The Dedication, Sibenik & Split

Tuesday was the big day, the dedication of the site. Vesna had meetings with us through the weekend and on Monday to get everything arranged for the event, making sure the site was ready, determining the content of the dedication and arranging a performance. A week or so before, Vesna talked to Winterbottom about the dedication and he volunteered a couple people to perform, myself among them. So the morning of the dedication everyone else leisurely went down at 10:15 while I scrambled running into Kampor and back at the last minute to get things for my outfit.

There was a presentation in the administration building by Vesna and a powerpoint narrated by Winterbottom that made us tear up. It covered the whole process from site analysis to future projections of what the plants will look like. Then the whole audience, over 50 people, including press got up and moved down to the site. We stood on the road looking into the garden while a two minute performance to soft relaxing music happened with performers showing the potential uses for the site like reading, playing music, gardening, physical therapy, exercise, talking etc. It was intended to show the audience how the garden will be used by not just the patients but the staff and visitors as well.

As their soft music came to a close I situated myself near the entrance at the front of the crowd and got ready. A moment later a loud reggaeton beat came over the speakers set up in the shelter. Carl moved down into the plaza and did a back flip out of Biruk's hands; the audience on the street started to cheer and on my cue I Cha-Cha'd my way out into the site by the entrance to the boardwalk. The rest of the performance is a blur, I know Carl and I met at the center of the boardwalk, jumped down into the plaza and danced very fast to the very energetic, fun song. Vesna wanted people to understand that the site is multi-versatile, and because dance is therapeutic and exciting she wanted it as an exclamation point at the end of the dedication.

After the bow at the end much of the audience came down into the plaza and learned two salsa steps from Carl then everyone danced in the plaza. All of us students, a lot of the staff, even some patients came down to dance. Then, because it's Croatia and I don't understand a lot of it St. Nicholas came out and gave everyone candy and sticks spray painted gold with ribbons attached. I moved through hugging everyone, Vesna, our volunteers, even the kitchen and laundry staff came out to see what was going on and I hugged them goodbye too.

After the dedication a few of us took one last walk through the site. Seeing it completely finished, shiny and new is surreal. Now we have to hand it over to the users, the people that will love it, hate it, maintain it and vandalize it. I wish we could have stayed just a few days longer to see how it's used; but such is life. The project is finished, our job is done and it's time to move on.
--

The next morning we met Marco in the driveway with all of our bags in tow. I think my red backpack developed an attitude problem being used as a dirty clothes hamper for two and a half months, if possible it has become more cumbersome and definitely more heavy even without my work boots and several articles of clothing I'm leaving here. It grumbled and groaned but I eventually got everything into it and it into the van.
Then we drove away, and left our island, the hospital, the project and everyone we've met, off to continue the adventure together for the time being.

Having stayed out very late the night before I slept almost the entire way to Split, which is on the coast, further south than Zadar. On the way we stopped in Sibenik, an old city on a steep hill that has spectacular, steep, mysterious stairways.

 I immediately took off up one of the small twisty ones between two rows of houses, then another and another and another until I reached the gates of the cemetery at the top of the hill (somehow I always end up in graveyards). The cemetery butts up against St. Michele's castle on the very apex of the hill but the road from the city was closed and gated. Over the castle wall I could hear heavy machinery breaking rocks apart. No matter, I hopped the wall and lowered myself down the six or so feet to the path below.

The castle from what I can tell is just the outside wall right now, piles and piles of stones are within it where the construction was happening. I made sure the construction guys saw me before I walked to a part they weren't working on, where the road continued on the outside wall. The view from the castle was spectacular and definitely worth some mild trespassing. From up there I could see all along the coast in either direction, the entire city, new and old town rolling over the hilly landscape. In the bright afternoon sun it looked like a perfect depiction of paradise.

---

Another few sleepy hours in the van and we arrived in Split. A biggish city centered around a walled city center complex, Diocletian's Palace.

 At first glance old town Split feels a lot like Venice minus the canals. They used the same kind of stone, the buildings create narrow alleys with the same verticality, and there are small plazas everywhere that have strings of lights across for Christmas.

 All of old town slopes gently down to the water where there was recently a giant renovation project that made the waterfront very comfortable and walkable. There are vendors all along the water selling candy, Christmas decorations, coffee, beer and mulled wine.

