How will I feel?

Recently my friend Kathy asked me a question. She may not have been prepared for my long-winded answer! Her first-born is about to leave home and move away. Knowing that I have already experienced this (and indeed am about to have my last-born leave as well) she asked me "How will I feel?" Here is my response:

Empty. Not ready. Full of grief. Regret for things not done, not taught, not shared. Regret that your biggest chance to make an impact on her life has passed. Not knowing what the future holds for your relationship. Grief at not sharing your daily life together anymore - not ever really knowing her future friends, her experiences, how she spends her days.

Also, you will start to grieve for Kris. It will feel like the beginning of the end of being together as a family. When she first comes home, it will feel wonderful when all four of you are together. Like a precious gift that the last few months has taught you should not be taken lightly.

Give yourself permission to grieve. That was the biggest gift that my friend Donna gave to me. After months of unacknowledged grieving (not knowing it was grief, just really missing Ryan and feeling sad and unsettled), Donna identified the feeling and gave me permission to really feel it. Almost immediately the grief started to lessen. That in and of itself was a lesson to me.

Now, with Shelby getting ready to leave home, I am not overwhelmed with grief or that pre-empty nest syndrome. I feel excited, hopeful, full of plans for this next stage in my life. Watching your kids become full-fledged adults may, by necessity, be done at a distance, but there is still joy to be found there.

Leaving Sarajevo

I leave in 59 days and was thinking about my time here.

10 Things I Found Strange About Life in Sarajevo:

1. The police are obsessed with fog lights. Jeff likes to drive with his fog lights on and he's been pulled over 3 times for that offense. Anything else they ignore, but fog lights seem to be a big threat. Even the random stops they wave us through because of our diplomatic plates.
2. Parking on the sidewalks and any other flat surface. Anywhere seems to be fair game for parking - it's crazy. Last time I was in the U.S. I started to pull my tires up on the sidewalk somewhere and then I snapped out of it.
3. Parking BEHIND MY CAR. We're in a locked, secure garage, yet still I go downstairs and someone has parked immediately in front of my spot. WTH?!?!??!?!? In what universe is this okay? Drives me insane.
4. Fear of fresh air. I think it's known as "propu" but they have a belief that open windows are unhealthy and will make you sick. I opened my window once in the taxi and the guy practically had a coronary - yelling No and reaching across me to wind it back up.
5. PDA. We live next door to a large city park with lots of bunches. Young couples do absolutely everything but... Well, maybe they do that too. I'm walking the dogs right next to them - everyone is walking everywhere - and they just go nuts on these benches. Blech.
6. Fear of dogs. Many Bosnians are really scared of dogs. Not all. If they are observant muslims, and a dog touches them, they have to shower before they can pray. My poor friend Shereen tries to be a good sport, but I see her face when my dogs come and rub up against them. I know she's instantly trying to figure out when she's going to fit a second shower in!
7. No big motive for profit. There are a gazillion coffee places all over town. You can sit there for hours and sip one cup and they couldn't care less. They have nothing else to sell (no food at all) and even in the restaurants table turnover is of no concern. My sister would starve working as a waitress in this country!
8. Where's all the money coming from?!? Unemployment is supposed to be like 46% here. (Can you imagine if that was true in the U.S.? We freak out at 5%.) Yet I see so many new buildings going up - modern shopping centers and so forth. I'm told it's Mafia money but the fact remains that money is coming from somewhere.
9. People obey the traffic lights! Like really! The lights go like this: green, flashing green, yellow, red. People here will stop on the flashing green. No one goes through a yellow unless they were trapped in the intersection for some reason. They'd get run down in the U.S.!
10. Fear of large bills. This is not quite as true as it was the first 2 years. Change and small bills are a precious commodity. No one has change - not the markets, not the grocery stores. I've tried to buy a couple of things with a 20 and been turned away. At the markets, you can forget it. We used to hoard and fight over our change. That seems to have improved...or we've gotten better at being prepared!

