life

sometimes as im walking down the street or sitting on a tram looking out the window at the gorgeous buildings, the people walking down the street, i stop myself and think “dude, you live in europe. this is for real. this is your life.” and remember how blessed i really am, for being here, for having this experience.

anyways, an update on my life.

this morning i woke up at 6:30, got ready for school and got on the bus. i met up with dora when i got off my bus and we went together on a tram to school. first period was english, i dont remember much being as it was so early and i was tired but i know we talked about sterotypes of different nationalities, kinda fun. second period was sociology, which i dont take, so i sat there and studied physics because i thought that those of us who failed the test were taking the retest today.. but we didnt. after sociology we had break, 20 minutes where we can go get food since there is no lunch period in school here. i got a sandwich. samo sir, salata i dalmatinski. delicious. 

third was gym. our gym teacher wasnt in school today so we didnt really have to do much. we hung out, played around with hoolahoops and were jumping on the big squisky foam mat that we use for the highjump. successful gym class if you ask me. 

the next two classes were german and biology, neither of which i take, so emma and i sat on the back steps, did our croatian homework then went and got on the computers. sixth period, physics. gross. and we didnt end up having the retake test, which was cool with me. i didnt know how to do anything that would be on the test anyways. i did however get yelled at for having a nice scientific calculator. the same one we are required to buy for school at home, is apparently not allowed in school here. so i guess they want me to go buy and abacus or something. figures.

mondays on morning school we dont have seventh period, so school was over. i went to the main square with emma, met up with another exchange student, danielle, got some ice cream then danielle and i went back to my house. we ate a huge lunch, hung out, and watched the new episode of desperate housewives :D around 5, emma came over my house too, and after a little we went into the city to get some kebab. omg, kebab <3

after we ate we headed to the main square to go to our croatian lessons. it was good, were working on the third case right now, the accusative case. im not even going to try to explain, sorry. 

then after class i went with some other exchangers to ‘vino grad’ or in english, wine city, and got kuhano vino, cooked wine, which is just hot wine and a kobasica sa sirom, or croatian sausage with cheese. vrlo dobro. very good. 

by that time it was almost 11, i got my bus and went home, got on facebook and went to bed. 

theres a typical day.

so now that ive bored you, ill tell you something exciting.

im going to france! yes! over christmas break, skiing for a whole week, in the alps, with just my friends. :D go ahead, be completely jealous, i promise i cant blame you.. [;

so thats that, life in hrvatska. 

what a sucky blog post. ill make up for it next time, i promise.

maybe.

LADY GAGA

yesterday, i went and saw lady gaga in zagreb.

yes, yes, i can see the jealously on all your beautiful faces. but really, i can not blame you. because yeah, it was perfect, she was perfect. and i fell even more in love.

i woke up yesterday morning at 8:30am, threw on some jeans and my leather jacket and was off to the train station to meet three of my friends, pick up some hair spray and head back to my house to start the process of getting ready for the night. we get back to my house, and immediately get out all the makeup, pick out all our clothes and turn on some music to get this party going. its 10:30 and we only have five more hours before we have to leave for the arena.. but of course, were hungry. so we get on google and find a pizza place who will deliver to my part of the city, call them up and order, are you ready for this, six cheese pizzas. yes, six. but okay, now before you go thinking all those ‘fat american’ things i know that are coming into your head, let me tell you these pizzas were not very big, probably half the size your thinking. and no, we did not eat them all, though they were delicious and we probably easily could have if we tried.  so we ate pizza and started doing makeup. intense, bright, obnoxious makeup. we put on our crazy outfits, teased our hair to four times its normal size, and took some pictures. one more girl came over, about 2:30, since she had went to school that day, then right around 3:00 we drove to the arena to make sure we could get as close to the stage as possible. 

now to you americans reading this, it sounds like pretty normal preparations for a lady gaga concert, right? 

yep, i thought so too.

but we are in croatia, and being as it was gagas first time in the country it turns out no one else figured it was a great idea to look as ridiculous as we did. 

we get to the arena and immediately start turning heads. everyone is looking at us, the ones who look like, well, little monsters. so mix the way we looked with the fact we tend to speak english very loudly and needless to say people were interested. we had kids coming up to us asking where we were from and getting excited when we told then were from america. we had kids come ask if they could take pictures with us. we had people simply taking pictures of just us. and well, really, i cant say i minded all the attention [; 

since there was still over 3 hours until the doors even opened i went with another exchange student to the new mall next to the arena which happened to be opening that very day, the new biggest and best mall in the country. we walked around there for a while, and i decided its my new favorite mall here. it reminds me of a big american mall a lot. 

so we went back to stand around waiting for them to open the doors and by that time more people had come and they were all crowded in front of the doors. we were pretty close to the front of the mob and we ended up being squished for about and hour and a half from people pushing trying to be closer to the door. luckily we were standing by these cool kids who we started talking to. then we all started singing lady gaga songs and got other people to join in. it was a lot of fun. so they finally opened the doors, we got through and ran like crazy down the hallway, down the stairs, through another hallway onto the floor and towards the stage, but there were already people all crowded around the catwalk and we ended up going to the far right of the stage. but i wasnt happy with that, we were not close enough. so after some pushing and squeezing we made it to the front and as close to the stage and catwalk as we could be. the most perfect place i had imagined. and it turns out the people standing around us were from germany, brazil and of course croatia and us americans. and the only common language we all had was english, so score one for us, we could actually understand all the conversations! 

so the opening band came on, which im not going to lie, i kinda of really liked them even though i had heard them before and hated it. 

after they played and we waiting for the stage to be set up for lady gaga the show finally started and there she was, right in front of me. 

i reallly wish i had the words to tell you what it was like. what she was like, but i just dont think there are any words for it. it was the most amazing concert ive been too, and trust me, ive been to quite a few. her voice, her stage presence, her outfits, her backup dancers, her dancing, her speaking to us, her attempting to say ‘little monsters’ in croatian, ‘mala čudovišta’ , her singing ‘hrvatska and i’, her true love for her fans, her motivation, her telling us we are all superstars, as tacky as that sounds. she is real. she is beautiful. 

so as you can kinda figure out, i thought she was more than fantastic. 
she did every song i wanted her too. we sang and danced along like it was it was our job. we screamed and yelled until our throats hurt. we were at the monster ball. 

after 18 perfect songs the concert ended and i dont think there was one person in that completely sold out arena without a smile on their face. 
she sure did deliver, now thats for sure.

lady gaga, moja ljubav. 
lady gaga, my love