[Me in front of a mausoleum inside Diocletian's Palace in Split]
After a few days in Sarajevo, just enough to get our mouths watering, we took a bus to Split, Croatia, a gorgeous city 5 hrs due west of Sarajevo. The next two weeks were set aside for International Bible School and a conference. Split is on a peninsula jutting out into the Adriatic. It is known for its seafood, Italian influence, and Diocletian's (Roman Emperor) palace. Being on the coast and sprawled across a mountainside, Split reminded me of Genoa, Italy, where I studied abroad for a semester.
The first night there we had amazing seafood a restaurant wedged into a corner of the old palace walls. The "riva" was lit up, a band was playing some polka-like music, and there was a small gathering around a stone table where locals were cracking walnuts with a large hammer. After our stroll and some ice cream Chad, Andrew, and I left the girls at the hostel and hiked back up to our apartment which was supposed to be only 20 minutes away. It ended up taking us over an hour with no map, no address, and two of us with injured feet. We finally made it though and by then thought we knew Split like the back of our hand, but the next morning we took the wrong bus and found ourselves on the wrong side of town again on our way to class......
That week we had a crash course on the second half of the Old Testament. The goal of the course was to make our "hearts burn within us" as the disciples' did when Jesus taught them on the road to Emmaus. It certainly sparked a desire in me to go back and look at some books in the OT that I seem to always skip over. Two of the most interesting things our professor brought out were the Hebrew "chiastic" structure and Hebrew "parallellism."
[Split harbor at night from overlook]
It's good to be back in Europe. Fresh bread, fruit markets, cafes around every corner, football, espresso, good cheap beer, old buildings, strange currency, charades, bus rides, taxis, and always on the go. In Split I felt like a tourist, and by the end of our time there, I was ready to settle down in Sarajevo. But first, Porec....
Our time in Porec was restful. We stayed in a hotel on the coast that if I hadn't known better, could have been mistaken for a retirement home. Every morning and evening people would herd into the hotel cafeteria for an all-you-can eat buffet of Croatian cuisine.
In our time off during the conference, we played ultimate frisbee and a game of football (read "soccer" from now on) in the rain. Good time of bonding and training, but still anxious to get back.....
No comments:
Post a Comment