Lydia turned 12 on October 7th while Ellie Beth turned 10 on October 11th.  We wanted to do something special for the girls for their first birthday in Croatia.  Since the three families we invited could not all come on the same day we divided the celebrations up.  On Lydia’s birthday we invited the McCollum’s to Bundek, a great Zagreb park with a huge climbing structure.  It is definitely getting cooler here so we did not think the park would be that busy.  Boy, were we wrong.  We failed to take into account that Lydia’s birthday was the day before Croatia’s Independence Day.  Bundek was crowded with people, dogs and tanks.  Even finding a parking spot was difficult.  In the end, the McCollum’s invited us to their house – which is much bigger than our apartment – and we spent the rest of the day with them.  We made cinnamon streusel coffee cake for our birthday cake as Betty Crocker cake mixes are not available here!

The next day we took off for a day trip to Austria.  The girls wanted to have lunch at Burger King and get a present at the mall in Gratz.  Although everything in Croatia was closed for the holiday, there was not a holiday in Austria.  Hmmm… let’s think about this some more… We realized we might be in for a longer trip than we had first thought when we got to the first border crossing!  We eventually entered Slovenia, only to encounter road construction on the only road connecting Zagreb with Gratz, Austria.  About four hours later we arrived in Gratz and pulled into Burger King for lunch.  This is the closest Burger King to us and our first BK meal in about a year.  It was yummy!  We went to two different malls and a Toys R Us store – it was almost like being in America except that everything was in German.  We spent the rest of the day exploring and had dinner at Burger King again, then headed home – along with all the other Croatian travelers.  It took us about six hours to get home –we spent two hours in start and stop traffic at the border crossing back into Croatia.  Next time, we won’t go on a holiday!

This past Wednesday we had the Meeker and Wursburg families over for our last birthday celebration.  It was fun to hang out, play Game cube, visit and eat the pavlova that Lydia made and gooey brownies. Although we missed our family birthday get together and the girls missed their friends, we had a great time and learned a lot about what to do and not to do for next year!

You know the routine.  You get an envelope in the mail addressed to you.  It’s from the electric or the gas or the garbage company.  You know it’s a bill so you get out your checkbook, write a check and mail it back in the self addressed envelope.

It is not quite that simple in Croatia. We do get our bills in the mail.  However none of them are addressed to us – they all have our landlords’ name on them – and weren’t you taught not to open other people’s mail?  We were only late on one bill before we learned that we do need to open all envelopes addressed to our landlords that come to our address! 

We get the normal bills that we got back in Minnesota- rent, water, garbage, gas, phone and internet service, and electricity. In addition to those, we have a monthly bill for the cleaning and upkeep of the apartment building and one we haven’t quite figured out yet.  They don’t use checks in Croatia.  So we can’t just send our payment in.  Most Croatians pay their bills through the post office.  When we have bills to pay, we walk, drive or take the tram to a post office, stand in line at the “isplata” counter and wait our turn to hand over the bills (računi) and the money in kuna. There is a small fee on most bills for this service. Today I went to the nearest post office to pay our bills and mail a letter.  When I got there, I counted twenty three people in front of me, all with bills in hand.  The line for mailing the letter was minuscule.  I decided to pay bills first before the line got longer.  About thirty minutes later, the bills were paid but by then the line for mailing letters was long.  Sigh…  I decided to come back another day!

Our favorite bill to pay is our rent.  When our rent is due, we drive to our landlords’ house and spend about an hour, drinking juice, eating wonderful desserts, laughing with them at our stumbling Croatian and getting to know them before handing over the rent- in euros not kuna.  What a delightful way to pay bills!

Everyone at camp

At first, when mom and dad talked to me about going to Croatian camp at Severin I thought it would be okay but when I actually got there, I did not want to stay!!  I felt nervous because I only knew three people, Debi , Tea and Petra.  It was all in Croatian.  Only a few of the girls spoke some English.  I was glad that my room counselor, Beka, spoke English really well. She is also an MK and her dad is Croatian and her mom is from England. 

At camp I played ping pong and volleyball, did archery, climbed on the rock climbing wall and tried to go swimming but the water was freezing!  My favorite sport was archery.  I had a Bible group and Beka was my leader.  She translated the Bible verses for me and told me what to do.  I learned a Croatian song and met some girls.  The food was great.

I wrote this story a while ago, but I will put it on the web now.

On je Daniel. Ona je Bonnie. On je njezin muž, i ona je njegova žena. Lydia je njihova kći. Elisabeth je njihova kći. Lydia i Elisabeth su sestre. Daniel je njihov tata, i Bonnie je njihova mama. Daniel i Bonnie su roditelji. Lydia i Elisabeth su djevojćice. Oni su obitelj

Whew! Click read more to get the translation.