I’ve been taking a Croatian language course for 3 weeks now and I don’t feel as though I’m progressing as much as I would have hoped. Many know that as an adult, it is very difficult to learn a new language if you’ve never successfully learned a second language before. In high school I studied Spanish, but it was only for 3 years, I never used it and I don’t remember much of it today. In college I studied Russian for 2 semesters. I remember some, and Russian is similar in root to Croatian, but I didn’t learn enough and I haven’t used it since.

I’ve been listening to Croatian (or Serbian) somewhat regularly, although limited at times, for the past 8-9 years. It was about 9 years ago that I met my boyfriend and a few other really great ex-Yugoslavians from Drexel. Since then I’ve been learning the language off-and-on on my own for the past 8 years. Needless to say, I am far better at reading and translating written Croatian than I am at anything else because I didn’t have much practice conversing in it.

Learning the language, by being immersed in it and forced to use it is one of the many reasons why I wanted to come live in Croatia. Being here has definitely exposed me to more spoken conversations, but I’m still not confident enough to contribute. I have difficulty hearing all of the words that are being said. Most of the time I hear only basic words and a few major words from someone and I can derive a concept from it and understand. But, quite often, I get stuck translating a word and miss the rest of the sentence. To strangers I look as though I’m dumb and then I end up saying

“Ne govorim hrvatski. Samo govorim engleski.”

Then they say sorry and keep quiet.

I had high hopes for my language course, but it is not living up to them. My classes largely consist of me reading aloud my homework from the previous class and then doing some exercises or reading aloud of small paragraphs from the work book. There is little real world, one-on-one dialogue between my instructor and myself. Today I asked her to modify the lessons so that we could spend more time on covering what I am weak in–conversations. I have my next class tomorrow and I hope that it is better.

There are only about 12 weeks left to my stay in Croatia and I would like to be able to hold real conversations in Croatian with my boyfriend’s friends and family. There is at least one friend and all of his family that do not speak much English at all and I would like to get to know them better and let them know me.

Seeing the good in things over the bad can be difficult. It is often easier to find the bad than the good in things. Perhaps because what’s bad is more impressionable.

On Friday I had a call with a colleague in Vancouver. When asked, how I liked Croatia and what it was like here I had difficulty quickly coming up with anything that was positive. My first instincts were to say what I knew to be different and those were negative. It saddened me, because I do enjoy being here.

Over the weekend I got to thinking. Why can’t I come up with “good” aspects of living in Croatia. It’s not that I can’t come up with them. It’s that I don’t remember them. The bad things that I notice here happen often and leave a lasting impression on me. I am also very fond of my home in Philadelphia and might just be trying to find reasons why I shouldn’t like living in Zagreb as much as I do.

So, I hope to be posting more good things that I find and better comparisons than I have been sharing with family and friends in the States thusfar. Here is one to start…

The people of Croatia are very, very proud of their country. Sure everyone has something to say about the government, the state of affairs, relations with other countries, and ridiculous laws, but when it comes to a Croatian winning something, the whole country talks about it and celebrates it.

When Croatia won the Davis Cup in Tennis, there was a huge celebration in the main square. Thousands of people gathered to celebrate the and cheer the tennis players for their great victory as they returned from Slovakia.

When dinamo (Zagreb soccer team) wins soccer games, residents cheer, scream and shoot guns into the air.

When Janica Kostelic would win a metal or place first in some race, I could hear the people upstairs jumping up and down and banging things in joy.

And when some Croatian folksinger or filmmaker won awards for their contributions, all the TV channels and newspapers had something to say about it.

After the celebration, you will keep hearing about the great event in newspapers on television and from passers-by for days.

The U.S. is quite big, and it’s hard to say that the entire country celebrates in joy when a U.S. citizen wins some award or places in a sport. There’s no real window into those types events around the country. Our mass communication mediums don’t find these types of events worth mentioning pages because they won’t sell papers or commercials. But I can comment on a local level. Most big local events do get recognition and celebration, but it’s no where near the caliber of here. It lacks the luster and true pride.

Unfortunately the weather was too bad this weekend for us to visit Samobor and the over 170 year old Carneval (“fasnik”) festival. But, it’s ok. Samobor is really close to Zagreb, and as long as our friends are willing, we should get another change to go visit it.

Instead, we had a great lunch at our friends house, played Bela, and went out afterwards. It was nice, albeit, it’s still hard for me to get used to all the smoke everywhere. Bars here don’t have really good ventilation for that stuff. Sure, some bars in Philly are like that, and Philly hasn’t outlawed smoking indoors, but there’s much better ventilation.

Dinko and I are fortunate to have our friends and family offer to cook us lunches. It’s really great, but I feel bad that we can’t exactly return the favor in the same way. Our apartment and kitchen is too small to cook for four and we only have seating for 2. We’ll work something out to return the favor though :)

There’s a lot of construction going on in Zagreb. I pass 6 active construction for houses on my 15-min walk from the main street (where the grocery store is) to the top of the hill (where our apartment is). Not only is there a lot of active construction going on, but there’s a lot of stagnant construction as well.

There are many unfinished churches and houses in and around the city. I suppose people run out of money.

Big superstores are gaining a lot of popularity in Zagreb. In comparison to the U.S. these stores resemble regular-sized grocery stores. So from U.S.-standards, they’re not really big, but the normal grocery stores in the city are very, very small. They are often the size of a poorly arranged WaWa, but with less convenience ;)

There’s a big superstore, Kaufland, opening up behind our friend’s apartment in the East part of town. Unfortunately I don’t know what kind of store it is because the website is only in German, but we shall soon find out.

Z’nuff for now.

I took my first language test today. It was mostly a written test to judge how much I know of the language before they build a course for me. Apparently I know quite a bit. I have to cover a few things in level one before moving on to level two. I had some problems with cases, particularly the genetive case, and i didn’t know some words. But all in all I can read and understand very well for never being instructed. Eight years of listening to the language off and on and a few self-learning books helped me with that, ha ha ha.

I started my classes on Friday and will continue them twice a week for 8 weeks. Soon I’ll be fluent–yeah right!