the last 2 days of Croatia

So yesterday was a very early morning again, long day, and late night which = me being extremely tired and I had another early morning today so I decided to make sure I got some sleep so I could survive today and just blog about it all at once.. being now.

Lets begin with yesterday.  Kristi and I went PARASAILING!!!!  The company that did the snorkeling trip for sas also does parasailing and a number of other water activities. They were giving SAS people a slight discount on their other activities so I made a deal with them the day I snorkeled.  The snorkeling trip was in such high demand that they had a group go every day in Croatia so they said that Kristi and I could hop on the boat that picks up the group to get a ride over to the place then instead of it being 600 Kuna for the both of us it would be 500 Kuna.. so 250 each..  have I talked about the kuna yet? Its wayyy confusing.. I guess not really, it jut causes a lot of extra thinking and sticker shock because you aren’t used to the numbers..  1Kuna = about 5.6 US dollars. So really we were able to go parasailing for about $50 each!!! Very good price. So we had to wake up early and get on the boat over to the hotel. Then we had to wait awhile till they were ready to take us so we spent a good hour to hour and a half laying out in the sun working on getting a tan just a little bit more!

Then we were able to go and we couldn’t wait any longer!!!!! We were able to do it together  sitting next to each other at 200m for about 10-15 minutes in the air.  It was GORGEOUS!!!!!! I wish we would’ve had a camera up there!! It was so pretty! We were so glad we did it! I was concerned at first I would have to do a lot more convincing to get Kristi to go since shes never been but she was totally up for it! i went in 4th grade when we were in the Bahamas and it was kinda different this time I think from what I remember of the last time.. this time we couldn’t see so much into the water like in the Bahamas but we could see all the mountains and rivers, the ship and over looking all the beautiful houses and islands it was cool! So so happy! After our ride we had about another hour or so to kill on the beach before it was time to catch the boat back to the ship so we ordered some smoothies and enjoyed them on our lawn chairs! =)

We got back to the ship at like 1 had lunch and then bummed around for a little bit and left again at like 3 to head to the Old Town again for some shopping.  I was able to get a few things for myself as well as a couple others. We grabbed some dinner in a walk in place I got a really good chicken and cheese sandwich that had lettuce, tomato and cucumber on it, In amazing bread!  Kristi had a croissant like thing that had spinach in it.. we enjoyed our meal on the steps of a little chapel outside of the place it was nice. After some more bumming around the town we headed back to the ship for a little bit. 

We haven’t gone out at night at all yet and this is pretty much one of our last countries we think we can do too much of that in. so we wanted to go out for a drink then get back on the ship by ten because they told us there were going to be fireworks last night! So we were going to just find a little bar along the street right out of our port.. only it didn’t quite happen like that.. none of the places were looking to appealing and 5 other SASers were walking by us and headed to Old Town so we ended up walking to Old Town which took longer than we would have liked and it was all uphill, yippee, ad just not what we were anticipating doing. So we get to Old Town at like 9:50 and we had heard that the fireworks might be at 10 so we decided to go try to find somewhere to watch them.. we went to a pier and heard people say they were to start at 10:30 well we got really lucky and were able to get some seats right on the edge of the wall so we sat down and waited.. at like 10:15 the fireworks started and we realized we had AMAZING seats! They were being shot off like right in front of us. It was cool most were red white and blue which I thought was interesting till Kristi reminded me those are Croatia’s colors as well. I didn’t know what to expect of fireworks in another country but they were pretty good. Nothing like the ones I saw last year in Washington DC but good none the less.  So only 6 days late but we got our fourth of july fireworks!  After they ended we found a bar inside Old Town and got a drink I got a Caribbean Cruise and Kristi got a Hawaiian something, hers was blue and turned her tongue blue haha =) then we headed to the bus and got a ride back to the ship at midnight, where I pretty much just crashed right away.
This morning I had to wake up even earlier to be on a trip at 8:15. My trip was a service visit to a children’s hospital and an orphanage.  First we went to the childrens hospital where one of the main doctors spent a lot of time talking to us about a lot of different aspects of the hospital, the patients they see, their healthcare, and how the whole system works for them. We got to see a couple kids and play with some and then after a tour around the building it was time to head to the orphanage.  The orphanage wasn’t really an orphanage but a children’s home.  It is the oldest “orphanage” in the world. Basically all the kids in the center (34 of them there currently) all have families. However they were all removed from their homes because the parents are either alcoholic, drug addicts, abusive, and overall neglected their children.  The goal is to give the parents help and the children can return to the home in the future but that is often not what happens. The court allows the parents a supervised visit twice a week, but many do not come.  If the child is not visited for 90 days then the orphanage sends this information to the court and the child is then put up for adoption.

After the manager of the center talked to us and told us all the information we were allowed to then play with the children for about an hour and a half.  First I started playing with a couple younger ones and an SAS’er who had bubbles. Then I met another little girl who was 9 and I believe her name was Lucia (I don’t know how to spell it though) I had brought a deck of cards with me so I took them out and her and I played cards the rest of the time.  I started out playing crazy 8’s with her.. it was the easiest to explain without having to talk since they speak Croatian and not English. Later I tried teaching her speed but that didn’t really work out to well so we stuck with crazy 8’s and a few others came and joined in with us a little bit and then would leave but it was still fun. It was a very cool experience and fun to get to interact with the kids!

I got back to the ship had lunch with Jackie, and bummed around a little bit. Then went to exchange my left over Kuna into Euro’s and I got my passport stamped!!!!!! Woohoo I have a stamp! Then back to the ship for a nap and blogging.. trying to use some more very slow wifi and about to go to dinner. Going to spend the rest of my night doing homework for tomorrow and sleep!!!

Every day the voice gives us a question of the day.. basically some dumb question that someone overheard someone else asking. . I keep meaning to post them every day but I forget because we don’t get them in port.. anyways we heard this one tonight

“Tour guide: this is where the prince was decapitated
SAS’er: did he die?”

One in Italy I remember was “How far is the bus ride to Capri?”  Capri is an island.. we all know that its kinda common knowledge to us on the ship..

a few more:

“Is lobster so expensive because it’s extinict?”

“What is in the Picasso museum?”

Just to give you the ones Kristi and I could remember..

So we went and had a not so great dinner but there was ice cream for dessert!!! Which is a first and a total treat!!! We are now off and on our way to Greece for the next two days. Shrek just started so guess what im doing before my homework! =)