Winter SUCKS!

February 7, 2012

Well, it’s been a few weeks, roughly 3, since I’ve last wrote something. I’m definitely the best blogger of the family, since Matt and Laura’s both last update was in the beginning of December.

After break, things at school have been calmer. Nothing real big to discuss there. In case I haven’t said it yet, I’m planning on coming back next year. It’s a job, and there are some great travel opportunities. My friend Blake just went to the UNI fair (in Iowa, the same one I got hired at) and he said the jobs for Social Studies teachers were very limited. He ended up getting a job in Honduras, not his first pick, but hey, it’s a job, right? And from the sounds of it, things aren’t getting much better with unemployment in the states…

I had my birthday on January 18^th.  It was a Wednesday, so I couldn’t get too wild and crazy, but my fellow teachers organized a birthday dinner at one of the only Mexican restaurants in town, so that was nice. Allison even made me a cake (well, it was more of a brownie pan, but still, it was good!). We had a few drinks, but didn’t stay out too late.

That weekend I had a little birthday bash at my apartment here, inviting a bunch of people from our school and a few people I know that don’t work with us. It turned out to be a pretty awesome party (in my mind the best one we’ve had this year so far…). ; - ) I made a make-shift beerpong table out of the cabinet door of my bedroom dresser. It worked pretty good actually.

I also have been doing this thing called “CouchSurfing.” Some of you may already know what it is, so if you do, you can skip this paragraph. You sign up on the website couchsurfing.com, and basically what you’re doing is offering people to stay on your couch for free. Obviously there is a bit of trust involved, but you can look at people’s profiles and references to see if they are legitimate or not. Even though I’ve only hosted people so far, I plan on someday actually doing the “surfing” since it’s free and a great way to meet new people.

My first couchsurfer was a South Korean girl back in the beginning of December. She was on break from school for about 2 months and decided to travel around Europe. I ended up having her stay 2 nights, because the 2^nd night her other host was busy. I showed her around on that Sunday, which only took about an hour because there really isn’t a lot to see in Prishtina. We also watched the Packer game (can’t remember which one it was, but we won). My next couch surfers were on my birthday party night. I had warned them that if they wanted to stay with me, they would probably have to stay up kind of late because I was having a birthday party. They didn’t mind. Claudia was from Italy, and Gonzalo was from Spain. Their English wasn’t the best, so I tried my best to speak Spanish to them, since they talked to each other in Spanish. “Spain” Spanish is much different than Latin American Spanish. It sounds like they have a lisp or something… I don’t like it. Anyway, I was totally hungover the next day, so I just stayed in bed. They went exploring around the city, but then had to leave that afternoon. They probably though us American teachers were crazy, since the party was pretty wild the night before.

My 3^rd (or technically my 4^th) couchsurfer was a guy named Sam. He’s a Brazilian-American, who lived most of his life in Brazil, but was born in California. The best way to describe him is he looked like Jesus. Huge beard, long hair, but he was a really great guy. He ended up crashing at my place for 2 nights as well. We had a “dude’s game night” one night, then we all went to trivia the next night. I also gave him the tour of the city. By the way, all these couch surfers are in their 20s, so it’s not like I’m getting a bunch of creepy old guys staying with me. As a host, I’m not expected to give them anything but a bed, but being the nice person I am, I usually cook something for them or take them on a tour. The Korean girl washed my dishes for me one night, as did Sam, so that’s generally what they do in return. Sam has been traveling around Europe for over a year now, and he said he usually just cooks for the people he stays with. My couchsurfing experiences have been great so far. I usually will get 2-3 requests per week, but I don’t like to host ALL the time (maybe 1-2 times per month), so I have to decline a lot of people. Plus, I prefer weekends, since weekdays I’m gone (although I have left my couchsurfers in my apartment a few times and there were no problems at all). Another good thing, they all offered me to stay with them if I’m ever in their area, so that’s always a nice way to return the favor (so Matt, if you ever make it to South Korea, I’ve got a nice Korean girl you can probably crash with—just pretend to be me…). I’ll continue to update everyone on my couchsurfing adventures…

Finals week was about 2 weeks ago—it was the end of the first semester. However, after 1 day of finals, it snowed like ca-RAZY! So we had to cancel school on Thursday and Friday of that week. I didn’t really do a lot—just hung out and stayed inside, cuz it was so damn snowy. Speaking of snowy, we’ve got SOOOO much snow here this year so far. Two weeks ago during finals we got 16-20 inches. On top of that, we’ve been getting light dustings lately. Just today we got another 2-4 inches. The biggest problem is there is no where to put the snow. The sidewalks are just a mess of snow and ice—which, by the way, is seriously about 3-4 inches thick in most places. The problem was is they never cleaned the snow off the sidewalk after it snowed (there are no laws about that here… weird… ), so all the snow eventually just got packed down and now it can’t be removed cuz it’s been super cold here lately. Well, cold by Kosova standards… in WI it’d be cold, but by no means would we cancel school.

