We had a special visit to our high school boys’ basketball practice. Former NBA All-Star Vlade Divac stopped by to help the student athletes with aspects of their game. He talked about doing the little things right, like crisp passing, wide elbows on rebounds, boxing out, have a repetitive free throw ritual, etc. The students were truly inspired.
At the end of practice he had a little fun with us. In the video above, he is telling a story of a trip to China. He demonstrates the one-handed, back-to-the-basket, half court shot. All net in one attempt. Truly amazing. He also laid down at half court and made the basket from the floor in three attempts.
I can see why he is a basketball legend. Great size combined with attention to detail, athleticism, and lots of hard work. Thanks to Mik J. for the video above. The start shows his hand as he was taking his camera out of the bag. Vlade appears shortly after the start.
It has been wonderful this week with so much snow falling. With 9 inches on the ground, more of the white stuff came down! Many students and teachers at our school have been wanting a school cancellation or delay. Being from the Upper Midwest, the current snow is actually fun and a nuisance, but not a impediment for arriving at school. Temperatures are around the freezing mark, so the major roads are wet and clear, while side roads have slushy snow. It has taken me back to my youth and learning to drive in Michigan.
The view above is looking towards the east wall of our high school campus.
The popularity of the social networking web site Facebook (FB) has got me thinking about its role in the learning of students at ISB. I am also pondering our use of technology tools (software / websites) at the school.
This is another good website to get you thinking about the subject. It is my goal to produce guidelines for teachers, students, and parents on using these tools.
We had a nice Sunday as we are in a long weekend. There is no school today due to the National Day of Serbia. Sunday we started the day with playing football and making a snow fort in the yard. We then went to Oliver’s classmate’s birthday party at the Grand Hyatt. Wonderful location as they have a gourmet all-you-can-eat buffet and they turn the bar into a children’s playroom. The kids and adults both had a nice time.
Ollie with Jack and Sam at the Hyatt
We then went over to the Moynihan’s for a dinner party. Tim wanted to celebrate the newcomers to Serbia making it 6 months! I came home exhausted after chasing around the kids and eating and drinking well. Some people joked that in my black shirt and shaved pate, I looked like the typical Serbian gangster. Nadia and I are pictured above enjoying a little peace and quiet while the kids sleep in the car.
Above is a photo I took last weekend. We were on the way to an open market in New Belgrade. We stopped at the traffic light, and these three gypsies were asking for handouts from cars waiting in line. At the major intersections downtown and in New Belgrade, it is common to have gypsy beggars or window washers. It has been a source of fascination for our family since our arrival. This is my second post (for my first post, click here) on the gypsies and I intend to do more while I am living here.
I recently finished reading Isabel Fonseca’s excellent book, “Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey” in which she writes of her experiences of living with the Romany people of several Eastern European countries for 4 years.
There are over 100,000 gypsies living in Belgrade. They are an on-going social problem in the city. They get little support from the government and have difficulty integrating themselves into modern, Serbian society. The latest news was the government moving (bulldozing) of a settlement in New Belgrade. It seems that no one wants them to live in their neighborhood. There are gypsies that are successful, but most are extremely poor and outside of normal society. Beside hustling for money at intersections, they are also seen collecting cardboard and other recyclable materials or selling junk at markets in New Belgrade.
They remind me of the Aboriginal people of Australia. They have their completely separate culture and lifestyle living right next to a majority “Western” culture. They are closer to the North American Indians, and are more integrated than the Aboriginals, but the same view applies. Like the Slavs, the migrated to Serbia from the east. Researchers discovered they originally came from India, leaving about 16-20 generations ago (approximately 12th century). They stopped in central Asia (Armenia) and reached Serbia and eastern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. Their official name possibly dates back to their original caste in India. Fragments of their Indian origin are maintained today in many words in their language and their Hindu-like customs of cleanliness and superstition.
Their original nomadic lifestyle has ended in modern times. Today they are mostly poor, illiterate, living on the edges of cities and towns. There are an estimated 6 -11 million gypsies world wide with most in Eastern Europe. The biggest population is in Romania. Fonseca reasons they were used as slaves in historical Romania and that explains the high numbers there. They have been persecuted since their arrival to Europe. They are the forgotten part of the Holocaust.
The girl above is probably the mother of the baby in her arms. Gypsies have their own cultural norms and one of them is to become a mother as soon as physically possible. What is amazing is many are illiterate with no concept of history, time, and Western cultural literacy.
Ocean is up and I need to attend to her. I’ll be writing more in the near future…
Below are some excerpts from the Rom News Network a website based in Germany that produces news items about the Romany people. I took the excerpts from an article by Olga Nikolic, called, “Life on the Margins of Society” from 2001.
“Romanies form the youngest portion of the population in Serbia – over a half, 62 per cent of them, are under the age of 25, while only 4,1 per cent of them are over 60 years-old. The said age structure is accounted for by experts as the result of high birth and death rates and a low average life expectancy. According to some statistics, the average Romany life span is 10 per cent shorter than is the case when all other citizens of Serbia
Dragoljub Atanackovic, the president of the Romany Congressional Party, claims that 90 per cent of Romanies live in extremely insanitary conditions and that in Belgrade itself there are 60 enclaves with over 90 thousand Romanies living in wretched circumstances. “The social position of Romanies is exceptionally difficult. But three per cent of the population of working age are employed, only 31 per cent have primary school education, the rest are half-illiterate or illiterate. We do not have a single newspaper in our mother tongue or a radio and TV program financed by the government.