Split also for some reason has many many shoe stores and book stores. I had to put on the blinders to keep from going into bookstores because I cannot be trusted in them and my luggage is already over packed.

Winterbottom arranged one last field trip for us out of Split, on Saturday we met Marco at one and drove about fifteen minutes outside of the city to Salona, an awesome Roman ruin, complete with a coliseum.

Split was relaxing, we took it easy, wandered the streets, ate delicious food, drank delicious wine and spent time enjoying each other's company. Our second and final night in Split we were all at the waterfront at one of the shack/bars when Winterbottom told us goodbye. He had to leave the program a few days early and fly to China for another project. I'll see him again in Seattle, but watching him walk away marked the beginning of the end of us as a group, and I think it struck a chord with everyone.

A Giant Storm and Pre-Mature Nostalgia: Last Week in Rab

Everything was coming to a close with the site, the plants are in, the structures are completely done. We were planning on being finished last Wednesday, the water feature got painted, tested and it works!

A few minor adjustments here and there, but it works, and works beautifully. We somehow have been very lucky with the weather so far, the days have been sunny, and if not really warm, not very cold either. Great for doing construction and getting projects done quickly. By the time we were finished last Wednesday the plan was only to work a half day Thursday to get some of the final cleanup and details done.

Thursday, however, had different plans for us. 

We woke up to rain. Hard rain, and wind as well. Tentatively I dressed in rain gear and headed down with everyone while we started the last projects, cleaned up and moved trash off the site and out of our shop/garage. As the morning went on the rain didn't let up though, lightning and thunder rolled in and parked on top of the island, splitting the sky with light and sound every ten minutes.

By late morning torrential, apocalyptic and dangerous rain started. I've never seen rain and hail like that before. Within minutes the road and gutters were like rivers dumping water into a completely overrun drain at the bottom of the hill. On the site water pooled in the plaza immediately and dirt from the planting beds washed down into the gravel pathways. We took shelter in the garage and under the covered structure and soon the staff called it a day. It would have been dangerous and stupid to attempt to keep working in weather like that.

Through the day the storm never really went away, the rain would let up from time to time but lighting and thunder continued into the night. That evening the power was knocked out at the apartments, and as the official representative of the boonies in the program I went around to each apartment leaving candles and warning about the "1 flush rule". 

The walk down to dinner in the hospital was memorable and terrifying. Straight out of Shutter Island at this point walking between the dark buildings to the dining hall. 

"If lightning lights up figures wandering slowly toward us, I'm turning tail and running" one guy said. 

"I'll be right there with you." I agreed. 

Friday morning I was afraid to go to the site, the damage could have been really bad, and I didn't want to spend the weekend fixing it. Luckily there wasn't much damage, some washout from the planting beds and there was a large puddle at the front of the water feature that we would have to dig a trench and lay a new drainage pipe to fix. Digging the trench stabbed a my heart a little, the area was finished and seeing it completed and checked off the list then ripping it up hurts. Physically hurts. I've had to do it only a few times, but each time a little bit of your soul dies. I pulled out the plants we had put in the day before, under a few inches of water and moved them to higher ground, then we dug out a trench that will house the piping along the side of the water feature and under the boardwalk to the perf pipe on the other side that leads to the main drain.

 Other than that everything seemed to be fine, our structures handled the wind, the water feature was full to the brim with rain that will have to be taken out so the mosaic can be cleaned and a couple other little things like that.

---

Most people went away for the weekend, but I wanted to stay and say goodbye to the island. On the free days I hiked a little to a part I'd never been, went back to my favorite coffee shops, and read in the sunshine in Rab for a short time. The island has become home, a temporary home for sure. But home none the less. Preparing emotionally to leave it and probably never come back isn't easy. Rab has a very unique culture to it, one I don't always understand, but it is charming.

I have met some wonderful people here on Rab, not to mention falling in love with the participants in the program. It's hard to think how unlikely it is that we will ever be in the same room again. Never again will I wake up and say good morning to my roommate, or ride into town in Luka's gigantic lime green van aka " The Candy Machine," or walk down to the dining hall arm in arm with Theresa, Patrick, Mark, or Sean.

