Frustration

The girls are frustrated with a dad who works at home, despite repeated explanations of what it might be like to have a 9 to 5 dad. Plus, they get a lot more time with their dad reading to them, going on trips with them, and so forth than they give credit for. But I think it's hard for them to see him working and be put off when they want to be with him. So here's a little bit of frustration from Celeste:

Dada in Croatia

In Croatia Dada olmost olnly looks at his copnuter. Boring. Well ilyst I have Mama. As I told you Dada is boring. And his conputer gets on my nrves.

Anyone want to write and tell her how boring it is to have a dad that's never home?

Ruins

By Ruby

Peeking into a tomb

On Thursday we went to Salona, a Roman town!

First we took a bus to an empty parking lot. Coming off of the lot was a road, the road was dirt and about 150 meters long. We walked along the edge of the road until we came to a green field.


On the green field was a basilica. It was made of grey crumbling stone. It smelled like a cave. Everywere around it there were tombs carved out of the same grey stone as the basilica.


In one tomb, I even found a bunch of old bones. And they were human bones!


We went down the hill on the road next to a lot of grassy terraces. The terraces had light green grass and the edges were lined with wild roses. There was only one tree with cool shade under it.


Finaly we got to more ruins, a Cathedral. It was huge with many crumbling roomes (in the city around it?). Me and Celeste played hide and go seak. First I hid in a room full of flowers. Then Celeste hid in a well. In another building (the bath house) there was a way you could get up on a wall.

We decided to see the colosseum next.


The colosseum was a circular field with stone seats all around it. But they were crumbling. Now there are mostly a bunch of fallen-in archways. The walls were made of stone as well. You could walk down a slope and across an archway, well, you could walk over 20 archways if they weren't broken!

This Video Just in from Salona -- more at 11

A trial of video from camera to blog...

Ruby's Sailing Class

A colleague of Rhabyt's who is a member of a sailing club helped us get Ruby into a sailing class for kids. The classes only require a membership fee of $40 a month and she gets her own little boat (an Optimist) to sail, while the teacher goes along next to and behind her in a little motorized dinghy.

Ruby had her first lesson on the water last week and found it scary and confusing, but fun. The teachers kept telling her to do things but she hadn't learned the names of the parts of the boat well enough so it was difficult to follow directions, and she had no experience with how it feels to sail a boat. But she came back saying she wanted to do it some more!

Above is a picture of the sailing school (before Ruby was there), like two bunches of ducklings with their mamas - out in the middle of the Adriatic! Ruby is learning to sail the smaller kind of boat (if you want to see any of the pictures on this blog more clearly, just click on them and you'll see them bigger).

Here's what Ruby says about that first sailing lesson:

"The water was dark blue with a greenish top. The sky tasted misty and yet it was perfekly clear as blue crystil. At first there was no wind, but as time went on it got stronger until it was whisiling past my ears.

I almost capsised 3 times! Every time it happened I felt fear dart through me like a cat. At first I did not understand, but after my teacher explande about the ruder [rudder], then I understood."

The Day

by Celeste

Yesterday me and my mom dropt my sister off at her sailing class and then I went with my mom to the market. And we bought lots of stuff. And I with my 10 Kn [money] bought a chocolate donut.

Here are two pictures Celeste took of herself while trying out the camera (and one of Celeste's foot thanks to Ruby):

Picture Gallery #1

Ruby doesn't feel like writing, even though her parents insisted she write something. So this is what she wrote:

"I feel like I caught a sickness that makes me not write. It makes me feel like there is an egg beater inside of me and I get cranky. My arms and legs feel like they are only socks."

We decided to wait until later, and she could write some captions about pictures. So here they are:

(Actually, I'm going to write the captions for the first two).

Laundry day, with everything hanging out in the sun on the terrace (as seen from our living room).

Walking home from the Riva along the waterfront.

Now for Ruby's travelogue of a trip we took near our house (out of town).
This is an example of Croatian countryside. We went here on a hike.

This is an old hermitage built into the cliff. A hermitage is where a hermit lives. Hermits were people who wanted to live a simple life. So they moved into big holes in the cliffs and built around the outside of the hole. My mom says they did it for religious reasons.

