Nadia and Alejandra Thursday evening did a midnight run to Tempo, the big supermarket here in Belgrade. They decorated the house, buying plants, rugs, etc, and they also rearranged the furniture. What a difference! The girls were getting the house ready for the arrival of my father-in-law, and Alejandra’s boyfriend. It is good to have a full house of family for the holidays. Pictured above is the living room, with Sebey, Owen, and Oliver playing with their bionicles, a present from Uncle Jack.
We wrapped up school yesterday with high school’s last exam and the middle school Christmas party. It was also the big slava of Saint Nicholas. It is cool and rainy this morning as I write this. A bit disappointing as we are all hoping for snow! This morning we are going to the police station to register our guests, as all people visiting Serbia in private homes have to do.
Yesterday afternoon we attended Oliver’s Early Years Christmas program. It was held in the afternoon for the Early Years (Age 3) and Pre-Kindergarten (Age 4) classes. Oliver did a great job demonstrating dancing, singing (Yellow Submarine), and acting. He also got a chance to talk to Santa Claus (above). He told Santa that he “was going to Serbia” for the Christmas holidays.
I’ll be uploading video this evening when I get a chance.
Wow, I can’t believe he is six years old! With the new haircut he got yesterday (along with Sebey and Oliver), he looks so much like a boy. We had a nice family day yesterday. The girls went shopping in the morning and bought some Serbian sweaters “All the Swedish moms love them.” while I was home with the kids. We then went and got their hair cut and then to the Delta City Mall to buy a Wii for his birthday.
Messages to Owen from family:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Big Guy!!
I hope you have a nice day and that you
enjoy your company. We hope to see in the
new year.
Love, Grandpa & Grandma
Happy Birthday Owen!!!!!!
Just sending you a big Birthday wish from all of us. Six years old already—-where does the time go. We hope you did something very special on your Birthday. I hope you get to see this and it is not too late over there. Tony and I just got back from the movies. The hospital had a children’s Christmas party and they got to see a movie, get popcorn and a pop for free. We saw Madagascar 2. That is a cute movieyuyuy8y8u888uyy9y89y8yy9y8y88888u(Thats from Tony)
Tony is having so much fun in hockey. He is using a stick now. I will have to send you some video. All is well here. Just waiting for Andy to get home on the 20th.
Owen have a great day buddy—-we love and miss you! Hope Santa is good to everyone.
Owen is shown dancing in his christmas musical at the school. Thursday the kinders and grade 1 students put on “December Nights”. Owen had an acting role as the Chief Mate and along with a first grade student, they were narrators for the program. The elementary music teacher compared Owen to a young Robert Redford! I would tend to agree, of course. He memorized a lot of lines and was a cool customer in a packed house of expectant parents. Congratulations Owen!!!! You did a wonderful job!
The musical was very good. The stage was a yellow submarine (Owen sang “yellow sumbarine”) and the children were dressed as pirates. Kinder and Grade 1 have around 60 kids so it was a challenge to get them all on stage and a starring role. The school is really lacking a proper auditorium! The parents and kids were quite crowded. Lower School events feel so crowded, such as the Halloween night. They definitely need more room. I uploaded several photos and am in the process of putting up video of the performance. Please check them out in my flickr.com account. Oliver’s performance is next week. He got an early start by running up on stage in the classic elementary school Christmas show style, when the little brother or sister storms the stage! I was preparing my camera and a girl next to me pokes me on the knee and I look up to see Oliver trying to grab the microphone from his brother. Hilarious!I ran up and got him off the stage.
We have our Christmas tree up. We bought a fake one from Home Center here in Belgrade. Ornaments have been all over the house as Ocean and Oliver both take them off and play with them. I can see why my Dad put the television on top of large wooden box when we were kids. We then could not break the dials.
Ocean "undecorating" the Christmas Tree
Ocean this week was battling a cold. She kept vomiting in the night due to choking on mucous. Nadia had to have Ocean sleep between us. Ocean kept kicking me in the head. It was a rough week for both of us with limited sleep. Finally, we called the local private clinic, Bel Medic and they have a children’s doctor that make house calls. Brilliant! No more waiting in the crowded room with sick and crying kids. It is amazing how much better Nadia and Alejandra feel after they see the doctor. I think the doctor does more good for them than the children. I don’t think there is much a doctor can do for a virus, but they can do a lot for an upset and worried Latina mother.
I took this photo on Monday evening at sunset. The sun sets around 4:00 PM here and I was heading to basketball practice on our campus. It shows a crescent moon, venus right below it, and Jupiter to the upper left. Although it looks like they are close, they are all actually millions of miles away from each other. Later on in the evening, the moon blocked venus (called an occultation) which is a rare event. Thanks to my wife for sending this link, which explains more about it. An interest in astronomy is another thing we have in common.