Right now, everyone is coming up to get their clothes that we just wheeled back up from the laundry room, sorted and organized. The girls usually pick through the clothes first, generally there is an exclamation or two of: "I can't find my leggings!"
I hear Winterbottom coming up the stairwell making Luka and Carl laugh along behind him, figuring out plans for our final goodbye dinner. Even though it's just the workings of laundry day, it makes me sad to think that it will never happen again. I'd better enjoy it while I've got it.

I wonder if it's because back at home in 'real life' big changes like this happen more gradually when they are less formalized. Here, there is a tangible day when it will all be over. This great experiment will be done and I'll only have memories and pictures and a completed park half a world away to prove that it happened.

Every moment is precious.

Especially this one.

The Beginning of the End: Last Construction

Here we are at week 8...*le sigh*


Tuesday was my birthday and along with a wonderful googley-eye-glasses wake up from my roommate, my fellows planned an executed a surprise party for me at the Lavender Palace, complete with toilette paper streamers, balloons and impromptu dance lessons. I felt very celebrated cared for. Also last week was Thanksgiving and we asked the kitchen staff if they could cook us a turkey, then we each made our own dishes and brought them down to the dining hall for dinner. We had almost all the students, faculty, and even our favorite volunteer from the job site come to the meal. There was lots of hugging, laughing and thankfulness. With dessert (and my specialty chocolate banana cream pie), mulled wine and eggnog.
All in all it was a warm and fuzzy kind of week.


I'm sorry my friends at home, I love you, but I really don't want to leave. The project is coming together, it's at a point of completion where I want to hang out in it all the time (and so do the patients). The paving is finished, the stone walls have been finished for quite awhile now. We just put the mosaic in the water feature (and I put in an octopus, yay!)

 the dirt for the planting beds arrived and we planted the two main beds today, right now the big project is helping weld the metal pieces for the structure and putting up the columns, beams, rafters etc.

I'm enjoying watching the last major features on the site get finished, the structure and the water feature. The structure is two structures, a smaller, completely covered one on the middle level of the seating area and a very very large arbor on the upper seating area that covers the entire upper paved area. We treated all the wood with preservative this week in preparation for putting it up this weekend.

That's me with a drill - be proud Mom!

We poured the concrete footings for the structures a million years ago. Since we poured them a lot about the structures has changed because of materials, budget, comments from a structural engineer, Vesna and various other reason. But since we have these footings already we had to make them work and found a way, sometimes designing as we went. The columns were put up a few days ago, set into the post anchors (the metal cradles stuck in the concrete) made level and held in with support boards until they were bolted into place. Then with the help of ladders and scaffolding and a few strong people we put up the 6"x6" beams and sandwich beams and bolted them to the columns, then put the thinner rafters on in the other direction, then sheeting boards, then waterproofing fabric and metal sheeting.

Watching the process is really interesting. I saw four thick pieces of wood become the outline of a cube, then something more or less like a jungle gym, then obviously a structure, then a finished structure. All over the course of a couple days.

The structures look awesome, and with their profile on site it's beginning to look finished. We are still working hard but there are fewer jobs to do as one by one projects get completed. It's exciting, to watch it all come together, now just last details and cleanup type work is left (and making sure the water feature actually works. We'll see that one tomorrow.)

Next week we have the dedication, which will be some kind of ceremony involving some big-wigs from the hospital, a ribbon cutting, slide show, and maybe a performance in the site. After that we are off to Split and Zagreb for the final leg of our journey.
In two weeks I'll be on a plane home.


Caitlin's Chocolate Banana Cream Pie:

You need:
A pie plate
Cinnamon Graham Crackers,
1 1/2 sticks butter,
chocolate bars/ baker's chocolate(but with lots of powdered sugar)
bananas,
vanilla pudding, (sugar, mix, milk)
1 cup heavy whipping cream,
A few handfuls of powdered sugar
a little vanilla