10 Things I Will Miss In Sarajevo:

1. My gorgeous, light, airy, penthouse apartment. I really love this place.
2. The view from my apartment. We have a gorgeous view of the hillside on the other side of the river and it's just so beautiful - in every season.
3. Cevapi. Yum.
4. The bread at our favorite restaurant - Dveri. Jeff can reproduce anything and even he has not been able to conquer this bread. SO good.
5. Real Coke. Not that I drink a lot of Coke. But the Coke here is still made with real sugar, not corn syrup. Big difference.
6. NOT driving my car. We take our car out like once every 10 days - on average. Just no need to drive. We are surrounded by shops and only a 15 minute walk from the embassy.
7. The incredible scenery just 15 minutes out of town. Mountains, rock faces, rivers. Gorgeous.
8. Jeff. Since he won't be in Ohio.
9. My bookclub. I love my bookclub with its international flavor. I'm usually the only American and there's usually not two people from the same country there. Such interesting perspectives and such interesting book choices.
10. The beautiful mosques. We have everything from mosques that have existed since Ottoman times to very post-modern (looking like spaceship) type mosques. Gorgeous miniarets, copper roofs, etc.

Daily Show CNBC 030409

Are you kidding me??!?!?

Jews in Sarajevo

I find history interesting, and since my blog is entitled "What I'm thinking about today..." I decided to post this information that was just sent to me by the International Women's Club of Sarajevo which has scheduled a tour of the Synagogue and Jewish Museum in the old part of the city.

The first Jews were tracked in Bosnia in 1541, 400 hundred years ago. They were mostly artisans, merchants, pharmacists, and doctors. They built their own quarter, dubbed El Cortijo (the courtyard), in 1577 with permission from the pasha Siavush. The community built a synagogue in El Cortijo in 1580 with the help of a Turkish benefactor, in a building called Velika Avlija. By the end of the 16th century, the building where Velika Avlija stood became known as old Jewish Cathedral, Sarajevo’s first synagogue. In the 17th century, Jews of Ashkenazi descent began arriving in Sarajevo, fleeing persecution from Europe. The Jews already established in the city were of Sephardic descent, and the two communities remained separate until the advent of World War II.

A bad fate fell upon the Jewish community when the Austrians occupied Sarajevo in 1697. They burned and destroyed the city’s Jewish quarter, including the synagogue. When the Austrians were forced to return the city to the Ottomans in 1739, the Jews fared much better, and were granted officially recognition. By 1856, Jews had equal status before the law.

Throughout the next few centuries, Jews in Sarajevo prospered. The city became a major crossroads in the Balkans for Jewish life, and came to be known as Little Jerusalem. By the mid-19th century, every doctor in Sarajevo was Jewish, and when educated Jews began arriving from Europe in 1878, Jewish children began attending public school.

However, Jewish life in Sarajevo changed forever with the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. Before 1941, Sarajevo was home to some 8,000 to 12,000 Jews. Deportations to concentration camps run by Croatian fascists began that year, and by the end of the Holocaust, 85% of the Jewish population of Sarajevo had perished. Many who survived immigrated to Israel in 1948 and 1949.

In 1965, during ceremonies marking 400 years of Jewish presence in Bosnia, the Old Synagogue, though still owned by the remnant Jewish community, was converted into a city-run Jewish museum. Originally built in 1581, the Old Synagogue was one of 15 that functioned in the city before the Holocaust, when Sarajevo was a major Balkan center of Sephardi culture, and the city’s 12,000 Jews made up nearly 20 percent of the local population. Jewish communal services were shifted to an Ashkenazi synagogue, a grand, Moorish style temple built at the beginning of the 20th century, which was converted to include offices and function rooms as well as a sanctuary.

Taken...

This movie left my heart racing and made me vow to never let Shelby be out alone again. It's only more scary because this actually happens. But this movie moves so if you like thrillers you should like it.

I can't believe these girls!

Watch especially at 1:59 and 2:21 - but the whole thing is amazing.! Thanks, Eric Henning, for sharing this.

I recently was lucky enough to be able to contact my cousin through Facebook. As I'm trying to explain to my kids what a first cousin once removed is versus a second cousin, I came across this very useful chart. It's written from the point of view of how all the people relate to the person marked as ME.

Things I Wish Were Listed In My Profile

I recently re-met a friend from my youth (ELB) through facebook and reading her profile reminded me of how many things I would love to do yet haven't. It has made me refocus on those things and built the desire to one day be able to list them in MY profile.

