us even in a seemingly little thing: they had scales outside of the line! We were able to weigh and twek our bags before waiting in line! We ended up and had some extra weight (about 5 lbs) we could have used had we known. Oh well.
We arrived in Belgrade and were picked up by several teammates. They then took us to Cacak where we moved into our apartment. Cyndi (and I, but mostly Cyndi) began unpacking stuff and figuring out where to put stuff. I did things like take a picture of the sunset.
The next day we started walking around town, registering with the police, etc…. We have noticed many things the same, but many things different than when we were here two years ago. So far, we have settled into a routene where we spend a few hours walking around, come back for Lydia’s nap, eat lunch (around 3pm), then go walk around town for an hour or so more in the evening. We have also tried to meet our neighbors. In this process of going around town and meeting our neighbors I have already committed several cultural blunders. On the other hand, Cyndi was able to carry on a conversation in French Can you believe it…come 1/2 way around the world to Serbia, learn Serbian, and speak in French!?
While walking around town we decided to start a contest of sorts called “Where’s Lydia?” Every week, we’ll post a picture of Lydia and you guess on where she is. You “enter” by posting the correct location to the comment. If there is no winner, we may pick one based on the funniest or most off the wall answer. So, be creative!
Technology has allowed us to keep in touch with many people since we have been here. God has certainly made it easier for people to move around the world and keep in touch with others from “back home.” I know, it isn’t the same as being there in person; however, it is much better than 50 or 100 years ago when things took 3 to 6 months on a ship. If you ever want to call us, visit our vonage page to call us for totally free or simply dial 1.304.521.2416 and ring our phone for just a long distance phone call.
We took an evening and just relaxed at home a few days ago. We decided we were going to have something sweet. We decided to get Plazma Cakes and Eurocrem.
There are usually kids around the front of our apartment building riding (or as they say…driving) rolera (Roller Blades). A few days ago, I took my flash cards, went down, and began practicing my alphabet. They came up and wondered what I was doing. They ended up and were very patient while I went through the cards a few times. Of course, they laughed at me and my bad accent and how I couldn’t tell the difference between a ch and ch sound (honest…they sound the same). Anyway, I asked if I could take their picture.
Cyndi and I decided we would splurge tonight and buy us a sweet treat to have while we watched a bit of TV. We haven’t done either in the past two weeks, so this was a good treat. What did we settle on? Plazma Cakes and Eurocrem . Never heard of ’em? I’m not surprised! These two things are made in Serbia and I don’t know where else you can get them.
How can I describe it? Well, Plazma Cakes are kind of like Lady Fingers while Eurocrem is thins chocolatey vanily fruity stuff. If you want to try some, drop us a note and let us know. We can send some back to the states for anyone to try. Don’t worry…it isn’t like Vegimite. This stuff is good.
If you want a real treat, make Palachenka and fill them with Eurocrem and crushed up Plazma Cakes!
One difference Cyndi and I noted right away when we started walking around Cacak was the presence of all sorts of gambling houses. We didn’t remember seeing them here two years ago. I haven’t talked to anyone about it, but just as in the US people become addicted to gambling, I’m sure the problem is mostly the same anywhere it is present. Pray that people don’t get lured in by the tales of “easy” money.
Remeber the Yugo? if not, go have a look at the wikipedia page. I remember one of the guys in my high school class had one and drove the tar out of it. But, you don’t see them much in the US any more. Well, we see them all over the place here!
Cyndi took Lydia back to the apartment yesterday afternoon while I went and walked around town a bit. Here are some pictures I took while I was out. Hopefully they will let you see a bit of the town.
Everyone (well, not literally everyone, but many people) enjoy Pivo. Pivo is beer. There are adds for it all over the place. You can buy it in kiosks all around town right next to the pop. It is just amazing.
Pivo Add on the street
Pivo “decoration”
The Serbians are Christian (Serbian Orthodox). In town, there is one BIG Orthodox church. Here is a picture of it:
Many of the buildings have grafiti on them. I can’t read much of it (only some is in English). But don’t get the impression that every place in town there is grafiti. Most of the buildings are very nicely painted and clean. In fact, if you are at home in a city in the US, you’ll probably be at home here. Cacak is a strange cross between a big city (it has 100,000 or so people in it) and a small city (everyone knows everyone). Some of the buildings are very modern while some are rather old.
Well, I need to wrap this post up right now. Check back later today or tomorrow. I should have another post written then.