- Crush graham crackers in a bowl into crumbs, - melt down the butter and add to crumbs and mix until all are coated and sticky,
-Press the crumbs/butter into the pie dish making a thin layer on the bottom and up the sides to the edge -put in freezer
-Make the pudding as directed, or if you are even more awesome and have time, from scratch.  - set aside to firm up a bit.
-Melt the chocolate with a little bit of cream and spread it onto the now firm crust
-Slice a banana and set the pieces into the chocolate
-Pour the pudding over the bananas and chocolate, smooth it out,
-Add powdered sugar, vanilla and cream and whip it! A lot! Until the "stiff peaks" form and you've got whipped cream but stop before you get butter.
-Scoop it out on top of the pudding, smooth it, make it pretty, clean the edges of the pie plate and let it set in the fridge for awhile before eating.
(you can also add more bananas to the top with drizzled chocolate on top)
-Eat your sweet banana deliciousness, sharing encouraged but not required ;)

Lessons from Strays

I am continually surprised, excited and happy to see that whatever you want to call it, the Universe, God or the random occurrences of events that is Life has a way of sending exactly what is needed when it's needed, even if you don't understand it at the moment.

The other day we had a free day and everyone went to Rab, hiking, biking, swimming or a mix of them all, it was a day off but I know I over did it a bit. I was already exhausted and should have taken more time to do nothing and recover. But the way things played out I found myself alone in Rab, separated from my friends without a cell phone on a Sunday so I had no way to buy a card to use one of the few payphones in town. I wandered through the now familiar streets, enjoying the scenery but progressively getting more and more tired and downtrodden. A little down in the dumps spurred on by physical tiredness and situational frustration.
I was about to give up trying to find my friends and start the long walk home by myself when a familiar little black cat ran up to me from a side alley.

Urchin is a kitten originally "adopted" by a woman in my program who gave him enough food to keep going when he had a hurt paw and an eye infection preventing him from hunting. When she first helped him he was emaciated and probably only a few days from starving. We checked on him a few weeks later and he was doing much better with his paw and eye healing. And here he appeared again.

He came right up to me, rubbing on my legs and mewing familiar greeting. I gave him a pet and continued my walk, him trotting along beside me all the way across town. When I stopped to take pictures he would lay down and roll in the dust or sit and patiently wait. When he was weaving in and out of my feet too much I picked him up and cuddled the little skinny body, feeling him relax against my chest.

I walked him back to his regular stomping grounds, the little park and church at the far end of the peninsula. I sat down cross legged and set him down on my lap as the sun started to go down. He immediately cuddled next to me and fell asleep.

In truth, I cannot bring Urchin home with me. Nor can I feed him for much longer, get him shots, take him to the vet, or guarantee him a long and healthy life. But on that Sunday I could hold him and give him a safe place to nap for a few minutes in the sunshine. In all the roughness that is and is going to be his life he got a moment of warmth and security. He kept me company when I couldn't find mine, my little five minute friend; he reminded me of the importance of finding beauty in unfortunate situations. A lesson I needed a little nudging with at that moment.

Soon

Urchin woke up, yawned, stretched and hopped off my lap. The sleek little cat lead me to the door of the church, mewed at me a few times and went inside. Instead of following, I turned and started the walk back along the water at a dawning dusk. Where I found my friends.

Hell Week: Starting Construction plus Adventures in Trespassing

Dead week, hell week, the week of eternal doom. This is an event of many names. The frustrations and sleeplessness are legendary among students and those working on deadlines everywhere. And it seems it has also followed us to Croatia.

After our review on Friday, Vesna and her team looked over all the designs, weighed pros and cons and picked the base design to build the final from - and it was my group's! There were a few parts she didn't like, and parts from other designs that she wanted added but it was nice to know we had been on the right track in our vision for the site.

After our lovely weekend dancing and hiking in Zadar, the groups were re-configured for the next part of the process - details. There is a group for stonework, the water feature, boardwalk, shelter structure and design synthesis which is my group. Our job was to re-design the area that will be built to better match what Vesna wants  in the final, work everyone else's designs into the final and eventually produce a master plan.

The first day or so the some of the other groups didn't all have a lot to do while we were figuring out the final, while we were designing and problem solving as fast as possible. Now that we were down to detail level decisions seemed so much more important and impacting that we really had to do it right. EXACTLY where the entrance will be, how the boardwalk curves into the plaza and how the water feature works into all of that without having awkward dead space. Then the other groups got into full swing and had to furiously get the detail work down on paper or CAD so we can transcribe them into the real world.

