Day 6 - First real day in Mlini

I'm about a half a day behind on the blog. It's amazing how access to the beach delays my entries. ;) Actually, yesterday, I slept in until about 11:30am. We had a meeting with our faculty member, Professor Drobac, and Marco (the liason I mentioned in the last entry). It lasted about an hour and then we all had lunch in the hotel. I have already begun making friends with a few people who I sat with in the meeting and at lunch. After lunch, I changed my money over to Kuna (the official Croatian currency) and we all went up to our rooms and changed to our swimsuits and hit the beach!

The beach (and the view from my room) are extremely beautiful. I am pretty sure my pictures will not do them justice. The beach has mostly pebbles instead of sand, but after being in the water for a while, I found it to be comfortable under my beach towel. I also had a beer (no umbrella drinks here) and enjoyed the view from the small bar near the beach with Karrie, another student I have become friendly with. Something I love about the hotel is that any of the restaurants/bars in the hotel will put the things you purchase on your room and we are supposed to pay off the charges once a week with our credit cards. I am keeping track of the charges though, because I do not want a crazy bill when I return home.

So, after a couple hours on the beach, I decided to make sure I didn't get a sunburn, so I went up to my room to relax for a few hours. I put all of my pictures from the last few days onto my computer and watched one of the two channels that plays American movies with Croatian subtitles. Suprisingly, I am learning a few words in Croatian this way. There are also some very strange television channels on our TV. One is a news channel that is also in English. They also have MTV where the VJ's are speaking in another language (possibly German?) but some of the shows are in English, and the music videos they show also are often in English. I watched the first Rock of Love with subtitles later in the evening. Another channel shows very racy advertisements later at night. Everyone in our group has been talking about shockingly stumbling upon them over the last few days.

Anyway...after relaxing, I got ready for our Welcome Dinner. It was held at the same bar/cafe by the beach. It was incredible watching the sunset over the beach and sipping on some wine. I also met some more people from our group. One girl had the worst possible trip over because her first flight was cancelled and all of her problems stemmed from the delay. I also met some of the students from Zagreb, Croatia who are part of the program, as well. So, in total there are 30 of us from the U.S. and 5 from Croatia. I found them very easy to talk to and they are very nice. In fact, most of the people in our group are very nice. The only real complaint I have is that many of the students are about 5 years younger than me and they are more focused on getting drunk and goofing off. I'm not a stick-in-the-mud, but I understand the importance of not treating this like a Spring Break trip. Hopefully, after a few days people will slow down a bit so I can get to know them better.

After dinner, I tried to get to bed as early as possible. We had class today beginning at 9am. Right now, it is a little after 1pm (7am Indiana time) and things should be wrapping up soon. Class is pretty interesting, but I find the internet to be a little bit of a distraction. I am hoping to have more time to do updates in the evenings so I can concentrate during class. That's all for now. More to come soon!