BYP Serbia: A Year of Service: My Attempt at Getting Ya'll Caught Up

(Haha, this was written a while ago, so bear with me...this part about the fog is not true NOW, but it WAS incredibly true...) I’ve been walking on clouds all week--well, more like in them. During late fall in Novi Sad, fog inhabits every street for the majority of the day. When I leave my house at 7:30 to catch bus # 4, the fog already interferes with my ability to see much more than a few feet, and in the late afternoon, the fog once again starts rolling in. It’s a beautiful sight, really. Last night I attempted to capture the beauty of the fog that was so thick I could practically hear the fog condensing into droplets of water and splashing onto the sidewalk. The flash was pitifully ineffective...

But I didn’t just write this blog to talk about fog. Believe it or not, Gilberto Vega, I have not given up on this blog. Settling into a different routine and a different environment is a time-consuming ordeal. It entails everything from changing small habits, to completely altering sleeping habits, to restructuring your life. It’s a little difficult, what with some weeks being better than others, but, overall, the pleasures that I obtain make everything more than worth it.

Some people have shown an interest in knowing my daily schedule, and, as always, I’ll take that a step further and walk you through my week!

My established weekly schedule (for now) is as follows:

Monday:

8:15-10:30 Serbian language class!

12:00-4:00 Work at my NGO NSHC (Novosadski Humanitarni Centar)

After, I return home and maybe go back to the city center to hang out with my Princeton friends or my Serbian friends! Also, homework...and if I stay at home, sometimes I play games with my host family! My host sister, Mima, loves playing Dutch Blitz and Rummikub, both of which I brought from the States!

Tuesday:

8:15-10:30 Serbian language class!

12:00-4:00 Work at my NGO NSHC (Novosadski Humanitarni Centar)

5:00-6:00 Piano lesson at the nearby school of music. My piano teacher is named Dina and she’s AMAZING. Sadly, I mostly only get to practice piano at my lessons. :(

6:00-8:00 I grab a bite eat in the city center and go to American corner to prepare for the English conversation classes lead by the five of us, or a lovely combination thereof: Tucker, Dominique, Charlotte, Jacob and I, or a combination thereof. We play madlibs, the dictionary game, rhyming games, and initiate discussions and debates around a myriad of topics.

8:00 Hang out with friends from American corner at a café in the center, or go home to do homework, or домаћи.

Wednesday:

No class. Instead, the five of our meet at Ceca’s house at 9:00 am to discuss our week, work on our group and/or individual updates for the Princeton blog, participate in group and individual reflections, discuss upcoming excursions or reflect on a past one, and fill out Dora (we do a group reflection in a book using drawing and diagrams to record the week’s highlights. Always mentioned are Jacob’s heart (hahaha) and a list of the new Serbian friends that we made that week). We always end with a group picture:

Such as:

Sometimes, we get a little distracted....

But we ALWAYS get our work done...

12:00-4:00 Work at my NGO NSHC (Novosadski Humanitarni Centar)

5:45-9:30 Youth group at the local Baptist church. The first time I was able to watch the worship team practice and then the youth group begins, with lively music and a teaching. Oftentimes I recognize some of the Serbian praise and worship songs, such as: Blessed be the Name, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, and Forever. I sing in English if I know the song, and attempt to sing in Serbian (fail...). I manage to understand the teaching if somebody knows enough English to translate for me! I've hung out with my youth group friends outside of class a few times, and I've had an incredible time!

Jammin' out!

My youth group friends...we're a little crazy?

My youth group friends...we're normal?

Thursday:

8:15-9:45 Serbian language class!

My University: Univerzitet u Novom Sadu

12:00-4:00 Work at my NGO NSHC (Novosadski Humanitarni Centar)

Chill at home with my wonderful host family or in the city center. Thursday night is Pljeskavica night: these delicious HUGE hamburgers that my host family makes on the grill in the balcony. I’ll find a picture somewhere...

Delicious!

Friday:

8:15-9:45 Serbian language class!

12:00-4:00 Work at my NGO NSHC (Novosadski Humanitarni Centar)

Go home after work and spend time with my wonderful host fam...then leave at 10:00 for the center to meet up with friends for a good night in the city’s infamous street Laze Telechkog or some other café/pub. I drink ne gazirana voda, or just plain water; If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I might order sok od jabuke but I have a great time with my friends anyway! :)

A night out with my girlfriends!

Saturday:

12:00-2:00 I lead various workshops at a school in the outskirts of Novi Sad that NSHC runs with the purpose of supplementing the education of Roma kids and kids belonging to other marginalized groups. I teach both English and creative workshops. The last Saturday in October, in celebration of Halloween, the younger kids decorated oranges (alas, no pumpkins) and simple masks:

My creative workshop!