But because of the nature of the time limit of design/ build projects we were under a crazy time crunch. For example the arborist came on Tuesday and we had to know exactly which trees needed to go so the maintenance guys could cut them on Wednesday. Then Thursday the excavator started cutting the foundations and leveling our seating area. We had to get the footings for the structure poured and the crushed rock ready for the rock walls on Friday because the stone masons were coming to teach us to do walls on Saturday.

We had to work as fast as we could to even have measurements to have locations to tell the guy with the machine where to put the dirt. In some cases we were still designing the next area while the excavator finished up the previous area. It was, in a word, exhausting. Fun, challenging, certainly enlightening and also extremely exhausting.

I really enjoyed being out working on the site trying to pick up as much knowledge about actual construction as possible. Luka, our amazing artist, consultant, landscape architect and translator let me come along when he met with the arborist so I could learn to tell which trees should be taken down and why. Then the next day I was there to see how they took the trees down while damaging the standing ones as little as possible. When the trunks were crashing down to the earth it struck me that this is real, this design is no longer theoretical and it's coming true one way or another. We are severely altering the landscape for our design because the hospital believes in us. And it's a little intimidating.

Friday and Saturday I was out at the site all day, first moving dirt from point A to point B then setting in the casings for the footings and putting a lot of the dirt from point B back to point A. A lot of the construction process as far I as I can tell seems to be moving material around and changing the form. Turn a pile of rocks into a stone wall, a hole into a casing into a hole full of concrete. More than anything its a lot of shoveling, shoveling a wide variety of things, dirt, crushed rock, gravel, in a variety of different combinations.

Friday evening the stonemasons came, had dinner with us and we had an impromptu party out on the decks of one of the apartments. Most of them were really nice and excited to talk about their art but one who managed to keep pulling me into his conversation only wanted to talk about how the US has ruined the world, how all of our systems are f-ed up, our people are lazy and medicated and expected us to explain or try to defend things that the U.S. did before we were even born. And he also managed to casually explain to me that I'm fat and should work out more. He considered himself an intellectual. I considered him a sociopath.
I was torn here, because I should have told him to go to hell and push him off the balcony. But the greater us needed him and his friends for the good of the program. If they left angry because I beat up/screamed at/murdered their friend everyone would suffer and the consequences probably would have been worse than I wanted to deal with.
So, anticlimactically I kept more or less a cool head, said "Fuck you. I'm beautiful." and left.

The next day I of course was put in a group with him to build a wall and I did my best to ignore him and only say something when I absolutely had to. In this manner most of the day passed focusing intently on the slow-mo tetris, and with 26 people building we got a lot of the walls almost finished by four or so.

----

If we were a spectacle before when we were just walking around and taking notes we certainly are more of one now. The site is completely ripped up, mostly dirt with a dump truck arriving a few times a day leaving us giant piles of stone, gravel, and crushed rock. Some of us are making walls, others are shoveling, and still others who are getting their details finished are moving around us finding tangents of curves to figure out where their team's features go.

A lot of patients are coming to check out the construction, they usually just stand at the nearby road in their pajamas and stare. Every so often one will wander into the site and we awkwardly wheelbarrow around them. Sometimes they try to help and shovel a few scoops then go away. They are harmless, at least none of them have caused any problems. The only continually annoying thing is at least once a day a guy will wander over to where I'm shoveling or hauling or digging and tell me to "-Stop. That is a job for a man." Again, ignoring is the best way to deal with it, most of them don't know enough English to understand a half hour long rant on why I'm capable of work, and can do it just as well or as fast as most men. There is also the whole cultural difference of gender roles argument blah blah blah. It doesn't make me feel any better about it.

Sunday was our first completely free day, several people rented bikes to explore the island, others went to an optional drawing class in town. I took the opportunity to sleep in (8:00 yay!) and try to go for a hike. A friend came with me to explore where our road goes. Turns out it's through a valley with a mansion on the hill then into an oak forest up to a house with olive terraces. Apparently the road goes further but it looked like it just ended so we went back. Along the way we followed what was either a path or a drainage ditch along a terrace field until it got too grown over and we hopped up the wall into the field. I think it was a vineyard at one time, tiny grape plants were losing against stronger bushes and grasses taking back the land. We hopped another ditch, then a stone fence then a barbed wire fence into a narrow valley until our path truly ended at a wall with forest on the other side.

