You say potato...

One of the things about Croatia that I love is the more relaxed attitude toward work.  Kristian works 30-hour weeks, and that's considered full-time.  People take long breaks for coffee.  It's probably written in the Croatian constitution that everyone gets at least week at the seaside every year.  Of course, salaries are small and people are poor.  But working AS MANY HOURS AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN is not the cultural virtue that it is in the U.S.  People here like to slow down and spend time with friends and family.  If you "drop in" to a Croatian's house, even if she's a stranger and you're making a business call, she will drop whatever she's doing to make coffee and serve cookies...and you better not say you aren't hungry or thirsty!!

Of course, this easy-going, relaxed attitude is very annoying when you want something done.  We have been without internet at home for two weeks.  The tenant before us had the same kind of internet, and a guy came out to set up the modem and router.  But at the main office, they can't be bothered to switch on our service.  All they have to do is TURN ON THE DSL.  It's guaranteed to be on within 30 days of us requesting service.  Thirty days!!  To make matters worse, they don't quit sending you a bill, whether or not you actually have internet.  So we could be billed for a whole month of internet service that they didn't give us.

Since Kristian does freelance web design on the side, and I teach online, we both require internet for our jobs, and it's really a hardship not to have it. Croatia isn't like the US in that there's free wireless at every coffee shop, gas station, and fast food joint.  There are a couple coffee shops in town that MIGHT have internet, but it's down as often as not.

Oh well, the 30 days will be up by the time we're back from the sea--we're leaving tomorrow--so at least the annoyance is almost over.  But I was just thinking today....it takes about 1 day of no-internet-at-home for me to quit thinking "Croatians have such a healthy, balanced attitude toward work" and start thinking, "Croatians are so damned lazy!!!!"  :D

Eclipse happened here, too!

Last night, My long-suffering husband and I went to see Eclipse at the theater in Varazdin.  It had opened in bigger cities a long time ago but just made it to our theater: it's in this cool old 18th-century building a couple of blocks from our house.  I hadn't been in there before, but I was sooooo excited to go to what I imagined to be a cool old-school movie theater with historic charm!

Plus, the tickets cost only 15 kuna--less than $3--so I was thinking, "we should go to the movies more often!"  In a Croatian theater, you get a reserved seat with your movie ticket, so you can buy your ticket early and waltz into the theater at the last minute without having to worry about getting a bad seat.

Well, we sat on the last row, which, in retrospect, wasn't a good decision.  The theater was full of young teenagers, about half of whom were intoxicated, and the back row smelled of vomit and other bodily fluids that you might expect to find on the back row of a cheap movie theater attended mostly by teenagers. Ewwwwww!!!!  The theater did have some of those cool features I was hoping for: a balcony, a stage, and box seats in the back.  It's a great old building, but the sound system was simply a stack of stereo speakers on the stage, under the screen.  Honestly, I had trouble hearing the dialog.  Yes, yes, all the expected jokes about how Twilight movies don't have any unmissable dialog.  I don't care: that series is one of my guilty pleasures, and I want to eat up every line of teenage-melodrama-fraught dialog!

All in all, it was a fun evening, especially when Edward finally proposed to Bella, the teenage girls in the audience cheered and clapped, and Kristian slapped his hand over his face and groaned.  It really was a heroic sacrifice for him to go to that movie with me! But, as much as I wanted to be charmed by the historic theater, I think that when the fourth movie comes out I'm going to drag Kristian with me to Zagreb to the fancy multiplex.

I have bought the mansion of a love but not possessed it; or, Good news comes in threes!!

The two big clouds on my Croatian horizon have been this hateful apartment and my inability to find a job, and it looks like they're both dissipating...but on both fronts I'm in that tenuous phase when the step has been taken but the results haven't come through.
1.  We are currently paying rent on this adorable cottage:

I could not be more in love with it! It looks bigger than it is: the attic is unfinished, so we just have the bottom floor: bedroom, living room, little kitchen and 1.5 bath.  But, more importantly, a rose garden

And over the garden walls, a castle view!

Okay, it's only sort of a castle view, if you peer real hard over the neighbor's shrubbery.  But I LIVE NEXT DOOR TO A CASTLE!  

Kinda.  But we are still staying in this dump of a Jugoslavian sardine can.   Why? We're waiting for them to switch the internet service from the apartment to the house, and, like a good telecommuter, I follow the internet.  We could, in theory, go ahead and move, but then I'd have to come back to the apartment every day to work.  I'm not sure what could make grading more unappealing than it already is besides walking 20 minutes and climbing 5 flights of stairs to a stinky gross cave where there is no longer a coffee pot.  

2. It looks like I may have gotten a new online teaching job! I got an email yesterday from Rasmussen college saying they wanted to tentatively schedule me to teach starting in October, pending of course the requisite phone interview, paperwork, training, etc.  No word about how many classes or what it pays, but still, I'm so happy: if I do get this job and it pays about like my current online job, we can get a car!!  Plus, I'll actually be working something closer to a normal workweek instead of finishing my work at 9:30 and then twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the day (i.e. playing video games).  However, this job is not a done deal by a long shot, 

so it could all come to naught.  But in the meantime, I'm going to just hope for the best and enjoy my dreams of car ownership!

3.  Best of all, three week from today I'll be on the island of Vis on my honeymoon!!  Kristian and I are married, legally, but it doesn't feel like we are because there wasn't a religious ceremony and our parents weren't there.  I don't feel any more or less committed to him than I did before we signed the papers.  (after all, I sold my car and moved to the sardine can for him, and as distasteful as those things were, I'd still rather be here with him than in the U.S: comfortable but lonely!)  But on August 23rd we're having the ceremony with our parents on one island, and then hopping a ferry to our honeymoon on another one! It is going to be really nice to put on a white dress and stand in front of our parents and say our vows for real.