The older kids made paper pumpkins. Charlotte wanted to join me on Saturday and so she helped out. We gave the children candy that I had purchased before going to the school, and Charlotte gave them candy from the U.S.: peeps and candy corn! All, in all, a great afternoon!

In the afternoon, I meet up with friends and we hang out, shop, cook...

Sunday:

10:00-12:00 Church at a Baptist church near my house...just one block away! Sometimes they sing hymns and sometimes more lively worship music. I do the best that I can...Good thing they have someone translating the sermon into English through these funky and cool-looking headsets. I’m not only only American attending the church. A met another American girl, close to my age, who is in Novi Sad through a Christian Service Organization!

After church, I try to hang out with my Christian friends, Princeton friends, or Serbian friends (or a combination thereof).

In the late evening, I try to skype with my wonderful family back home. It’s hard because of the time change, but totally worth it to see their smiling faces and their sweet voices.

Non-profit work is a whole different ball-field from the dependable field of academics. The most you can do is do your best, be flexible and open-minded, and accept challenges as they come. At my service organization, I am currently working on two major projects: 1) the Spanish class for volunteers that I am teaching twice a week. It is good that I get to practice my Spanish and I enjoy preparing the classes. The volunteers are eager to learn another language and very receptive to whatever I teach them! 2) The English and creative workshops for the school on Saturdays. It is fun to prepare the workshops. Last week, my weird supervisor ;) (just kidding, he’s pretty awesome) Dejan (my former boss) went to a store with me and we bought a ton of creative supplies for my workshops. I normally teach two workshops each Saturday--one for the older kids and one for the younger ones. Some smaller projects that I have worked on include the campaign for raising the awareness of mental health that my NGO is running, and editing English reports that some of my coworkers have to send to the philanthropists that fund their projects. Apparently, I am also in charge of making sure that nobody in the office goes hungry...a job which I gladly take on! Some time ago I made funnel cakes for the entire office. Needles to say, I smelled like food for the rest of the day, but, other than that, it was a very enjoyable experience!

Part of the Bridge Year Program includes several excursions that we take as a group--some are meant as a short break from our every-day lives, while others are meant to improve our understanding of the political and social problems in the Balkans. Our four-day October excursion to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was just that. Although we had our fair degree of fun (see below...) the trip opened our eyes to the damaging effects that war has left in the region, and to ethnic tensions that run deeply in some regions of the Balkans. A professor from the University Sarajevo told us about the ethnic and religious tensions throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. In fact, this fairly small country is a large melting pot of ethnicities and religions: Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, Turks, and those who refer to themselves as Bosniacs. The ethnic tensions are highlighted even more by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-96), especially the Siege of Sarajevo. Serb forces blockaded Sarajevo for almost four years, bombarding important buildings, targeting innocent civilians through snipers located in the mountainside, and prohibiting the import/export of goods. In order to survive, a tunnel was built that under the Sarajevo airport (controlled by NATO) through which thousands in Sarajevo received enough food and other supplies from the outsideto survive. We visited this Tunnel, which is now a museum near the outskirts of Sarajevo. It’s amazing that a Tunnel that small was able to make such a difference in the lives of the Bosnians. To this day, there is still tension between Serbs and Bosnians, and a lot this is due to the recent war between them and the lose of nearly 10,000 lives at the hands of the Serbs.

We also had the opportunity to visit an NGO that works with training people to be peacemakers in their towns and work to solve problems in society that are a direct result of the Bosnian war. After attending all of our lectures, we had the rest of the day on Saturday to ourselves. Shopping in Sarajevo was an amazing experience! The Bazaar was especially incredible. The Turkish and Hungarian scarves and jewelry were exceptionally cool to look at! The center of Sarajevo (the pedestrian zone) is a mixture of many different cultures, two of the more pronounced being the Turkish and Hungarian cultures. Then, in the evening, we met up with a friend of mine from the States, Sanda Hinjalic. She was an exchange student at J.P. McCaskey for a year, and it was great catching up with her! What are the odds of my having a friend in Sarajevo? Apparently, they’re pretty good!

A Sarajevan street shop.

Self explanatory...just, you know, the place that started WWI...

Me posing as Gavrilo Princip...it's super cool, I know.

Delicious ćevapčići, a Bosnian typical dish!

Beautiful view of downtown Sarajevo.

This is us with Sanda in Sarajevo....she's an amazing person!

They say that if you drink from this fountain, you will return to Sarajevo!

Life is good. Life is great, actually. Sometimes, I catch myself thinking: Yentli, what are you doing? How in the world did you end up in Serbia instead of college? This program has, so far, been an amazing experience. I’m reveling in the new friendships that I’m forging, the new experiences that I’m being exposed to, and the opportunity that I have to grow in this new, phenomenal world.