Batman and Jedis

Things have been quiet here this past week.  Last Saturday, Geoff and I had our first solo date night since we arrived.  We have gone out with friends and shared a babysitter a few other times, but Saturday was just us.  Our sitter, Becky, has kept Liam before, and she is the sitter of choice for several other Embassy families, so we felt very comfortable leaving Liam in her care.  After she arrived, we left for dinner at Tavola, an Italian style eatery downtown.  We had wine and an appetizer; Geoff had the gnocchi and I had a steak.  It was delicious, and quite the bargain at $97 KM ($61.98 US).  After dinner, we walked to the movie theater where we finally got to see Batman.  2 tickets, a box of popcorn, and one coke cost only $18.50 KM ($11.82 US)!  The movie was great and was well worth seeing in the theater, especially since 5 hours of Becky's services only ran us $50 KM ($31.95 US).  This was the cheapest date night Geoff and I have ever had!

On the home front, Liam's potty training is back on track.  After a weekend of hard-core, no-holds-barred training, Liam is now close to being fully trained.  He still doesn't tell us very often, but he no longer fights us when we take him to the potty.  I am hopeful that it won't be long now.

As a reward for his success on the potty, Liam got to watch bits and pieces of "Yoda."  He has a Star Wars ABC book (you may remember his brainwashing reading video from earlier this year), so he knows the characters.  As a result of watching some Star Wars, we now have a Jedi knight in training.  He loves to fight with light sabres most afternoons and evenings.  It is fun (although a bit repetitive), and Geoff is glad to have a fellow Star Wars junkie to hang out with.

Our love to all!

Liam's new bike

The plan was to wait for Liam's birthday, but we just couldn't!  Liam has been talking about a "blue bike" at school that he rides when they are outside, and he can't get enough of Geoff's bike either.  So we told ourselves that if we waited to give the bike on his birthday, Liam would quickly run out of enjoyable weather to ride the bike.  Boy are we glad we gave it to him.  When Liam saw his bike (which is a type of balance bike that teaches kids balance whereas tricycles and bikes with training wheels don't...supposedly he'll be able to ride a "real bike" sooner that way), he took off running, jumped right on it, and we almost haven't been able to get him away from the bike since.  See his joyful face for yourselves.

Vrela Bosne (Bosnian Springs)

This past Sunday, we joined our new friends, Josh, Anna, and Lane Saxton (who relocated from northern Virginia about a month after us) at Vrelo Bosne, the Bosnian Springs.  After some meet-up confusion due to their being two (and maybe more) points of entry, we enjoyed the fall-like outing very much.  First we walked down the tree-lined path.  It was gorgeous, and lots of people were taking advantage of the cool temperatures.  Along the way, we saw lots of older Austro-Hungarian style homes, probably built as retreats from the city.

Once we got to the park, Lane and Liam fed the ducks and swans before heading over to the playground.  After some playtime, we sat at a cafe where the kids had some ice cream and the adults had coffee.  After our snack, we threw some rocks in the water before heading for home.  Because we came from the city end of the park, we took advantage of the horse-drawn carriages to get back to our car.  We had a blast and will make the Vrela Bosne one of our go-to spots as long as the weather lets us.

The tree-lined path

 Gorgeous scenery

 Mama, Liam, Anna, and Lane

 The Springs

 Feeding the birds

Liam found the climbing parts of the playground quickly. 

 Our carriage

The Tunnel of Life

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to tour the Tunnel of Life with some other Embassy family members.  It was pretty impressive, I must say, to think that this tunnel 1) saved Sarajevo and 2) was never destroyed by the Serbian forces.  Here is a short video that will help give you perspective.  That is our guide in the video.  It was his family's house that hid the tunnel.


Sarajevo's tunnel of life by euronews-en

Our guide served in the war, joining the Bosnian forces at 17 years old.  His bias was quite obvious (ripping the UN for not allowing arms to be shipped into the country), but if I had gone through what that man must have, I'm not sure I could avoid bias either.  The tour included a video, which was a tad too long at 20 minutes, but which had some interesting video of people and soldiers building the tunnel and then using the tunnel to sneak food and weapons into Sarajevo.  Then we were able to go into the house (now a museum) and then actually walk through 25 meters of the tunnel itself.  It was humbling to be there, and despite my sorority girl smile and stoop pose below, I was in awe of what these people did to survive during nearly 4 years of siege.

