Mid-Year Report

We recently passed the mid-point of our stay in Serbia.

I don't have anything grand or profound to say, but I'd like to pause and take note of the moment. I can't think ahead to actually leaving; we have so many things to do between now and then... coffee will be drunk, conferences will happen, and babies will be born!

Dan had to submit a mid-year report detailing all of his professional activities. I'd like to offer an incomplete and somewhat random accounting of what I've done since our arrival:

• Many hours at the computer
• Drunk gallons of coffee
• Learned how to make turska kafa
  
• Tasted many new foods
  
• Serbian lessons
  
• Attended a soccer game
• Belgrade Book Fair
• Snowboarding
• Birthday party for Meg
  
• Tango
• Dined with a former ambassador (Pakistan to Nigeria)
  
• Stayed out way too late for a couple of old fogeys like us
• Baked chocolate chip cookies, attempted to bake banana bread
  
• Visited the US Embassy
  
• One magazine and one TV interview
  
• Attended a performance of traditional Serbian folk dances
  
• Attended Slava & Orthodox Christmas
  
• Workshop at the university
• Workshop in Lapovo, Serbia
• Applied to graduate school (found my next calling?)
  
• Published 1 1/2 blogs
  
• Places I've travelled:
• Belgrade
• Novi Sad
• Nis
• Budapest, Hungary (x2)
• The USA
• Sarajevo, Bosnia
• Books I've read all or part of:
• The Read-Aloud Handbook
• The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
• A is for Alibi
• The Unexpected Mrs. Polifax
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot
• Dear Mr. Henshaw
• Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs...
• Catch-22
• Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction
  
• New York Trilogy
• The Power of Reading
• The World is Flat
  
• The Ballad of the Whiskey-Robber
  
• others that I can't remember because we took them home at Christmas
  
• Passing Addictions:
• Sudoku
• Computer Pinball
  
• Srce hot chocolate
• Various flavors of Next juices
• Knorr cream of asparagus soup packets
• Burek sa mesom
  
• Mythbusters
• American Chopper
• Lost