1. Learn an instrument other than the piano (which I already play). Contestants are the clarinet, the mandolin, the harp, and the drums. I'm thinking clarinet is the most likely.
2. Become comfortable in a foreign language. (I don't dream as high as fluency.) I speak some Spanish, some German (more once I refresh), some Bosnian (didn't focus very much) and a few phrases in Arabic. I think I will focus on Spanish since I know the most of that, but I could be persuaded to make it Arabic.
3. Own a Vespa. I think. Although every time I think about this I can't justify a Vespa over a bicycle. Need to give that more thought.
4. Read every book. 'Nough said.
5. Get involved with dog rescue, possibly even becoming a foster for dogs rescued from puppy mills.
6. Travel to places I haven't made it to yet: Antarctica, African Safari, Vietnam, Scandinavia, Nova Scotia, the British Isles and Alaska. The last I include because I actually will be there via Cruise West in September for my 25th wedding anniversary with him.
7. Learn to play bridge.
8. Learn to scuba dive.
9. Snorkel through every "Top Places to Snorkel" list I come across.
10. Have grandkids. Lots of grandkids. I hear that it's a blast.
11. Go out to dinner with my sister, her treat, the night she gets her Environmental Engineering degree.
12. Learn to draw.
13. Learn to paint with watercolors.
14. Learn sign-language. Almost forgot this one, but I really would like to. I plan to take classes through the adult education classes in Cincinnati while I'm living there later this year.
15. Take dog-grooming so I can groom Sophie and save my family some money.
    
16. Volunteer at Drake Hospice Unit when I move to Cincinnati. That idea was formed during the hours that I spent there with my mom.
17. Train Maya as a hospital volunteer - she's the perfect dog for that as she is so quiet, so loving, and a sucker for being petted.
    
18. Walk. Through beautiful cities. Hike. Through our gorgeous National Park system.
19. Visit the Everglades and the Keys. I think I might quite like Florida based on the time I've spent in Destin.
20. Volunteer at the Cincinnati Zoo. Maybe I could be a giraffussus trainer.
21. Investigate becoming a vegetarian or moving in that general direction. The fact that I so love the occasional steak may be a problem. I could give up meat on a regular basis quite easily. Saying I'll never have a ribeye again? I'm just not there yet. Maybe I should just start where I am. Oh, and fish. And bacon. Yes, I have a way to go, I think.
22. Learn to make stained glass.
23. Become an expert crochet artist. Emphasis on the artistry.
24. Get my degree. Finally. Without taking money out of the "mouths" of my children (literally, their college educations come first) nor time out of the life of my poor, sacrificing husband. Still working on figuring out how to do this so I get want I want (a degree in International Studies focusing on human rights) without the negatives to everyone else.
25. Up my productivity quotient. This applies to everything, actually.
    

Ellen DeGeneres ~ I Love Jesus But I Drink A Little (HQ)

Congratulations Ry!

I was all giddy today because Ryan told me of his promotion. It's fun that I'm still capable of being so excited about an event in his life when so much of his life is lived far removed from me and will continue to be so as he continues his career and starts his new life with his wife, Jenise. He is now an E-4, a Petty Officer. I have no idea what that means exactly, and how the promotion process works exactly, but it doesn't matter. I celebrate his good news! I've been promised a photo of the ceremony.

Rokia Traore

Everytime I "discover" a new musical artist, it makes me wonder how many other artists are out there that I may never even hear of. It all seems so random. My latest "discovery" (the quotes are owing to my awareness that the word discovery suggests a degree of seeking that never actually existed) is Rokia Traore. I am so enjoying her album Tchamantche.

Graffiti written by an unknown Dutch soldier on a wall of the army barracks
in Potocari, Srebrenica, 1994/95. Royal Netherlands Army troops, as part of
the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992­95, were
responsible for protecting the Srebrenica safe area.

I saw this poster on a wall of a local printing company here in Sarajevo. The fineprint underneath the image was very small and I had to get up close to see it. I had stared at this poster all through our meeting trying to figure out why someone would have this on their wall. Of course, once I was able to read it, the irony of this being written by a peacekeeping soldier was not lost on me.

ISFJ

In Honor of Dianne...