Which brings me to my next point—they canceled school for this whole week in the Kosova public schools because of the extreme cold. Energy use is a huge issue here (in case you haven’t learned that from my previous blogs about how the power goes out all the time in my apartment), so to help ease the use of the heating systems, they just canceled public schools. However, our school had to go yesterday. I’m not really sure why, because it’s been really cold in our school. I probably have the warmest room, but that’s because I have one of the only rooms without windows, so there’s no way for the heat to get in or out of my room. However, the downside is that my room smells like teenagers—aka body odor. I’ve gotten used to it though, so it’s no biggie.

The temps have been in the single digits and some nights it even gets in the negatives. Like I said, it’s cold, but considering our school heating system is pretty shotty, it’s pretty rough for some classrooms. Heck, in our middle school you can see your breath when you’re in the hallways. That’s not good… Yesterday there was only about ½ of the students in school, then today when we all showed up, there was even less than that. Our principal decided then to cancel school for today and tomorrow, but to return on Thursday and Friday. He was kind of hesitant to do this, because we’ll be having a 10 day break coming up from Feb 17 through the 26^th, but what ended up happening is the Kosovar Ministry of Education forced us to close school, so I’ve got the rest of this week off. Yay! The worst part about today was the wind—20 mph to 30 mph. Plus, the blowing snow made it terrible to walk to school in. Wind chills have consistently been in the negative teens, which is pretty darn cold. My apartment is still really really cold. Well, not too bad, in the mid-60s, but I’ve been running my heater everyday and it gets about 1’ warmer every day. But things could be much worse.

I’m sure a lot of you have been reading about how all of Europe is suffering from the cold and snowy conditions. I read that in Sarajevo, not too far from here, they got over 3 feet of snow. Ukraine and Romania have had hundreds of people die because of the cold. The rest of this week is supposed to have lows in the single digits as well (some days negative), so I understand why school needs to be canceled. I wonder how the homeless people are surviving outside. Every few days I see people begging out in the streets (usually the Gypsies/Roma). I have no idea where they go in conditions like this. That’s probably why so many people are dying around this region—they have no heat or place to stay.

So we’ll have school just for 4 days next week, then we’ll have a 10 day break. I still haven’t decided yet where I wanna go, but Joe and Courtney are going to Barcelona, so I think I might just tag along with them. Other people are going to Italy, Cyprus, and a few other places. But I kind of want to get away from the cold weather, so Spain should be ok. I think the temp has been in the 50s and 60s there lately, so I shouldn’t have to worry about packing all my winter clothes. Kosova’s 4^th anniversary of their independence is coming up next Friday too. I’d like to stick around and see what happens on that day, although I’ve heard it’s not a very exciting day.

Finally, for my last part of my blog I’ll tell you guys about my recent trip (last weekend) to Belgrade, Serbia. Don’t worry Mom, Serbia is safe. I’m not an Albanian, so they don’t hate me (well, some of them don’t like the US because we helped Kosova, but I didn’t encounter any animosity at all on the trip). We went on a UN bus, so it was safe. Every few weeks, UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosova) hosts these trips around the region. They’ve gone to Serbia, Thessaloniki (Greece), a few ski places in Bulgaria and Macedonia, and that’s about it so far. It’s relatively cheap for the bus (usually about 30 euro), but you have to find your own hotel, which is fine, cuz I don’t like expensive hotels that all the other people usually stay at.

So a group of 11 of us went up to Belgrade. We left Friday after school (4 pm) and didn’t arrive into Belgrade until midnight. The trip should only be about 6 hours, but because we went across the Kosova/Serbia border, it took quite a bit longer. For some reason, we were stuck at the border for almost an hour and a half. Plus, it took us almost an hour to get out of Prishtina, because of the traffic. Anyway, the beers sure made the ride an easier one… : - )

So we got to our hostel late and just crashed. We stayed in a 10-person room, so that was kinda fun. The next day we got up and went to the Nikola Tesla museum. Tesla was a famous scientist that worked with electricity. He was Serbian/American, so that’s why this museum was here. There were a lot of experiments here that our tour guide demonstrated for us. Like how Tesla discovered that electricity can be transferred through the air. We all held up long florescent light tubes and when he turned on this giant Tesla coil, they all lit up, even though they weren’t attached to anything except our bodies. Tesla worked with Thomas Edison, and from what it sounds like, Edison was kind of a jerk and stole some of Tesla’s ideas. Edison discovered DC current, or direct current, which was the OLD way of electricity. The biggest problem with direct current is that it can’t travel very far through powerlines, so if you wanted electricity with DC current, you had to live within a mile or 2 of the powerplant. Not very efficient. Tesla discovered AC, or alternating current, which allowed electricity to travel much further distances. I don’t know all the details of AC and DC, but I do know that DC is not used much today, and AC is. Tesla also created the first induction motor, or motor that uses magnetic forces to run, with a coil and all that stuff. Basically, that type of  motor is still being used today in almost all major appliances and machines. So thanks Tesla. You’re an ok guy! Oh, some people also think that Nikola Tesla is responsible for the Tunguska event (look it up if you don’t know what it is), which happened in Siberia about 100 years ago. Thousands of trees were flattened here and no one really knows why, although most scientists today believe it was a meteorite that exploded in the atmosphere. Anyway, on to the rest of Belgrade…