Our adventure was fun, in part because we were probably not supposed to be there, but we kept our ears perked and eyes up in case any angry farmers showed up. None did, but in one field without much cover I smelled cigarette smoke on the breeze. With no one else in sight that was enough to make me high-tail it back to the road before we disappeared into the Croatian wilderness never to be heard from again.

The rest of the day we spent in Rab, intending on doing some errands, but everything closes on Sunday except for one gelato place and the tourist shops. So I walked around and stumbled across most romantic spot in Rab.

Panorama views of the city and several islands was a nice way to end a stressful week. Now another few days of construction and it's off to Plitvice Lakes we go!

Starting the Project in Paradise: Rab, Croatia

When the boat pulled into the marina it was raining in Rab. Hard. We schlepped our luggage off the boat and into our awaiting...ambulances. The hospital sent them as the only cars big enough to carry all 17 of us. Because of the rain and exhaustion my scope of sensory input was pretty small. I paid attention to getting as little water on my clothing as possible as we got into the vans. The marina was misty and I didn't see much out of the foggy windows, but there were palm trees and many boats tied up to the dock. 

Even during the ride to the apartments I didn't notice much of the landscape because I was too busy being scared for my life. I was sitting in the front seat and was able to bear witness to our driver speeding the cumbersome van around blind corners on a tiny two lane road. He barely stayed in his own lane and passed other cars at every opportunity even around corners. Luckily our apartments are only three miles from the town and we arrived in a matter of minutes. With the rain still drizzling down we heafted our luggage out one last time, the boys were sent to their apartment, a random decision was made for which two girls would get the 1 bedroom apartment, and the rest of us hauled our luggage up three flights of stairs around the back of the building to the main apartment. 

The apartment is the entire top floor of a small three story apartment building, the central hallway has the highest ceiling and the bedrooms on either side have sloping ceilings which are cute and kind of fun but many of us have hit our heads already. There are three bedrooms, one with a queen and a cot, one with a queen and three twin beds and the last with just a queen bed. Without much drama we picked bedrooms, I ended up in the room with just the queen and a bathroom attached. For those of you counting we've got 9 girls using 2 bathrooms and one kitchen. Surprisingly thus far it's working out though and we're all getting along and figuring out the bumps along the way.

After we got our bedrooms and freshened up a bit we went out to visit the hospital for the first time. The rain had stopped and without my pack on my back I took the time to look around and figure out my surroundings. Our apartments are in two buildings that share a courtyard and driveway. They also have a little weird looking dog that we always give a pet when we go out. Also, there are cats absolutely everywhere, no one gets the feral cats neutered or spade so they all just have more and more kittens they wander around looking for places where people will feed them. We have one that sticks close to the apartments who will practically dance with happiness when you pet her. But I don't want to buy her food because what will she do when we leave and is used to getting fed? The people here certainly won't feed her and it will attract more stray cats to their home. For now I can only give her short pets on the head then wash my hands thoroughly. It's pretty heartbreaking.

Our area is pretty rural, we are in a small collection of buildings and houses with big gardens outside the little town of Kampor. The landscape is mostly fields with tall grasses and scrubby bushes or olive, pomegranate, persimmon or fig orchards in the back yards of the houses. Nicer houses have designated front yards and usually a big veranda with Roman columns and grape arbors above. Nearby also are a few sheep pastures, and the sheep will come right up to the fence asking for treats. And in the distance the fields slope up into the big wooded hills of the island. Some people would call them mountains. 

The hospital is literally across the street from our apartment building, the commute is less than three minutes from the door of our apartment. We got extremely lucky with this, we were almost going to live in the psychiatric hospital in 8 person dorm rooms. Not fun. Our nearby accommodations are much better.

My first impression of the hospital is that it is definitely not "Shutter Island" the first thing everyone sites once they heard I was going to a psychiatric hospital on an island in eastern Europe. The landscaping and grounds are nice, modern, well maintained and clean. Patients walk around and talk, smoke, and joke with one another. 