I recently ordered a book based on a phrase in the subtitle - "one anothering." (Authentic Relationships: discover the lost art of one anothering by Wayne and Clay Jacobsen) I loved the sound of that phrase. Today was my first chance to pick it up and start reading and I hadn't even made it out of the preface before I knew I would love this book. But this post is less about the book and more about...Dianne. The author pulls out of the New Testament almost two dozen examples of how we "one another" each other and as I looked through the list I realized that my friendship with Dianne includes, I think, every one of them. I have other friendships that come close - but only the quotidian nature of our Gmail chat (quotidian's for you, D) has allowed us to so completely, in my opinion, "one another" each other.

Here is the author's list of where "one anothering" can be found in scripture:

• Loving one another John 13:34
• Forgiving one another Ephesians 4:32
• Accepting one another Romans 15:7
• Bearing with one another Ephesians 4:2
• Being devoted to one another Romans 12:10
• Honoring one another above ourselves Romans 12:10
• Greeting one another 2 Corinthians 13:12
• Being hospitable to one another 1 Peter 4:9
• Being kind and compassionate to one another Ephesians 4:32
• Sharing with one another Hebrews 13:16
• Carrying one another's burdens Galatians 6:2
• Building up one another 1 Thessalonians 5:11
• Encouraging one another daily Hebrews 3:13
• Comforting one another 1 Thessalonians 4:18
• Stimulating one another to love and good deeds Hebrews 10:24
• Instructing one another Romans 15:14
• Admonishing one another Colossians 3:16
• Praying for one another James 5:16
• Confessing your sins to one another James 5:16
• Being of the same mind toward one another Romans 12:16
• Submitting to one another Ephesians 5:21

I've actually said this to Dianne before - Everyone should have a Dianne in their life.

Note to Dianne: My comment inbox awaits your snarky reply.

Congratulations Ryan & Jenise!

Civil Courage

At last night's meeting of the International Women's Club of Sarajevo a speaker came with quite an interesting background and mission. She was a journalism student and journalist who then went to medical school and became a cardiologist back in 1980. She lived her whole life up until the war started in Belgrade. I learned only this morning, through other reading, that our speaker, Svetlana Broz, is the granddaughter of Josip Broz. He is better known as Marsal Tito - leader of Yugoslavia.

Once the war started, she felt that as a human being she could not remain in her safe home in Belgrade while a mere 100-150 kilometers away people were dying. She set out to offer her services as a cardiologist to anyone who was in need of them. What she discovered was that people were much less interested in talking to her about their medical conditions than they were in talking to her about their own experiences with people with extraordinary courage who had helped them. These acts of courage usually involved someone taking the part of a person who was not of their ethnicity against a large group of their "own" people. Eventually, she put down her medical bag, so to speak, and picked up her journalism tools of recorder, tapes, and so forth. She went out and just let people talk and tell her their stories. Eventually they were compiled into a book titled Good People in an Evil Time.

Her mission now is carried out by the organization she is involved in, Gariwo. http://www.gariwo.org/portal/

They give seminars and 8 day intensive training sessions to the youths of this region (from Slovenia to Kosevo and between) on civil courage. Here I'll quote from their website:

What is civil courage? It is the individual's capacity to defend humanity, regardless of faith or ethnicity, in the face of negative authority urging him instead to harm or kill his neighbour. Righteous people personify this opposition to harmful social norms. Their universal message of choice and independence of mind - in other words, civil courage - fosters trust in humanity and urges all of us to reflect critically on our own past and present behaviour.


They bring young people together from all different etno-groups - ages 18-25 - and although they arrive very nervous, they weep at the end of the 8 days because they do not want to leave each other. They keep in touch and even visit each other's homes which apparently is a very big deal to their parents at home who are not keen on housing the child of their "enemy." A few of the youths have even started small NGOs of their own in their hometowns. The director of the seminars was assassinated on February 22, 2007. Dusko Kondor was his name. He was gunned down in his home, through a locked, bullet-proof door. That is what she told us. His family has been given safe-protection in an unnamed European country.

They are in the process of trying to establish a Center for Civil Courage here in Sarajevo so that they can "train the trainers" in order to meet the call for admittance to their seminars.

They have established a Dusko Kondor Award for Civil Courage that is apparently quite a hot potato. She is meeting with one family in the Serb part of Bosnia today to try to convince them to accept this award. They fear for their lives if they do and she suspects that it will be held off for a better time.

Her talk engendered a lot of emotional feedback from the Bosnian women who are part of our group. The raw pain in their voices as they emphasized a point she had made or told a story of their own was hard to listen to at times.

