Thursday, April 17, 2008

I suck

Week 5 in Croatia is just about the same as Week 5 in Rochester...except of course I couldn't remember off of the top of my head which week it actually was


I suck


more on this later

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Welcome Back Me

Sorry team, I've been really slacking in the recording my thoughts, dreams, aspirations, and feelings thing. It's okay, I assure you nothing really interesting has happened...I promise...


Today the first PLC/XML joint assignment was due. I finished it up during the break between classes and uploaded it about half an hour before the dropbox closed. I definitely waited a little bit too long before I started playing with the different languages and technologies. Needless to say I'm a little tired and the whole deadline experience wasn't as enjoyable as usual. I've learn my lesson in any case and I'll be starting next week's assignment tomorrow. I'll be heading to the school at like 10:30, that seems to be the best place to work with the fewest distractions. It's kind of similiar to going to work on the lab machines at RIT rather than on my computer in my dorm room.

After uploading I had an hour still before XML began. I was hungry so I walked down into the old city to the bakery with the nice old lady and the cute girl. Neither of them were there, but that was OK because the other lady is nice too. I bought a Calzone for 14 kuna and then walked over to the convenience store and bought .5 liters of Gusti for 7 kuna. Probably the cheapest lunch possible in the old city, it's my favorite anyway. I walked back and studied for the Environmental Science quiz that we didn't have and didn't study for the XML quiz that we did have. I should have seen it coming, looks like we'll be having quizzes in PLC and XML every Tuesday, seems reasonable enough.

Environmental Science is a funny class. All of the ACMT students in our section are freshman. When the five minute break comes after the first hour, EVERYONE who isn't American, including the professor, hurries down the stairs and out the door for a smoke. Today it was just the nine of us in the room alone so I suggested that we shut the door and declare ourselves an independent nation. The risk seemed greater than the reward and Stasa is an interesting teacher, so we let everyone back in the room. Our apartment needed groceries so we took care of that, somehow we came home with, among other items, 750 grams of Gouda. Looks like we might be moving, I'm fine with that so long as the landlord is fat (I read somewhere that you can't trust skinny landlords, don't ask me where, I won't explicitly remember) and the washing machine exists.


bye


Kyle

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

crazy drivers

So from here on out I'll try to make at least
weekly updates here. So every friday I'll
sum up the week (what I've learned, Croatian
Culture, stuff like that) and then around that we'll just
have interesting events and my own random thoughts...

basically this should ensure that there are at least a few
official and useful things on this blog that describe the whole
study abroad experience on top of what I was already doing...this
poorly edited notes, thoughts, and whatever


enough of that


So our apartment is very close to a driving school...

After class today I went to the atm by the grocery store
to get money for the rent...It was fun, I was alone and I pretended
that people were following me so I walked all fast and official...doubling
back and stuff like that...

The street that my apartment is on is connected to other streets via one of those
traffic circle things. As I was walking down the hill to my street one of the student
driver cars passed by me. The driver must have been scared of the traffic circle thing because
she slowed the car very much. She was going down an extremely steep hill and 2 other cars and a
large truck were behind her. The screeching of their breaks was extremely loud and hurt my ears.

after she made it through the traffic circle a motorcycle came down the hill, blazed through the
circle and passed all 4 vehicles around a blind turn.

These sorts of things happen here...

Sunday, March 9, 2008

waking up is weird

My fone alarm freaks me out

or something

So I've had my fone alarm set for 8 am while I've been here. On Sonday I didn't really want to wake up at 8 am, but I forgot to change the alarm. When my alarm went off at 8 am I woke up angry. I wasn't really coherent, I couldn't find my fone anywhere...looking for it in the ceiling probably didn't help my case. My fone was actually underneath me, when I did find it I turned it off. Five minutes later the alarm went off again. Why would the alarm sound when the fone itself is turned off? demon fone. I was even more irritated and even less coherent...my new solution was to remove the batteries from the fone. Some scratching and throwing later the battery was removed and the alarm ceased. Naturally it would have been easiest for me to just turn the alarm off or set it for a little later.

whatever,


Kyle M.


btw my fone still works

the actual first weekend = Saturday

jk



Saturday most of everyone still had to turn in their picture and paperwork for the bus pass. They all left while Chris was in the shower, them folks are always in a hurry. Chris and I rode the bus down to the station...the card reader thing is sweet, it really makes me feel like I belong. So we got down there and he handed in his paperwork. With that taken care of we walked down into the old city. The city was beautiful, we both agreed that we had stepped right into the game "Assassin's Creed". We ran into some other folks from the trip and had lunch = pizza again. Pizza is safe and good, I like pizza. We went back into the old city after lunch and enjoyed the area. I'll be posting pictures maybe. It really was pretty cool, dogs were following us around, people were smiling, buildings were not falling...we even found cold drinks and a beautiful view. Ended up walking back rather than riding the bus. The walk is something like 1 or 2 miles and of course there was much to see...pictures maybe...

The first weekend

This entry has been censored.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Orientation?

Today was the much anticipated Orientation Day at ACMT. We got to the school at 11 and discovered that they didn't have anything for us to do until 2. So we waited around for a little bit and then Zoran came by and said he was meeting a friend at the coffeeshop and we could go with him. We all went down there and hung out for about an hour. I had kakao, which is like hot chocolate, some others had hot chocolate, which is like pudding. After that experience we went down to the bus station to get our passes. They were pretty nifty magnetic cards and came with their own plastic sleeve. After all this we went to the orientation meeting which consisted of 30 minutes combined of introduction and tour of the building. After that we split up, some of the folks who didn't have bus passes yet walked back, I took the bus with a few people and we all got sandwiches on the way as well. Picked up a few more groceries and now there aren't really very many more responsibilities ACMT-wise until Monday.


km