The city of Belgrade itself was beautiful. It really made me feel like Prishtina is just kind of a blip out in the middle of nowhere. People were shoveling sidewalks, streets were clean, and there weren’t cars parked in any empty space (including the sidewalks) just like in Prishtina. We went to the Belgrade Fortress, where the Danube and Sava Rivers meet. It was basically an old city wall/fort to protect the city. However, inside the fortress there was a military museum. Outside of the museum there were a bunch of large canons, tanks, and artillery, but they were all covered in snow. Inside, the museum laid out the history of wars in Serbia, starting with swords and helmets, moving all the way up into the 1990s. WWI and WWII were pretty cool, since I really am interested in those wars. But the part that interested me the most was the 1990s section of the museum.

In this part, they had new weapons that would’ve been used to fight the Americans and Kosovars during the wars in the late 90s in this region. One thing that I found particularly distasteful was the display with an American soldiers uniform. They also had a pilot’s uniform that had been shot down, and a part of the airplane. They had a UCK (KLA, or Kosova Liberation Army) uniform there as well, and outside of the museum they had a US Humvee that was confiscated during the 90s. I’m pretty sure that if a US museum did something like this, it would get a lot of negative feedback. I really don’t feel it’s necessary to show the prisoner of war’s personal belongings. It makes you wonder what happened to that person or what kind of torture they went through. I obviously understand why the museum does it—because there is a hatred for Kosova and the US among them, and it’s kind of their way to show off to the visitors of the museum that they can “run with the big boys,” or that this wasn’t just a one sided war—Americans and Kosovars were captured and killed as well. Either way, I find it kind of discourteous that they have to display these types of artifacts as propaganda just to try to show their people that they are a powerful nation.

That evening we went out to dinner then found a nice little bar with a live band, playing American music. We stayed there most of the rest of the night, then crashed at the hostel. Since the next day was Sunday, we didn’t really have a lot of time, since the bus was leaving at 4 pm. We walked to the St. Sava church, the largest Orthodox Church, by volume. It was pretty darn big, and really beautiful with the snow around it, but the inside was being renovated, so it wasn’t very exciting inside of it. We also went to this bombed out building from when the US was bombing Belgrade. It was 2 buildings, right next to each other. This used to be the Yugoslavian Defense Headquarters, so it was a pretty obvious target for the US during their bombing raids. I believe they kept it there to remind people what happened, and to never forget it. I thought it was pretty amazing, not only because this was my country that did this and I feel it was for a good cause, but also because it is amazing to see what a bomb can do to a building. We hear about bombings all the time on tv, but we never see up close what the buildings look like afterwards. This was quite an experience, to see this up close. Definitely one of the more memorable parts of this trip.

Anyway, we headed back to Kosova and this time it only took us 6 hours, since we didn’t have to deal with Prishtina traffic and because the border crossing only took us about 15 minutes this time. Obviously Serbia is more hesitant to let people across, especially when they’re coming from Kosova. We all decided that Belgrade was a really nice city. Belgrade is a much more developed city than Prishtina, so of course it’s always a treat to get out and stop at a McDonalds or mall, just to get a taste of America again… Pretty sure we all will be going back to Belgrade, but I think the spring time would be better, since it’ll be green and not so damn cold!

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Tonight I’m going to dinner with some friends then going to watch a movie, since we don’t have school for the next 3 days. Like I said, my next major trip will most likely be to Barcelona, so I’ll update you all on that when I get back. Oh, I watched the Super Bowl on Monday morning, from 12:30-2, then I took a nap during half time and the 3^rd quarter, then got up to watch the 4^th quarter. So I went back to bed at like 4 am, so I only got about 3 hours of sleep. That’s probably why I’m kinda sick right now. Ah well… I love football, and it was a good game, so it was worth it to me.

Finally, for those of you that want to know, the last day for students at ASK is June 22^nd (Friday). Our calendar says that we have to stay until the 29^th, the next Friday, but all the teachers told me that you can leave whenever you get all your grades in and classrooms cleaned up. So what I’ll probably do is go on a little trip somewhere (maybe Athens? Or Rome?) for a week, then come back to the US around July 1^st, just in time for Gary and Cindy’s 20^th annual (or something like that) 4^th of July bash! I can’t wait to get back and see the family, especially Jack and Annie. I will probably be home for all of July, and since we don’t start school until the beginning of September, I will probably be home for most of August as well.

Ok, now I’m really done now. Talk to you all soon!

Love,
Mike