I was surprised at how much I still don't know about this area and the pain that is leftover from the war.

Lake Bled, Slovenia

We're off to Lake Bled in Slovenia today. This magical looking lake is somewhere I've wanted to go since we lived in Bavaria. I was not as geographically savvy back then as I am now and for some reason I thought Slovenia was on the other side of Hungary and that it was quite far from Germany. In actuality - where it will take us 8 hours today to drive there would have probably taken only 3 hours before. Oh well. This photo is not mine - it was captured from the web - but I will replace it with a photo that Jeff takes next week.

Heading Home...

Our last day we had to check out of our hotel at noon, although our flight didn't leave until midnight. We took the shuttle into Na'ama Bay which reminds me very much of an Egyptian Gatlinburg. That was kind of fun. We walked through a hotel I'd like to remember for future reference - http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/FAYHITW-Hilton-Sharm-El-Sheikh-Fayrouz-Resort/index.do;jsessionid=A32892755AEDA652C478C057F6606B03.etc21?ctyhocn=FAYHITW&brand_id=HI&brand_directory=/en/hi/&xch=1450348,ZBXTTAVBQQOOOCSGBIV2VCQKIYFC5UUC - it's also a Hilton but it looked much nicer and it is right on the boardwalk into Na'ama Bay's shopping area.

At the airport's metal detector, the guy with the wand also asked Shelby if she was married, how old she was, and why she wasn't married as he remarked that he too was unmarried. Can you imagine the TSA guys doing that at a U.S. airport?!?!? This was like her 4^th inquiry and at this point Shelby was pretty creeped out.

Now for the Learning Part of our Trip

We arrived at the domestic terminal in Cairo and it took an hour to get our luggage. AN HOUR?!?!? I was pretty panicked at this point as our flights had all been booked separate and I figured since we now couldn't possibly arrive 2 hours ahead for our flight, we were probably going to be out of luck - and this in the middle of the night. There are no signs from the domestic terminal telling you how to get to the international terminal, and there are more than one of those! Everyone I asked, as we rushed along, gave us a different answer AND wanted to sell us something. By the time we found someone to give us a ride to the right terminal I was practically yelling in his face JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH?!? That was what I was reduced to - I KNOW YOU WANT MONEY FROM ME - JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH!! It was a good 15 minute ride to the right terminal and at this point I was coming pretty close to losing it. The thought of being stuck in Egypt in the middle of the night and having to buy new airplane tickets because we missed our flight was not a comforting one.

There were two lines for security - one had a few people in it - the other had many people. I went to the one with few people and they refused - for no reason - to let us go through there. I swear it is one huge racket. This is all before we can get to the counter to check-in. The security guy then wanted to see our tickets - our E-Tickets - and I practically caused an international incident trying to explain to this moron that e-tickets, by definition - don't exist in a form that I can give him! As you can imagine, I was pretty worked up as I saw our time ticking away. When we finally made it through security, some guy had loaded all our luggage on a cart and taken it to the checkin counter which - I kid you not - was 10 feet away. Jeff asked me what I had that he could give the guy AS A TIP for ripping us off and I just turned away before I murdered someone. Found out later that Jeff ended up giving him $12 to make him go away because all he had was a 10 Euro bill. 10 Euro for carrying our luggage - our luggage that has wheels that we can easily pull ourselves - TEN FEET. Yes, I'm still angry even now. At this point I told Jeff that he needed to take over all conversations with Egyptians, including the desk agent, because I was going to get arrested if he didn't. We got our boarding passes and rushed down the hall in order to stand in yet another line for 30 whole minutes. I really thought we would never make it out of there but we literally ran from passport control onto the plane itself. Phew… As we sat down in our seats, and I tried not to cry tears of frustration, I told Jeff that there was NO #%^@b(# way that we are ever moving to Egypt. Egypt was top of my list before this experience.

SO - to recap - IF YOU GO TO SHARM - which I highly recommend - get a direct international flight to Sharm el Sheikh and save yourself all the hassle of trying to make a transfer in the hell that is Cairo Airport. And only stay at the Hyatt - yes, expensive, but oh so worth it!

Coming home was oh so sweet. What a sense of relief it is to walk back through your own front door. Happy Day.