We Do Adventure

In an exciting development for the floorball (aka uni-hockey) team we work with here in Jajce, training now happens indoors. Floorball is intended to be an indoor sport but the team in Jajce had trained outside for years because it wasn't able to hire a hall for practises. Playing outside in snow, ice and freezing temperatures is good for building dedication to the cause but not helpful in honing the finer points of technique. This Sunday was the second of what should be a regular session in Jajce's new sports hall. It has to be said that today you could see your breath inside but at least it wasn't slushy underfoot. Playing on a new, almost perfectly flat, playing surface will definitely sharpen up everyone's skills. This Sunday it showed up mine as somewhat lacking but I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that last week I scored the first goal of the first game of our first session with my first touch...in a game my team went on to lose!

Sunday afternoon is, traditionally, a good time for a stroll. And so yesterday afternoon, with the snow falling thick and fast, Rowan and I headed out to catch a glimpse of a different kind of Jajce. Such eagerness to run out and play in the snow is undoubtedly a result of our childhoods in England, where snow was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it phenomenon. All that has, of course, changed in the two years since we left. Last week my hometown had it's heaviest snow fall in fourty-three years, apparently. The snow is Jajce is unlikely to go anywhere for at least a week, accept from the roads and pavements, where a very efficient cleaning operation had everything snow-free by the time we were back from a trip to Vitez today. That's one reason I'm happy to have grabbed Sunday's video, for the full alpine effect! The photo is from about half past eight this morning, somewhere approaching the town of Travnik and the Vlašić mountain. It was a great to be out driving this morni...

I think I had myself quite the cross cultural Sunday afternoon. It is my loosely-held belief Sunday afternoons were inventing for slumber. After all, if God rested on the seventh day shouldn’t we do likewise? After a pleasant outdoor lunch with friends, enjoying what seems like the onset of spring, we retreated to our apartment where I could enjoy today’s real treat: No Line On The Horizon. I’d pre-ordered U2’s latest album from iTunes. I switched my laptop on this morning to find an email telling me it was ready to download. I knew what that meant for my afternoon. So it was I donned my favoured headphones, stretched myself out on our English sofa , in our Mostar apartment, clutching a box of American Skittles to listen to Ireland's finest export. Tragically, it seems I really did slumber. While the chocolate Skittles were no more, an hour later I was in no place to offer an informed opinion of what I’d been listening to! I’ve done some revision while I’ve been attending to some c...