TBE in Porec

We're almost done people. For a week we stayed in Porec, Croatia, right on the Adriatic Sea. But really, you could see it from our hotel and we walked past it every day on our way to shows/animations.

1. 1 show a day (or none!). This was the most chill festival ever. We would have an "animation" in the morning, where we'd do a little show in a town square setting where we could like dance with the people who came kind of a thing and we'd just do like 2 numbers. And then we had 1 show at night. However, not everyone did the animations every day, everyone only did it three times out of 7 days. And there was one night when I wasn't in our night show at all because I wasn't in the dances they were doing! Yeehaw! And one day we had NOTHING, 0 shows, 0 animations, total day off. Best, festival, ever.

2. The buffet at the hotel. Um, it was amazing. A huge salad bar, amazing fries, ice cream, adorable desserts, and just all around amazing food. We ate at this place for all three meals people. Everyday. So good.

3. Water aerobics!

Here is a good portion of the team (and some of our chaperons) doing water aerobics on the last day we could. They had them everyday at 11 am. That day the aerobics were led by Ivana (who came to one of our shows, she is so great!) and her special guest Greg! Seriously, this was so fun, and quite a bonding activity. I think every single person on the team/chaperon did it at some point.

4. Getting a tan.

5. Getting into the Adriatic Sea. I do not yet have a picture of this, I think Liahona took one. And I only went in once, and I didn't stay in it long...but it was good enough for me. :)

6. Our awesome day off and boat tour. We weren't planning on doing anything on our day off. The emcee Tim found that out and was not having any of that. He hooked us up with his friend who does boat tours and got us booked for a little tour around the Adriatic. We stopped at a couple of places, passed a nudist colony or two, and had some interesting lunch. One of the towns we stopped in was where Casanova was cast out to after being kicked out of Venice. As for the nudist colonies, thankfully they were far enough away to be not scarring. And lunch? Let's just say if you ordered fish, you sure got fish, all of the fish. And the waiters were SERIOUSLY confused when we gave them back their alcohol they had put on our tables.


Here's a picture I stole from someone taken on our boat tour. Really, everywhere looked like this, it was so beautiful it couldn't even be real life to me.

7. Hanging out with Justin to re-cement our Elkridge partnership. Justin and I were having some clogging partnership issues in which we couldn't hold on to each other for some reason. It all started when he let go too early in Prague for the men's and women's solos. So we decided to stick together during our first stop on the boat tour. We looked for antique books. We found some wooden cats. We went to the top of a really high tower in a church while admitting to each other how much we hate heights (but really, we could have died on those steps), and we almost didn't make it back to the boat but thankfully stumbled upon Michael Steele who laughed at us because we were sort of frantically running. In the wrong direction.

8. Having Jared telling me I was plenty pretty. :) Oh Jared, our banjo player is the bomb and one of my favorite people ever, and the people of Oklahoma will love that boy while he gets to serve them for two years.

9. Carrying Jared's banjo because I wanted to, and having everyone get mad at him for it. The night I wasn't in the show I didn't have anything to carry so I decided to carry Jared's banjo because he always complains about how heavy (fat) she is. However, when people saw me carrying it they assumed that Jared had made me carry it and got mad at him. It was entertaining.

9.5. Always wearing Jared's hat. Seriously, he put it on me like 50% of the time.


10 and 11 really don't need to be published on the internet.

12. Watching the awesome Chinese war epic movie and gaining a new love for eastern warfare. Really, all this time I thought war was stupid, now I realize, western war tactics are stupid.

13. Having no leaders with us for the last parade so we revolted and did songs other than Oh Susanna and Back up and Push! Some of these included Country Roads, ...yeah I can't remember anything else, but they were great! And fun! And everyone loved us and we weren't bored out of our minds.


13.5. Having the leaders show up at various points in the parade with drinks or ice cream right in front of us. Taunting us. It was mean. And funny.

14. Hit cookies after said parade. Those cookies are amazing.

15. Walking down old Roman streets and seeing beautiful old buildings.

No big deal. Just beyond gorgeous.

16. How picturesque everything was. Really, everything made a perfect picture. I kept feeling like I was dreaming.

17. Funny chips. Drew and Tim understand this, and they are the only people on that tour who have ever heard me giggle.

18. "I bet it's cooler outside!" Once upon a time, we had a show and our dressing room was in an abandoned store. It was crazy hot in there, this was clearly the case. But just in case our personal temperature gauges weren't working, Ed continually reminded us to change really quickly and go outside because it's much cooler outside. It became an inside joke between Katrina and I, we said it to each other quite a bit that night, and continued to do so when things got ridiculous throughout the tour.

PS, just for kicks, this was what our stage looked like for that show.


19. Watching a British inspirational movie about education. It was rare to find programming in English that wasn't just news, so this was exciting on a morning when I felt ill to be able to just chill in my room and watch this. Did I mention yet how this week was like a vacation? Seriously.

20. Being in paradise.


21. Eating kalimari, fish, and shark.

22. Finding out Tim (our emcee) seemed interested in the Gospel, especially our focus on families. Ed left him with a Proclamation to the Family.

23. When Tim (our emcee) told us we were the talk of the town. Everyone loved the BYU group! This was so flattering.

24. Going to this awesome mosaic church that has bits of it from really...really old times. 6th century BC? Maybe? I'm not big into history pre-Medieval ages so I don't know. BUT I went with Drew, which was great because we both took forever. However sadly those who joined us were probably bored out of our minds. But at least they could smile long enough for this picture. Thanks for putting up with us Justin, Jay, and Lia. :)

Zagreb

Our next stop was Zagreb, Croatia, which is the capital of Croatia! I thoroughly enjoyed this place, and here are some reasons why.

