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

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

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...

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.

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

First day in town

This was exciting.


Zoran rang our door bell at 10:30 am. I wasn't even aware that we had a door bell. He said "We can go immediately if you are ready" so we went immediately. We didn't get bus tickets yet so we each had to pay 10 Kuna for a ticket. 1 Kuna is about .20 cents btw. So we rode down to the school and met some of the folks there, they're on break to right now so it was really laid back. The school is different than I expected with several floors, but it was nice. We filled out a form that would allow us to get a discount on the bus ticket subsidized by the Croatian Government. Technically we aren't supposed to be granted this discount because we aren't citizens of Croatia, but Zoran says that the school has such a reputation that it would be OK. After finishing up there we walked down into old Dubrovnik. He told us a little about the town and that we would be spending some time with him as a group around here as part of our Croatian Culture class. We rode the bus back and then Zoran told us we were free until tomorrow when everyone else arrived. Apparently Professor Axel was coming in tomorrow morning as well.

None of us had eaten very much since the plane ride so we decided to walk around. We found a pizzeria kind of thing and it looked friendly. We each had a cheese pizza. They didn't bring us a check until we asked, but it was money and time well spent, our first meal in Dubrovnik. The rest of the day was spent in the apartment, I went to sleep early again, 8:30 pm, I'm slowly adjusting to everything.


Woke up and went out with Brad and Stacy for a walk at around 2. We went to this cafe that Zoran had told us about. Stacy and I each had Cocoa, which is somehow different than Hot Chocolate. Stacy originally had ordered Hot Chocolate and he said, that they don't have any, but they do have Cocoa. We finished there and then went to the Grocery store and each picked up a few things. Now we're waiting for the other students to arrive.

One adventure leads to another

I’m in Dubrovnik Croatia.

So Monday morning I woke up early to eat breakfast with Mr. Hust. We went to the country kitchen and a couple of teachers were there because the school had a delay that later became a closure. Came home, finished packing and took off with my mother for the Syracuse Airport. We Stopped last minute radio shak in the Carousel mall to buy European power adapter/converters/whatever. The guy asked where I was going, I said “Croatia” and he said that nobody had ever told him that they were going there before. Got to the airport, gave them my luggage, ate a sandwich with my mother, then left to wait at the gate.

Flew into Washington Dulles where I had a 3 hour wait for the next leg of my journey. This airport was much busier than the one in Syracuse. I kept running into this group of Germans that were mocking all of the people that ran. I had time and hunger so after I made sure I knew which gate I was supposed to leave from I went into subway. Eating there was a good move it turned out as they had open tables and free refills. At least, I assumed they were free, and nobody yelled at me. I stayed there for about an hour, called home one last time then proceeded to gate C6. United “easy update” kept calling me telling me that my flight was departing from gate D15, but it was lying. I think they like to play tricks on people. That’s why they book more people for flights than there are seats. You can’t blame them, travelers just don’t have a very good sense of humor. The plane ride was long and I did a lot of reading, fortunately the seat next to me was empty so I didn’t need to worry about small talk.

In Frankfurt I met up with Brad and Stacy. I hadn’t been sure that anyone else was coming in at the same time as me so I was glad to see them. The flight to Dubrovnik was short. We met Zoran after we picked up our luggage and he took us around the city. Stacy printed pictures for the bus pass, we went to T-Mobil but decided that we weren’t quite ready to purchase a fone yet, and then we bought groceries which consisted of bread, turkey, some chicken spread kind of thing, and microwavable meals. None of us were very talkative or decisive, we just did whatever Zoran said. Probably not a bad idea for the next couple of days .

The apartment is very nice and really clean. I didn’t do much else the rest of the day, by 4:30pm I was in bed and slept until 3:30 am, hopefully I’ll adjust to the time change by the time classes start. At 10 we’re going to visit the school for the first time, it’s all very exciting.

Going Home

I'm officially finished with 20072, finals are complete and I handed in my last assignment at 7:15 pm last night. Most of the people that see me regularly know that they won't see me regularly next quarter and I managed to say goodbye to most of those people so that's good. My father is going to be here to pick me up in less than one hour. Everything is packed (rather inefficiently) and now I'm just waiting for him to show up. It'll be nice to go home for a little while I think

The last three weeks I've had this feeling that I'm forgetting something really important, we'll just hope that's not true. More to come later.


Kyle M.

Guinea Pig

I must say, this is all very exciting...


This blogger thing I assure you is not me trying to be more like jk and his blarg...


This is in fact an assignment from RIT's Computer Science Department. They would like for me to share my feelings and stuff here so they can document part of my trip or something. I had a choice between this, taking pictures, or writing a report. I went with feelings.

I've never done one of these things before so I don't really know the rules or anything. That's probably OK, most people on the internet don't have any sense of etiquette anyway. I'll just try my best to update this every couple of days with some original thoughts and we'll see where it goes from there.

So currently it is week 10 of Winter Quarter and things are mighty busy. Each day has several responsibilities and important interactions. The goal is to get all of my work done, ace all of my finals, pack up all of my things, eat only free food, take care of all of those things that can't be taken care of two weeks from now , and say "later" to all of those folks that mean so much to me. Why do I sign up for these things? Whatever, it's going to be fun!

So truthfully I am very much looking forward to this adventure. Chilling with those smart and sassy CS people in Dubrovnik will be a blast, even if none of them watched the Super Bowl. I'll probably check in here a few more times before I leave, just documenting some of the "preparation" stage.

Love,


Kyle Andrew Marcotte

(I just reminded myself of this funny story. So my Dad is a Math teacher at this high school, and there is this Superintendent. Anyway, my father wrote this email to my Mother, probably something about dropping my sister off somewhere or meeting at my Soccer game or something. As husbands do, he finished it up with "Love, John". Nothing wrong with that. To his misfortune, and the good fortune of this story, he had also been writing a reply message to this superintendent. Something about the school being a learning and living community or whatever. In any case, he signed that email "Love John" as well. ...whoops)