According to statistics, the rate of unemployment among Romanies is four times higher than is the case with the country’s majority nation and in the past ten years the negative ratio has doubled. Every fifth Romany of working age is illiterate and every third has merely primary education. A fifth of all Romany families have no earnings whatsoever, while the majority barely survive by doing odd jobs in the black market sector, such as selling contraband cigarettes and similar smuggled goods or by collecting secondary materials.”
The big news this week was Thursday’s snowstorm. We awoke to a winter wonderland after several weeks without snow. As I write this on Sunday morning, it is still coming down. It has been snowing intermittently for the past four days. We measured the snow level in our yard yesterday and it was 9 inches (23 centimeters). We considered school delays or cancellations Thursday and Friday, but the main roads in Belgrade were open. It is a wet snow and the roads are clear. Many of the secondary roads however, are not and it has given some people difficulty in getting around. The city did a pretty good job of clearing the roads. In my hometown of Caspian, Michigan, a place that gets a lot of snow, we have a rule that no cars can be parked out on the street at night. It makes it easy for the snow ploughs to clear the roads. That is not so here, hence the snow on the secondary roads.
We love the snow and took the kids to the tobogganing hill yesterday. We made a few runs, but Nadia and Ocean do not do very well in the snow. I also took the car to the shop to have the snow tires put on. The snow gives the city a whole new look and it is really beautiful.
The students follow Goran's snowblower at the Lower School
It is not everyday that I find a message from my administrative assistant like the one above. “Oh, Mr. Kralovec, by the way, the Princess called you twice this morning and wants you to call her.”
Serbia does have a royal family. Princess Katherine married into the Serbian royal family and is from Greece. The crown prince of Serbia, Alexander Karađorđević, married Katherine in 1985 in London. It was the second marriage for both. Alexander’s family goes back to the first Serbian uprising against the Ottomans in 1804. His ancestor was the famous, Black George, who established an autonomous Serbia within the Ottoman Empire. George, like most Serbians at the time, came from typical peasant stock, growing up on a pig farm. Very nice to see that Serbia didn’t import their royals like many European countries did.
Alexander is the “crown prince” and the official heir to the vacant throne. His father, Peter, was the last king of Serbia before Tito and the communists came in 1945 and got rid of the monarchy. Alexander is a good guy, having come back to Serbia permanently in 2001. He says that Serbia must first establish a democracy before they can establish a monarch again. He lives close by in the Royal Palace. Katherine invited the school to come anytime to take tour.
Alexander and Katherine do much charitable work here in Seriba. Katherine heads the HRH Crown Princess Katherine Humanitarian Foundation and she is working with the ministry of health to improve the health care system of the country. Her current focus is cervical and breast cancer. She had a charity fashion show last night to raise funds for a cervical cancer center. Serbia’s health care needs improvement and it is nice to see her taking a role in improving it.
Princess Katherine called asking if the school would promote the charity show with our families. I was hesitant to do this, because we often receive requests from organizations seeking access to our community. In this case, I allowed it because it was for a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Serbia. It is a chance for ISB to give back to our wonderful host country. I hope to visit the palace someday and meet the Princess in person.
That is a cool thing about living in a small country and working at an international school. I get to meet and work with the leaders of Serbia. If I was working in a school in the USA, that would not be possible. I feel honored and grateful to be a part of ISB.
One of the nice things about living in Belgrade after so many years in the “outback” of Venezuela, is the opportunity to attend cultural events. There are many concerts, plays, exhibitions held in Belgrade. This month Belgrade is hosting the 10th annual Guitar Art Festival. Sunday evening Sting and Bosnian Lutenist Edin Karamozov performed at the Sava Center in New Belgrade. Sting is one of my all-time favorite musical artists. (He ranks in my top 5 with U2, AC/DC, Seal and David Bowie) and I was thrilled to finally see him live in concert. The first half of the concert was devoted to his album, Songs From the Labryinth. This was like attending a lecture on the 16th century music. Sting learned to play the lute and brought back to life, the music of English composer John Dowland. The lute has many more strings than a guitar and the music is much more complex. Sting at his mature stage, is a bit bored with rock music and I am enjoying his growth and changes. The second half of the concert they played some old police songs and some other tunes, like the short snippet of video above, “Fields of Gold.” Sting’s voice was better live than the studio version! He is truly a great musician.
He said that he was going back into the studio to record a new album and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
Middle School Mathematics Teacher Lekisha Jackson is shown above assisting Nathalie and Alex moments before the team competition. This weekend we hosted the CEESA (Central and Eastern European Schools Association) Math Counts competition. Math Counts is a non-profit organization devoted to promoting math excellence among middle school math students. Seven schools with 54 “mathletes” competed in written and oral tests, with both individual and team categories. The students were billeted with ISB families and besides the mathematics, they enjoyed getting to know the cultural side of Belgrade and socialized with our students at a big dance on Saturday.
