13

There was a tram accident downtown today (no, we weren't anywhere near it, just saw it on TV). Tram #13 jumped out of the track at 13:13, and there are 13 injured people. How strange is that?

Catch up time

A Mongolian, Turk, Croatian, American and Australian walk into a bar... No, it's not a beginning of a joke even though it sounds like it should be. :) On Friday night Chris and I went out to a club, a rare ocassion these days, indeed. We went with some of Chris' Croatian school classmates, thus the strange line up of folks from all over the world. That was really amusing. Everyone spoke English in addition to their native languages (unless English was their native language of course). We had a really good time and came home at the unusually late hour of 5:00am. The wake up time is 6:00am (or a little later on good mornings) which is when Ivor gets up every morning, but still, it was worth it. Chris got the kids that morning so I slept till noon and than we swapped so he slept till late afternoon. It took us some time to recover.

I can see that my blog has been suffering lately and it's not for the lack of things to write about. I've simply not felt like it. Life has been very busy lately and I've not had the energy to include blogging on my list of "to dos."

I am glad to announce that Chris has been employed for over a month now. He started working as a Systems Integrator April 7th at a company named Ericsson Nikola Tesla. He searched for work for about 6 weeks, which I admit, is significantly less than the average here. It all went pretty smoothly.

Every morning now I turn into a soccer mom and shuttle everyone around town. I drop Chris off at work and kids at daycare. Then I head home and do some work myself. In the afternoon I pick the kids back up and we then we cook dinner, clean, talk, do baths and bedtime. After kids are asleep, I go back to work until my bedtime. Chris goes from work to his evening Croatian classes; 2.5 hours every day, 5 days a week. He makes it home by 10:15pm every night (takes public transportation to get home) and then we start all over the next morning. The schedule's been working out but it does leave us both quite tired. This will persist until mid June when his school semester ends. He decided to go at least another one to two semesters so he can keep working on his Croatian which means we'll have a busy year coming up.

In the Fall there will be another student in the family, in addition to Chris. Ivor is enrolling in the Croatian school system. Well, sort of. He'll get to enjoy the better parts of the system as he's attending a small private school downtown Zagreb. That means tiny classes, a lot of personal attention and more time spent working on practical assignments and less time just sitting down and staring at the blackboard. So far, he's very excited. I am not sure how long that excitement will persist though once homework materializes. He's been attending prep classes for a couple of hours every day for a month already, culminating with last week when he had real classes and regular school days so he can get a feel for what to expect when school actually starts. He did well (says he), but wasn't up for sharing too many details on what they did. His typicall response: "Oh, the usual" as if he's been going to class for years. He said that there are three other kids in class learning Croatian so he won't have to feel left out. He mentioned that they spoke German. This is in addition to German, Italian and English speak children that he spends time with at daycare. If you were to ask Mia what foreign languages she's learning at daycare, she'll tell you that she's learning German and Croatian. :) They actually have German and English classes a couple of times a week. In addition to that Ivor has been taking Tae-kwon-do couple of times a week. We're going to find out what he's learned soon at a recital that he's getting ready for, so let's see if it's been time (and money) well spent. He's very excited about it, of course.

We celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary 5 weeks ago. It turned out into a really nice evening away from home. We got to go out and spend some time together. Had dinner at a terrific restaurant. Went out for our favorite desert and watched a romantic movie. About three weeks after that, we all went to visit some of my relatives. Conversation turned to many things including, what else, but food. It turns out that my cousing works as a pastry chef at the place that sells our favorite local dessert. Even better, it turns out that she made those. What are the chances? :)

As usual, we've been chasing paperwork, a standard Croatian love-beuraucracy-or-perish thing. Last week, Chris got his residency permit for another year. The process went smoothly this time (unlike last year) but was still tedious. We had to collect a ton of paperwork, do document translations (where applicable), wait in line (long waits, multiple times) to turn it all in, do another interview at a local police station then go back to get the stamp in the passport. Now that is done so we need not worry about it; for a while anyway. For his job Chris had to do a number of things as well including getting official paperwork and tax documents (I don't even have those yet). He even had to have a medical exam, a standard employment procedure here. Even Ivor had his share of things to get done in the last few weeks including a full physical and a dentist visit so we can get his stuff in order before he can be enrolled in school. We still have a sizeable list of things to get done but hopefully, slowly, we can start crossing them off the list.

Mia's fourth birthday party is behind us as well. She had a princess cake and got lots of great presents. We planned an outdoor event but fickle Spring weather (lots of rain this year) messed it up for us so we ended up celebrating at home. It turned out great and we still had a fun birthday. Now it's time to start planning Ivor's party. He can't hide his excitement. Let's see how it goes.