Champion’s League Final

The night after the Pope left, we went to a bar to watch the Champion’s League Final with everyone.

On the way we passed a spraypaint speed artist, who mesmerized us for a while before we met the group (they’d left before us). Frank bought a piece, but I was content with just watching him work.

We spent the night watching football, drinking, peoplewatching, and generally having a fun time after a long day with Papa Franjo. This is Arnela, who is a sophomore at James Madison University and whose family is from Sarajevo- she’s my own personal guide here 🙂

This is the waiter we’ve made friends with.

Candids are my favorite.

This is Steven. He goes to Berkeley and never smiles for pictures, but we have a challenge to get three smiling picture by the end of the summer. So far we’re unsuccessful, but I’m determined to prevail.

The music here is wonderfully dancey.

I passed my camera around so these pictures are taken by everyone throughout the night.

This is Merima and she’s always laughing, which makes the rest of us laugh. (She also flew here from France and hasn’t been home to Nebraska since January).

I have a ton of pictures of Arnela but she’s fantastic so it’s ok.

This is Drea who was supporting Barcelona, so she was engrossed in the game the entire time (you know how dedicated to football I am…) It’s important to understand around the world, though, and it’s not uninteresting.

In Bosnia, they don’t amalgamate tabs or split checks, so you get separate receipts for everything you order.

Anyway, Barcelona won, everyone cheered, I ate an entire chicken sandwich afterwards, and it was a great end with great people to a great day.

Sunday was a day of studying because I do have homework here- 200+ pages of reading this week alone and nearly 100 pages collectively to write by the end of the session. They don’t do printing here, unfortunately (I work best interacting with my information), so operating solely from my tablet takes some getting used to but everyone’s also pretty lenient and easy to work with because they’re voluntarily teaching us.

We have some pretty rock-star teachers, too, including Husan Nuhanovic, a survivor of Srebrenica. I’ll share books with you as I write more in-depth about what I’m learning, but Sunday we all took a break and studied for this week’s work.

I’ll leave you with these pictures of the view from my window, taken two hours apart each.

Sometimes it’s very difficult to imagine, nestled here in a valley, why or how Sarajevo and the Balkans were important enough to eliminate. But, on the flip side, that’s not hard to see at all.

Until tomorrow!

-Kris ❤