Oliver & Ocean on top of Mount Avala
On Sunday we drove to Mount Avala which is about 8 miles south of Belgrade. The mountain is a state park and it has some walking trails, war monuments, and a hotel that looked closed for the season. Being about 500 meters higher than Belgrade, there was still snow left and we had a good snowball fight. Owen showed his tropical upbringing, and he refused to get out of the car, prefering to stay warm with mom. We are both sick this week and driving in the car gives us a break with watching the kids so the trip to Mount Avala had an alterior motive. Behind Ollie and Ocean is the Unknown Soldier monument dedicated to the Serbian soldiers killed in WWI. I noticed some of the marble blocks were chipped. This was from the 1999 NATO bombing raids that targeted RTS state television transmission towers. They are building a new tower that looked like the CN Tower in Toronto, so perhaps there will be a restaraunt there.
We are loving our new car. We bought a GPS also, and I am a believer in it! It is so much easier than old fashioned maps, although I love maps. The GPS tells us exactly when to turn, etc., and you can zoom in and zoom out on the map. It also has pharmacies, supermarkets, etc. Amazing! Below we are shown filling the car up with gasoline. The neighborhood gas station is very low key, so much different than the big, lighted, American gas stations. The Serbian gas stations on the highways are similar to the US gas stations, but the ones found on side streets are like the one below.
Nadia is pictured the second from the right. The school did not take off the Thanksgiving holiday, but we did have a party at the Austrian Ambassador’s home. It was an enjoyable evening, with live music and delicious food. The Ambassador has three daughters at our school and his wife tutors Spanish with one of our students. Nadia is pictured above with many of the elementary teachers.
We had a babysitter for the kids and Ocean fell asleep in the arms of Sophie. She sweats a lot and is shown below with the crazy hair. Her hair is growing slowly and she has beautiful curls in back. Much of my time at work has been with basketball. I am shown below in a faculty versus student game.
Yesterday Owen awoke and asked me, “Do we have any carrots, Dad?”
The boys were so excited as it snowed heavily overnight. They awoke to a white yard and they were out pretty early. I showed them how to pack a snowball and make a snowman. We had a mini-snowball fight before school.
We don’t have Thanksgiving off here at the school. We do have a holiday dinner party at the Austrian Ambassador’s residence tonight. It was a busy day at school with a community service fair, admin team meeting, SLC meeting, and a Principal – Parent Coffee.
We drove quite a bit this weekend with our car. Great to have some freedom! The car is a sweet 1996 Honda Odyssey that we bought from the Swiss Ambassador, hence the name “Edelweiss”. It has an Edelweiss sticker on the front passenger side hood and I think we’ll keep it.
The car is in excellent condition as the Swiss take good care of their cars. We are happy with the space and comfort of the car. With three kids, we needed something that we can all fit in. We hope it is a good car for us. It cost $6,800 and cars are generally more expensive in Europe than in the USA.
A nice aspect of working at ISB is we get diplomatic plates and status. The “CD” sticker indicates Corps Diplomatic and the 144 M on the black and yellow plates indicate we are part of the USA mission. The US Embassy has been very nice to us here. They allow us to shop in their commissary, invite us to many functions, and we get the diplomatic plates.
Today Nadia and I are not feeling that great, Nadia worse than me. Tough to be sick with kids. All I feel like doing tonight is a bit of school work, read a book, and go to bed. We have to feed, bathe, and put the kids to bed however. We ate lunch in Zemun, I had a great fresh water river fish while Ocean at a lot of pasta. There was a light dusting of snow that collected on windows of cars and so I taught the boys how to make a snow ball. We also went to Delta City Mall to by a GPS so I can figure out where to go. Belgrade is a big city and we need it.
Ready for another week of work! Happy that basketball is starting!
Ollie throws his first snowball!Ocean likes the new car too.
It was a shopping Saturday as we ventured out in our new car yesterday. Despite the cold weather, we were warm and comfortable in our car, a 1996 Honda Odyssey. After 4 months of taxis and buses, it was a welcome change and instilled us with a sense of freedom. We drove around Belgrade Saturday morning and eventually ended up at the US Embassy Commissary. Nadia picked up her order of turkey, 2 hams, yams, and cranberries. She also bought three baskets full of that good old American processed “food” that we can’t live without. Lucky Charms, Tostitos, fruit roll-ups, and Mac & Chees. Long shelf lives, packed with preservatives, and a good helping of corn syrup…
We then drove to the largest supermarket in Belgrade, Tiempo. It is like a Sam’s Club or one of those big warehouse bulk shopping places in the US. As you can see from above, we stocked up on everything. We finished our shopping day by going to Galerija Podova and buying a carpet for our basement. We have transformed a room in the basement as a guest room. We are anticipating more visitors over the holidays and want to make it nice for them. It also gives us another room for the kids to play in.
Nadia’s ear was bothering her and she is still battling a cold. She went to the clinic last night while I watched the kids. Went to bed early.
Two of Serbia's Winter Staples - Cabbage and Potatoes
Owen and Oliver are shown above boxing. We are boxing this week at home and they love it. They have some “socker boppers” and they are following in the long tradition of the Kralovec boys of beating the heck out of each other. At least they are doing it now in a controlled environment. I am teaching them to jab and move, protect their face with the gloves up, etc.
There was frost on the grass a couple of mornings this week and I also saw a flock of large birds heading south – winter is on its way! Today it is warm and raining.
Ocean is walking all over the place. She prefers to walk than crawl now. Gotta run.
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