Well, it was finally time to figure out how to use the washer in our apartment. It isn’t that we were stinky (yet) or ran out of clothes (yet), but we didn’t want either of those two things to happen. So, we began by inspecting our washer. It is smaller (way smaller) than our washer in the US. We had a super dooper extra large capacity washer there. By comparison, this washer is about 1/4 the size. So, we figure out what we want to try as our first load, and start investigating the machine. We have to use fabric softner (more on that later) instead of dryer sheets. We also have to figure out how to get the soap in.
It turns out there there is a pull out drawer that you load all of that stuff into (seperate containers) and the machine squirts water into the container and washes out what it wants when. Ooookkkay….that is certainly a change from the US. We measure the softner and put it in the softner place (the bottle said use 1 capful…we think so that is what we try). We open up the soap and can’t find a scoop. It is just a bag so I dig around in it (yep…all the way to the bottom) and never find a scoop. We go get a plastic cup from the kitchen and guess. The load is way way smaller than we would do in the states so we try to guess accordingly (but we don’t want too much because then it will stay in the clothes).
Next, we have to figure out how to tell it what we want. There is only a cold water hookup and a dial you turn to set the water temp. We only used cold water in the US, so this isn’t a big deal…leave the dial set at 0 and hope that it doesn’t try to freeze the clothes and just uses spiggot temperature water. There are two more dials. One has letters that match up with letters in the soap drawer so that should be ok and pictures (that make no sense). By looking in the drawer, it looks like we should choose B. No sweat.
We have no clue what the other dial is for, but it may be a timer of some sort. It is also red. No clue so we skip it.
Next, we have to figure out the three buttons on the front. Push the one on the left…oops it turns on. That must be the power button. Don’t want that yet so we push it real fast. Now, the door won’t open. ARG. We fiddle around and get the door open again and put the clothes in. The other button has a tub picutre and the final button has an e. No clue so we don’t push them either.
After loading the clothes and soap, we start the wash. It spins (a bit) then stops. Then some water squirts in then stops. This repeats itself over and over and over. After many of these things, it starts to sound like a jet engine spinning up. It must be close to the end! Not yet…it rinses the clothes (the same squirt, spin a bit, squirt, spin, etc….) then spins again. We pull them out and hang them up to dry.
We don’t have a dryer (at least we don’t think so, but even if we did, it takes FOR EVER and takes much electricity) so we put them on a drying rack on our balcony (yep, the one with the great view). At least we are on the top floor so people can’t just look and see what kind of underwear the American’s are wearing. I can imagine it now (think of Back to the Future): Your name is Calvin Klien..that is what is printed on your underwear. Therefore, the American’s names must be Haines. Or think of Blast from the Past: I can’t imagine for a minute why Cliff is wearing Ralph Lauren’s underwear. Why are the American’s wearing someone elses underclothes?! But, I imagine if a big gust of wind ever comes along and blows it over, we’ll be all over the building and block. We might as well be prepared for it now.
Anyway, since this first experience, we have tried out different things. We pushed the middle button (with the tub picture) and the e button last night. We woke up to find that the water never drained out of the washer. We won’t do that combo again. Our control dial also has a sun (and 1/2 sun) on it. It looks like when we set the control to that and set the red timer, we do actually have a drier. we are going to try it this evening probably to see what actually happens.
Well, just to update everyone, I think I have committed two blunders already.
The first was when we went to visit our neighbors. They asked what I wanted to drink. I said that I liked the coffee but if it took too long to make I would take something else. They then asked about juice. I had recently learned that apple was juabka (pronounced yabooka). Well, I don’t think they had any; however instead of telling me that, I think they sent their son to the corner store for some apple juice. Next time, I’ll simply say juice is fine.
The next was at the store. I bought some diapers, bananas, and a broom. The total came to 1,502.41 dinars. First off, there is no practical unit of money to subdivide the dinar. Officially there used to be (it was called the para. If you want to go read more, go read the Wikipedia page on the Serbian Dinar). I didn’t have any 500 dinar notes, so I gave the lady 2 1,000 dinar notes (1,000 dinars is about $20 in US dollars). She said something to me. It was late and I wasn’t paying close attention, so I didn’t say anything. She handed me back a 500 dinar bill. While I was walking home, I finally figured out she asked me if I had 2 dinars. She didn’t want to make 498 dinars worth of change and was trying to ask me if I had 2.
