Daily Schedule

After the hectic first day and the jet lag from the seven hour time difference, I started into the classes on Monday and got my schedule. Surrounded by the beautiful city that you see around this text, I start the Croatian class each day at 9am, taught by Dr. Tomislav of the Zadar University. He actually teaches German and French at the university, and seems to speak pretty good English, so he certainly knows what he is doing.

Then at about 11:00am we have a short break where we go out to the driveway where Mamić without fail has left coffee and Croatian cookies waiting for us. Often Sanja, another professor from the university, and Daniel, a higher level graduate student, will eat and chat with us.
We then continue classes until usually about 1:00pm.

The classes are entirely in Croatian, which has been really tough so far, but Tomislav speaks good enough English that I can ask him for any words that I don't understand or any concepts that I don't understand in Croatian. Below are all my books and the new textbooks that I am using. So far it has only been review grammatically, but there have still been a lot of new words and I still need tons of work before I'm conversationally proficient.

After my classes, the rest of the day is mine. Well, aside from homework, of course. I've spent in on things such as going to the beach, which is absolutely wonderful here, albeit a little cold from the region's long last winter. I've also gone on runs, walked about stari grad ("the old city"-- where all the old buildings and a lot of the tourist attractions are), and went grocery shopping at the amazing local supermarket, "Interspar". Mamić is basically in love with the place, and its not hard to see why. It has basically anything we could need, and is only like a 5 minute walk from our home. I'd liken it to a nicer Wal-mart. 

Well, that's basically my average schedule. It differs slightly on Wednesdays when we have presentations from Sanja, but otherwise that is my life here in Zadar. There is still a lot more to do and learn than I ever could in just six weeks, but I can feel myself improving and I think this program will have a lot to offer me. 

(As a reward for your continued reading, here are pictures of Zadar at dusk, taken on my second day here.)