Rijeka, Croatia

August 18-20
Church
Boys' hair cuts
Cliff jumping at beach

August 18, 2018

Traveled to Rijeka. We didn't know it at the time, but our border crossing into Croatia (not part of the Schengen Zone) was unbelievably fast. We learned since that border crossings usually take hours - 4 if we're lucky! Croatia is green and has big, beautiful mountains. We've loved watching the scenery.

Our accommodations: This is a great apartment. Nothing fancy, but it has strong wifi, more than one garbage can and, most importantly, it was clean. This place had AC which was so appreciated since it was in the high 90s while we were there. The guy who rents it out (it was his parents and they died so they renovated it and now rent it out) lives across the hallway and was very nice. I love staying in places that are pleasant!

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Church started at 10am and was only 8 minutes away, which was great. The speakers - all missionaries - translated their own talks into English at the pulpit! I guess they usually only have about 6-8 members who come, but this week there were about 15 people with visitors and investigators. The senior missionary is the branch president and speaks very little of the language. The branch president before him (as of last week), was an elder who is going home the end of August.
They only have a 2 hour meeting. Sacrament meeting blew by. Croatian is very similar to Russian; not similar enough that I can understand a lot, but similar enough that I understood some nouns, prepositions and some phrases. That was cool. They missionaries did a special musical number. One elder played the piano and the other elder sang. He had an incredible voice!!
They don't have primary, but the sister senior missionary showed the kids some videos and had them color. The church also has a game room (cultural hall, kind of) with foose ball and ping pong. The kids played in there while primary was being set up. They said it was the "funnest" primary ever! Dan and I sat through a Sunday school lesson on sacrifice that was translated by a sister missionary for all the English speakers.
Every Sunday, they have a lunch afterwards and invite everyone to stay. The senior elder missionary made a delicious gnocchi soup, the elders a pasta salad and the sisters some real chocolate-chip cookies. It was fun to talk with the missionaries (all American) and hear their stories. The senior missionaries were especially inspiring. It makes me think of my parents - I hope they do OK! We stayed at the church for 4 hours! There was another family visiting from Germany. The wife got her masters in Language Acquisition. It was fascinating to talk with her because of her knowledge. She told me about the Waldorf learning style which is very hands on, like traveling around and learning about places. She assured me our kids are learning tons.:)
We returned home, visited the first torpedo factory, listed as a park, which was actually a scary shell of a building people use to visit the beach. We had some delicious pasta with veggies, thanks to Dan and played Phase 10 that night. Great Sabbath day!

Monday, August 20, 2018
Dan took the boys to get their hair cut this morning. They tried three barber shops before finding one that could do it that day and with only a 30 minute wait. They look Croatian. I don't know how that is, but they definitely do. I saw the exact haircut on a few people today.



After haircuts, we went swimming at the beach. The water wasn't too cold and they had a small cliff (10 feet?) to jump off of. The downside to cliff jumping into ocean water is the salt water in your nose! It was a beautiful, albeit a small and rocky beach with no sand. It was packed! It was hard to find an open spot. All women wear bikinis - there's no code about being young or skinny to wear one which I found interesting. The kids loved seeing little fish in the water.
Then we traveled to... Jezerce.(3 hours)