It was also informative.  One thing our guide said that stuck with me is that a lot of people mistakenly think of the Bosnian War as a religious war, pitting Muslims against Christians.  That is not true.  It was a political war fought over territory and as a direct result of the break-up of then Yugoslavia.  I certainly thought it was an ethnic war due to massacres like Srebenica.  Centuries old hatred bubbled up during the political war to cause such ethnic-based killings, but the war began due to similar reasons our own Civil War began.  Territories were seceding and wanting to set up their own governments.  Many people didn't want that to happen, especially when a city like Sarajevo was in one of those territories.  There were Serbs and Croats in Sarajevo who fought with the Bosnians to try and save the city, so to dismiss the Bosnian War as a religious war leaves out a great deal of the reasons behind the conflict.

It was a very worthwhile visit, and Geoff and I will happily take any visitors who wish to see it for themselves.

The front of the house that hid the tunnel.

 Back of the house after entering

 Map explaining the siege. 

The airport (& tunnel underneath it) are on the right hand side of the map, 

in the narrowest white space.

Entrance to the tunnel

Outside of which there was evidence of attack

 Going down the stairs

 The tunnel

 Me in the tunnel

(in my posing defense, everyone had to stoop to walk in the tunnel, even me!)

 Our tour group and guide

A sobering sight--a list of the over 11,000 names of the civilians killed in the siege.
The war took over 100,000 lives.

Jahorina visit #2--wild blueberries

The first weekend of our buddy Chris Rawls's visit, we had an opportunity to join other American families for some wild blueberry picking on Jahorina Mountain.  It was a gorgeous day, and the quiet and coolness of the mountains was a welcome treat.  We grabbed a bucket (Yes, the same one we use for carsickness as it's our only bucket.  Yes, we washed it out.) and started hiking upward, picking the tiny berries as we went.  The wild blueberries are much smaller than our domesticated versions back home, so we had to pick a lot in order to make blueberry muffins the next day.  It was a great little break from the city, and we plan to go back again soon.

 Picking blueberries is fun!

 Mama and Chris helped too.

 Dada joins the fun.

Geoff and Chris hiked toward the top and captured this shot.

Liam is clinging to my back.

 Our second visitor, Chris!

Can't wait to see this view during winter!

Jahorina, visit 1

While starting to write about our blueberry picking this past weekend, I realized that I failed to post about our first visit to Jahorina Mountain (site of 1984 Olympics women's skiing events) when I found the pictures while uploading shots from our second trip.

Our first trip was of an exploratory nature.  We had heard there was a waterfall that wasn't too hard to reach, so we packed a snack picnic and headed out.  It was a gorgeous day, clear and cool, and after dodging some sheep and cows (complete with old timey cow bells) along the mountain road, we reached Jahorina.  We set out our little picnic, only to discover Liam had no interest in sitting and eating.  He wanted to run around and apparently fly off the cliff.  He kept saying, "To infinity...AND BEYOND!" while flinging his arms out.  It scared us to death, especially while he was climbing around on the scenic ledge.  We never made it to the waterfall due to Liam's inability to listen.  We packed it up after a couple of very loud and embarrassing time-outs.  To complete the Griswold outing, we stopped at a restaurant on our way down to grab some lunch, only to be told there was no more food after we had already ordered drinks.  So we had to sit and drink our European lukewarm beers while we watched another family eat their pizza and salad.  We gave up and went home.  Here's evidence of our day.

 It stated out okay.

 Gorgeous views!

 Flying attempt #1

 Love this shot!

 Flying attempt #2

Last of the time-outs before heading home

the 4th of July

A friend just e-mailed us some pictures from the Embassy's 4th of July party (which was a TON of fun, despite the rain.  Liam got to sit on the stage with the bluegrass band due to his obvious love of the music.)

We attempted to capture our first family photo in Sarajevo.  Here are the results.  Judge for yourselves.

 Not bad...Geoff's not looking at the camera though

 Cute and fun, but Liam's "cheese" face is a bit over the top

 All are looking at the camera, but Liam is clearly over the camera at this point

Now EVERYONE looks awful.  Oh well, we tried.