We Do Adventure

The main reason our blog had been sitting unattended was work winning the battle for attention. Part of what we do here is work with the Evangelical Church of Bosnia and Herzegovina on youth work projects. This includes summer camps and conferences. Anyone who has ever been to a Christian camp will probably have experienced singing of some sort or another: maybe camp-fire songs, maybe things that sound like they come from the Bible, maybe tunes that sound like they came off the radio. The English speaking world has hundreds of artists producing all this and more. The Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian speaking world doesn't. All of that to say the work in question - producing new music recordings – is something that needs to happen more here. Music is such an important form of expression; we don't want young people to miss out on the chance to sing things they mean in their own language. People can, and do, translate English language songs and sing them. Sometimes they work, but of...

We were standing in the kitchen this morning when I heard a Police siren outside the window. In our experience here that can mean only one thing: dignitaries being ferried about the country in a high speed convoy. Rowan had seen on Facebook that Ivo Josipovic, the Croatian President was dropping in on Jajce today. Sure enough, half a dozen blacked-out people carriers, a few others vehicles whose description I can't remember, and a couple of ubiquitous white Volkswagen Golf Police cars were snaking their way down the valley from the direction of Banja Luka. I can't claim to have seen the President but if he was looking out of the window he may well have seen our house, if not us gawping out of the window! I've just received an email from Balkan Insight that contained a link to an article explaining why he was in the area. As it was a promising piece politically I thought I'd couple some of the stand out sections here in the hope you'll click the link to read the...

In an email to a friend the other day I mentioned that in the last three months the fastest I’ve driven was 80kph. They’d done a fair amount of travelling with us in the UK and were well familiar with the way we used to enjoy our Minis. Needless to say they were surprised, possibly verging on disbelieving. However, I know I wasn’t lying. The Toyota Combi we drive here gives no impression of being able to travel any faster than the national speed limit for out-of-town single carriageway roads. I have taken to telling myself all speed sign are in fact in miles-per-hour to save myself from depression. That we spend most of our lives trundling around at thirty miles-per-hour or less requires some getting used to. Today we travelled to Dubrovnik to pick up Rowan’s family from the airport. I made the welcome discovery that Croatia has a 90kph speed limit on out-of-town single carriageway roads. The two and a half hour journey contained two or three short sections of uphill dual carriageway a...

No Saturday morning lay-in for us. we were up and out to a music practise. For Rowan this was a chance to dust off her bass playing skills, while I got the chance to give my new Sound City amp it's first run out. For those interested in the intricacies of valve amplifiers I would caution that this modestly sized, and competitively priced, package punches above its weight, making 'quiet' quite a challenge! Still, I've no regrets about the last-minute purchase and I'm sure it's going to get plenty of use in the months ahead. So this afternoon has been spent going over out furiously scribbled notes to make sure we won't have forgotten anything by next week. It seems language lessons aren't the only thing to come with homework! And on that subject, I think I got plus points of a translation from the sports section this week. It wasn't so much the quality of my work or the commentary I'd written but that the article mentioned Luka Modrić and Vedran Ć...

We’re back from a Novi Most team retreat in Slano, Croatia. Last night we went out for dinner in Dubrovnik. I visited Dubrovnik back in 1986, just a few days before my twelfth birthday. We flew in. I remember the decent over the mountains. The 737 got lower and lower as the bare, rocky slopes got closer and closer. I think I saw someone herding goats – I certainly remember seeing TITO spelled out large and clear in stones. I was sitting in a window seat on the left of the plane and there was still no sign of civilisation when we touched down. We climbed down the stairs onto the tarmac and headed for the solitary barn-like building that was airport terminal. It was a memorable introduction to Yugoslavia. Down in the city last night I tried to see if I could remember anything. I know I’d been to the port before. Although it looked like the pictures it didn’t seem that familiar. On the main street I tried to work out which building was once a sparse shop where I bought a post card or two....

There is nothing particularly profound about this video, or at least it's not intended to convey any deep, hidden message! It is however a record of something that happened at the Novi Most team retreat we attended this week and so has its place here...enjoy :)

Sorry to anyone who's clicked to come here in the last couple of days and hasn't been allowed in. (Thanks to Meg for the tip off!) We got locked down by a robot-generated spam accusation! In our haste to get everything up and running with our WeDoAdventure communications launch I registered this blog but didn't post anything. You good people were clicking the links put up on YouTube and Facebook but because we'd not provided anything to see the machine went on high alert. It won't happen again. Big news this week is the arrival of 'Teach Yourself Croatian' . As I type Rowan is sitting opposite holding the book and listening intently to the voices on her iPod - or she could be asleep, I can't quite tell! I need to get a grip on language learning. Monday morning is going to be my main time, at least that's what I keep saying. I'll let you know how I get on.