Celeste on a beautiful trail leading into a quiet area.

Aaah! Signs pointing in all directions! These ones point to the hermitages and two tiny limestone churches.

Celeste: outstanding in her field!



There were a gazillion wildflowers!

Standing on a hermit's porch. It was hot, and I smelled wildflowers. They were growing all over the porch.

On the edge of the road, with a long drop down. And WOW! No railing!

I found a FAIRY hermitage!

A close-up of the fairy hermitage.

Celeste says: "We found this written on a cactus. It is plant graffiti. I thought it was a cool idea, but it was mean to the plant. That's what my mom and dad [and Ruby] said."

Ruby again: >EEK! We're being boiled!!! Well, actually, it's just a stone well where we ate lunch.

Celeste says: "Well, the sun was boiling us."

The view! We decided to hike down to this place and look off the edge. We had to follow a trail into the woods and climb up a steep, rocky slope, and we got to a meadow with wildflowers of every color. The view was just amazing!

Here we are in the middle of the wildflowers. We found a big stone pit that we thought was an old lookout's house. There were two of them, one big and one small. I thought the smaller one was way too tiny to be a house.

Celeste says: "It was very rocky and we could see a good view of the ocean and an island. We saw some goats on the way up, so I watched out for goat poop. I tried not to touch the flowers as I jumped from rock to rock. It was just a little game."

Mama loved all the wildflowers there.

We saw a wild asparagus hunter and so we started looking too, and we found a whole handful. They're kind of purply-green and smaller than usual asparagus. We ate it for dinner!

Finally! Cold water on our feet. I felt like my feet were going to be worn down to stubs when I took off my shoes.

After this, we walked to a bus stop and caught a bus back home.

Wow!

Ruby says,

"Thank you all for sending me the nice comments! I really enjoyed reading them. I'm glad you liked the chocolate! I'm going to put a new post up (with lots of pictures) soon, and you can read it when you have time. Love, Ruby"

Celeste couldn't believe how many people wrote into the blog in one day.

Thanks, everyone! Sometimes we feel like our old life was just a dream, and it's so good to hear from you - it helps us feel like you remember us and you are still out there. We look forward to seeing you all when we get home! And Ruby's right, we're working on a new post - quick, before there are too many things to write about.

Comments, Anyone?

Ruby and Celeste are learning to like bread dipped in olive oil with their lunch!

Hi everyone,

We finally realized how hard it is to click and write a comment on this blog, so we decided to change how it is done. Now anyone can comment (you don't have to sign in!). Also, the comments will be sent to us first, so 1) we see it for sure (we missed a bunch before); and 2) we make sure the comments are things people will want to read.

Thanks to people who have written comments! Ruby and Celeste really like hearing from you all, so keep 'em coming!

Love,
Ruby, Celeste, Heather, and Rhabyt

Rainy Days

By Celeste

Rainy Days in Croatia make you slip on the lime stone tilese. espeshily my crocs caus they are warn out so they are round.

P.S My unbrela trns insid out when ther is strong wind.

Going to Trogir & Celeste's Dream

Ruby says:


"We took a bus to Trogir on Sunday morning. When we got there we had a hot chocolat and a pastry. The pastry had a thin piece of bread on the top and bottom, and the inside had whipped cream and vanilla custard. It smelled good.


We sat next to the water, the water was as clear as glass that has been washed. The hot chocolate was warm and chocolaty. It had delicious foam on top of it.


After that we walked across a cool wooden bridge and went into a park. Some people had had a party there. There was trash EVERYWHERE and we picked it all up! Then we walked into the city!



We walked through a lot of twisty turny alley ways untill we came out on the harbor and saw a real galleon! We had lunch (I had [spaghetti] Bolognese). It was delicious. Then we got ice cream (I had Jaffa cake flavor).



We found a palazza [Venetian-style small palace or mansion]. It had a big courtyard with balconies circling it.

We had fun!"

Celeste had a funny dream about her class. Here's what she wrote about it:

"The Dream.

I had a drem. And in my dream Mrs. H. was driving along with the whol class in her car. It was flying by seagulls like in James and the Giant Peach."