1. The most delicious, warm hazelnut pastry was eaten here. And I found it at an awesome cheap bakery that was much loved in our time in Zagreb. It was so good I took a picture of it.


2. Our first (and only) air-conditioned hotel. I was even cold for a little bit!

3. Cheap food.

4. Kebabs. Mine actually wasn't even that amazing compared to the other kebabs people got. But it was still super good.

5. The Cathedral and seeing a depiction of Christ and God as separate and embodied individuals. Don't you love it when nuggets of truth show up places where they shouldn't technically be? Reminds me of the Sistine Chapel, oh Michelangelo, you sly dog.


6. The impromptu show in a town square with the missionaries. Upon arriving in Zagreb we learned our one show there had been cancelled. So instead we ended up getting a show arranged in a town square through religious laws so that the missionaries of the area could come and proselyte while we danced. It was amazing. Probably one of the best shows of the entire tour. We did the whole thing in one costume and we were originally going to do like 3 numbers, but ended up doing almost our whole show. It was a really cool opportunity.

Here we are doing Elkridge clog in character shoes and Appalachian dresses.


I include this picture solely for Josh's face, he's the one in red in the middle. This is the boys doing Texas Fandango. For about half the dance they just beat each other up.


Here are the dancing...things...that joined us in the show. Greg messed up in Appalachian Running Sets that day and blamed it on the dancing banana, you can't see it in this shot but there definitely was one.

One of the greatest parts about this show as that while it was being set up, our translator asked the Police Dept. (where he was setting this up) if they wanted help with their English, so they will now be getting English classes from the missionaries!

7. At that same show, between numbers I got to chat with the people watching. I met these siblings from Bosnia who loved to talk to me (they liked improving their English) and then getting to tell some senior humanitarian missionaries about them because Bosnia is in their area! I also told the siblings about English classes through the missionaries.

8. Finding things in the market for the first time that I actually loved and unashamedly buying them. Even though I'd liked things in Hungary, I mostly bought traditional things to remember being there. But in Zagreb I truly loved the things I bought them and didn't get them because they were traditional. I bought a small and a large tablecloth with a traditional heart print on it and a beautiful carving of Christ. I use the tablecloths as blankets. I also spent more than David Lewis, which was a feat because he was clearly the big spender of the trip.

9. Rooming with Emily Bills again. Love her.

10. Watching Man on Fire with Drew and Jay. It was nice to just stay in and watch a movie one of the nights we were there. I was sick of being a tourist.

11. Staying in and watching funny youtube videos with Liahona. My personal favorite was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Lx2ihpGbc She also showed me some great Friends clips.

12. Spending an afternoon at the park watching some of our team play soccer while eating a kebab. It was nice just to relax. And entertaining because the grass they were playing on was super slippery. In fact most surfaces in Croatia were slippery...

13. Eating a hot pepper just because Justin wanted me to. I have never taken a food dare in my life, but something about Justin made me want to do it. That's quite a talent...hope he doesn't take advantage of it. ;)

14. Speaking in the ward and knowing as soon as I entered the building who the talk was for and getting to meet her afterward. Giving a talk through an interpreter wasn't as difficult as I expected, and it was probably one of the most intense spiritual experiences of my life and I will never be grateful enough to Ed for giving me that chance.

Prague.

So it turns out Prague is not my fav place in the world. People may delight in it, but I am not people. It was kind of a let-down after the wonderful-ness of Budapest. But don't worry, good experiences were still had, and a TBE list was still made.

1. The guy from a recent Ensign article about the saints in Czech Republic was one of the translator/leaders. Here is a video of him from the Church website. https://lds.org/youth/video/the-first-step-english?lang=eng

2. People caring about me enough to notice that I was having a horrible night our first night while Jon was showing us through Prague. It really was a terrible night but some wonderful friends noticed and even though I didn't want them to talk to me at first, I was glad they made the effort, it really helped.

3. Czech goulash. SO good. And SO different from the Hungarian version.

4. The Charles Bridge. Easily my favorite thing there.

5. Seeing a real Gothic cathedral in front of my face for the first time ever. This almost rivals the Charles Bridge. It was breathtaking!


6. Hanging out with a different group of people the last night in Prague. It's really easy on tour to end up with the same people the whole time. There's nothing wrong with them, but in large doses people can get annoying. So my last night I was spontaneous and went out late at night in a city I didn't like with people I hadn't hung out with the whole time on tour so far. And it was amazing! One of my favorite adventures. And I got to see this sunset...

The first glimpse


Getting closer.

The whole view

7. Magnum bars after our show. That ice cream was needed in my life.

8. Seeing fireworks on the Moldau River after our show.

9. Discovering great friends in Whitney and Stephanie, the Daily Universe Reporters that got to tag along with us for a while.

10. The clogging workshop we got to do. We were supposed to be the "experienced ones" but...yeah I don't think I ever got that combination. And the pizza they fed us here was AMAZING! The Czech Republic had this really delicious super thin crust pizza, and this kind had the most amazing cheese.

11. A gorgeous thunderstorm.

12. Political discussions with J-red. My favorite banjo player. Who knew someone else felt the same way as I about the 17th Amendment?

13. Walking through the concentration camp with Justin in complete silence. We both just ended up walking together even though we started in different groups. It was a great experience. :)

14. Gelatto for the first time (hazelnut and chocolate) in the tiniest scoops I've ever seen.