The event was dominated by Korean students. The top 10 students in the individual competition were all Korean students. ISB grade 8 student Rick was the top non-Korean in the competition, finishing one question short of the top 10 in 11th place. Winning the competition was Tae Suk Joung from AIS Budapest, with Victor Moon and Duk Sung Ahn from AAS Moscow finishing second and third respectively.
ISB Team Members Irem, Andrej, Rick, and Carl
In the team competition, the Anglo American School of Moscow took the top two spots with AIS Budapest finishing in third place. The gold medal AAS Moscow team consisted of Duck Sung Ahn, Victor Moon, Ji Tae Park, and Gi Cheol Shin. Also participating in the competition were AIS Zagreb (Croatia), the American School of Paris (France), the Anglo-American School of Sofia (Bulgaria), and the Tirana International School of Albania.
I would like to thank Tim Moynihan, Will Clowney, Igor Saljic, Aleksander Nikolic and Marija Vuckovic for their outstanding efforts in organizing the event. A lot of work goes into behind the scenes when hosting a successful event of this magnitude. A special mention goes to our Math Counts Coach and math teacher Ms. Lekisha Jackson. She spent countless hours preparing the students and the community for the event. Her dedication and organization paid off as our students learned much from the event and performed extremely well. Ms. Jackson has been a special addition to our staff this year and we all appreciate her teaching! Thank you Lekisha!!!
The dance on Saturday evening was also special. I would like to thank Mr. Sean Hayes and the STUCO students for the fine organization of the dance. Our students made our guests feel at home and they enjoyed themselves in a responsible manner. Thanks to Mr. Vrbaski, Ms. Tharalsen, Mrs. Medenica, Mrs. Jovanovic, and Mr. Hayes for chaperoning the dance. The out of the classroom relationships our teachers form with the students is one of the best characteristics of ISB. I would also like to thank our ISB families that hosted students. I only heard positive comments from the parents on the comportment of the students.
In summary, Math Counts accomplished its mission of encouraging math excellence. We look forward to next year’s competition.
I want to write about the my trip home to Michigan last week and reflect on the passing of my mother. This is more for posterity sake.
It began with a phone call to my mother two weeks ago. She was a patient at the big, regional hospital in Marquette, Michigan. My dad took my mom to her usual hair appointment on Friday. He then went to help out at the church and when he returned, my mother could not get up from bed. He called 911 and eventually she was transferred from the Iron County Hospital to Marquette. She was there for several days. I talked to her on the phone once and she sounded okay, complaining of pain in her back and legs. My father said there was not much the doctors could do for her and they were looking at transferring her to a nursing home in Iron River. He said the situation was grave so I immediately made plans to fly to Michigan.
My mother was a diabetic for over 20 years. Diabetes runs in her family as many members have it. She received a kidney transplant from her brother over 10 years ago. Diabetes in the long term harms the body’s circulation, eyesight, and other vital organs. Mom was an active person and never smoke or drank. It was sad to see the debiliatating effects of the disease on her.
She kept asking my Dad what day it was and when the boys were going to come home. I live in Serbia and my brother Andy, (on the far left in the photo above) lives in Ecuador. I arrived in my hometown of Caspian, Michigan last Friday evening. On Saturday morning, we got a call from the nursing home where my mom was staying. She told the nurse that she wanted to see us before she passed away.
I went up there with my daughter Ocean. My mom recognized me and called my name. She asked for her glasses so she could see her only granddaughter. Ocean sat on the bed next to her. During the day, we stayed in her room and Dad and I helped her stay comfortable. She asked us to move her because her back, shoulders, and legs were sore. Andy arrived in the afternoon and the nurses moved her to a private room.
Her three sons, husband, and sister were with her when she passed. I held her hand and hugged her in her final moments. We all said goodbye and told her that we loved her. I promised to take care of the her grandchildren and especially to teach Ocean to be a good basketball player. My mother died around 5:00 PM Saturday.
The next few days were sad. It was good that my two brothers, Dad, and I were together to get the funeral organized. We went to the funeral home together to help write her obituary and plan the funeral. We made a large bulletin board of photos as a memory to her.
My mother suffered greatly her final couple of years. There were many trips to doctors and hospital stays. My father spent much time helping her out.
The funeral was really nice. Most of our relatives on her side of the family came as well as people from our small town of Caspian. On the way out of the church, the choir played the West Iron County High School fight song, a fitting tribute to a sporting woman who gave so much to school’s basketball program.
Nadia, Ocean, and I had to fly back the next day. We left Owen and Oliver back in Belgrade. The emails, letters, and words of sympathy from our family and friends, both here in Belgrade and the USA was overwhelming and greatly appreciated. She had a full life and passed away knowing that she had a postive impact on the lives of so many people. We will miss her.
Nadia gets into our rental car in Caspian.
It was also my first time in Michigan in February for many years. It was very cold (-27 C on the day we left) with heaps of snow.
The cycle of life continues - Ocean's growing up fast!
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