Celeste told me that when Mrs. H. parked the car, it hovered above the ground, and Mrs. H. told them to cut the threads that held the seagulls to it, so it would come back down. Mrs. H. got in a taxi (this part is unclear), and the kids all began biting through the threads. After awhile there were only two seagulls attached, and the taxi driver apparently thought this was scary.

We are all fine, but the Jugo (wind from the South) has come, and is blowing all our socks off (so to speak). Some lady from up the hill's underwear blew off her laundry line and into our front yard, but it had a lot of holes in it, and I didn't want to embarrass anyone by going around knocking on doors: "Excuse me, but are these your holey knickers?" Perhaps I'll just throw them into the neighbor's yard and hope they're hers.

Lizards and the Zoo

Celeste says:

"There are many lizzardes in Croatia. They are cool and they have spots doun thar bak and they are green. When they are in a bush you see it rustle."

She is right. Little green-and-brown lizards come out and run around on walls and paths, and in gardens, when the sun comes out. They are everywhere. The other day when I was watering, on a warm dry day, two lizards came carefully out and licked stray water off the wall. I guess they were thirsty!

Ruby says:

"On Sunday we went to Marjan Zoo. Marjan is a big hill that sticks up in the middle of Split. It's covered in trees and park, and there is a zoo there and a cafe where you can sit and drink hot chocolate. It has a beautiful view.


At the zoo, we saw a red fox who was digging in the ground. I told my dad exactly what the fox was doing, and I was right! He was digging up stored food.

There were peacocks and chickens everywere walking on the path, sitting on a fence, and even on a roof! There were white storks clapping there beaks so loud you could hear it across the zoo! (The peacocks squawked loud too).

We also saw a Siberian Tiger! The orange part of the tiger was like a sunset. The tummy was like cream. The black stripes were like night. It was beautiful."

Ruby's dad says the zoo was a little small and old, and some animals, like the bears, were in cages that were too small for them. Ivica (pronounced Iv-eet-sa), Rhabyt's work-friend, says that the zoo is one of the embarrassing parts of the city, because it needs to be modernized. But the peacocks and the chickens, and the location, make it magical anyway!

How to Read Croatian

Okay, kids, now it's time to learn how to sound out words in Croatian!

First, all the vowels only have one sound. That's the easy part.

A = "Ah"
E = short "e"
I = long "e"
O = long "o", but also kind of like an English person saying "Aw"
U = "oo" but not long like in "moon" - more short, like in "toot"

All the consonants sound the same, except:

There is no "Y", "Q", "X", or "W".
J sounds like Y
C always says "ts"
G always sounds hard, like in "goat"
H is said in the throat, like you're getting ready to spit, but softer (like the "ch" in Scottish "loch")
LJ is treated as one letter and sounds like the "lli" in the middle of "million"
NJ is also treated as one letter and sounds just like the Spanish ñ, or the "ni" in "onion"
R is always pronounced like the trilled Spanish R.

Then there are some extra letters:

There are two C's with thingies over them (one looks like a little check-mark and one looks like an accent), and they are both a variation of "ch" (we can't hear the difference). Here they are: Č and Ć. Then there's more:
Š makes a "sh" sound
Ž makes a sound like the "s" in "pleasure"
DŽ says the same thing as the "dg" in "judge"
Đ or đ is the same as the "j" in "jewel"

Also, remember, R's and H's can be their own syllables!

Okay. Ready to start reading some Croatian words?

How about these:

Indijski Čaj (means "Indian Tea")
Čili (a kind of spice)
Jaja (means egg)
Pasta za zube (toothpaste)
Mlijeko (milk)
Suha Smokva (dried fig)
Lavanda (lavender)
Čokolada (chocolate)
Dalmatinski (Dalmatian, as in something from Dalmatia, which is the area we live in)
Nacionalni Specijalitet (national specialty - in food)

That's not so bad, is it? You can do this! Okay, now, the extra credit spelling words:

Hvratska (Croatia)
Trg (square, as in Times Square)
Vrt (garden)
Htjeti (to want)
Razglednica (postcard)
Hrvoje (a boy's name)
...and my personal favorite:
Svježe vrhjne (fresh cream)

But more hard words later. For now, you've graduated from Grade One of Learning to Speak Croatian!