There we met Vesna, the director of the hospital and our host for the project. She told us a bit about the history of the hospital, when she took it over and started making improvements and some of the demographics of the hospital. Most of the patients are here for addiction rehab, there is also a hospice for the very elderly who need care. A smaller percentage have social disorders and there are smaller numbers of other problems. Most of the people there are there voluntarily and as such there are fences but not huge stone walls with watch towers.

After the orientation she walked us around the campus. By the entrance is the game area, they have a large size chess board, boccie ball, ping pong etc. the Main square where all the main buildings face in on is the primary social space for patients. They sit on the veranda, smoke, talk, and take walks around the garden. Our site for the design/build is at what I would call the back of the campus. It's the entire length of one side and includes a wooded grove area, an open meadow with wildflowers, then terracing left over from when the site was a vineyard who knows how many years ago. that part is now just a dirt mound with trees on it.

We ate dinner at the hospital and it was very pleasant besides my almost getting hit by a car while we were waiting for the building to open. It was coming down the main way and sped around the corner into the alley we were standing in, nearly hit us with squealing breaks then backed up and sped away. I do NOT like the way people drive here.

--

Wednesday morning the sun was shining through the skylight and I was welcomed to a lovely view off the balcony of our apartment. It was deliciously warm out and not too hot and it felt wonderful to be comfortable. I met with my group for site analysis. The part of the landscape design process that is just figuring out what's there, who uses the site when, what goes on there. What are the sun patterns, where does the water go, what plants are there etc. Getting to know the site as well as we can before we start proposing how to massively change it.

My group and I walked around the site, up to the top of the mound, down the terraces through the woods and the meadow and into the grove taking notes and making sketches. When we thought we had enough information for now we walked through the grounds of the hospital to get a better sense for it. We are a bit of a spectacle an were approached several times by patients. I realized that I didn't know a single word of Croatian and quickly picked up "good afternoon" (dobar dan) "good evening" (dobra vecer) and "thank you"  (hvala). 

Vesna had told us that all of the patients who approach us would probably be friendly. They are just curious and interested in something new in their worlds. She said if they ask us for cigarettes to just say sorry, no. A very friendly older guy tried to tell us about every experience he'd ever had involving the U.S. Before we started to insistently say "ciao!" and ended the conversation. The most common question we got was "Where are you from?"



That afternoon a group of us decided to walk into town. The clouds and rain of the night before were a distant memory and a hot, sunny day beamed down on us. Unfortunately about half the way to town we had to walk on the road (that has no shoulder and certainly no sidewalk), but with a big group we were more visible and didn't have any close calls, but people still went around us at 70mph or so. 

After a mile and half we reached the beach trail. It thankfully turned away off the road and straight to the water, which is as the Adriatic tends to be, perfectly blue and clear. The walk first took us through fields of grass sparsely populated by the occasional bird yard or sheep pasture. 

The section along the water is the best part, it becomes a formal walk, with places for boats to pull up, little marinas, and stairs down into the water for bathers. In the distance we could see a tower and the gleaming white buildings of the little seaside city. I'm pretty sure Rab must have been the inspiration for "The Little Mermaid"'s seaside kingdom for all it's picturesqueness and perfection.

The walk ended at a sheer wall with a staircase up to the city. At the top was a stone courtyard overlooking the water with live tree growing in the center. The city is almost entirely stone, and since it is so small and on a hill cars can't drive up most of the tiny, twisting streets so the whole city is pedestrian friendly, most of the streets connecting by steep alleyways or small staircases lit by wrought iron lamps on sconces. The houses are behind walls with metal gates and in most cases their plants and flowers spill over the walls, draping vines and colorful star bursts of color down into the streets and alleys. 

Everywhere I looked there was evidence of some kind of loving detail, in the door knockers and hinges, to the flagstones set in the streets, to the window panes and gardens. 

Ann and I walked around together, looking into the shops remaining open after the exodus of the tourists at the end of the season. We got a gelato, walked around a bit, bought a few things, got another gelato, found more people, shopped around and generally enjoyed the day.

Rab is definitely a tourist destination, practically becoming a ghost town by this time of year. Which means we almost had the place to ourselves. Running up and down the steps to different levels and views of the city, each one a little different and special. Discovering new nooks, crannies, stairwells and courtyards at every turn made for a wonderful afternoon of exploration until the sun set. So far I'm very, very happy with our study abroad destination.