Sprung

It's amazing how a little sunshine and some non-jacket temps will raise your spirits.  Now that we are officially into spring, the weather here in Belgrade has begun to improve greatly!  Over the weekend the temps were in the upper 60's and the sun was out.  I was able to go for a run/walk on Saturday and did an extremely difficult hash on Sunday (fun times had by all though!). 

But before I can gloat more about the great weather here (snow in Dallas - HA!), I want to let you know some of the fun and less fun things that have been happening to me here.

Generally, I think of myself as a pretty boring and stable person.  I'm the go-to-girl and I always have been.  I'm not prone to emotional outbursts, to doing crazy and impulsive things, and I try to follow my motto "don't be a jerk".  And generally this approach works for me.  But sometimes, even when you haven't done anything wrong, bad things happen.  And at times like this, it is important to KEEP AN OPEN MIND.  Yes, that advice is continuing to haunt me here.

My last post was on Wednesday, and I was feeling a little blue.  But, as I mentioned, the weather turned and that has improved my mental well-being tremendously.  I also got to talk to all of my family on skype last week, which was great.  On St. Patty's day, I met the Hashers out at an Irish Pub and we listened to a Serbian band playing Irish-ish music.  It was a lot of fun.  I stayed out a little too late, but it was an enjoyable evening. 

I should have realized that life was going along too smoothly.  On Friday, I was supposed to go to our factory to run a trial.  The factory is about a 2 hour drive from Belgrade, so I got up early and went out to my car which is in a garage about 3-4 blocks from my apartment.  Here is what I found:

The quality of the photos isn't the best because I took these on my iphone.  However, you can see that my car was blocked in by two other cars and a motorcycle was chained to the wheel.  There was a sign on my car written in English that said "call me" with a phone number.    I was furious.  So I called the sign-maker to see what the hell was going on with my car.  The owner of the garage said that my landlord had not paid him and the owner needed payment before he would let my car out.  I asked how much and said I could pay him immediately because I needed to be in Maglic by 8:30am.  His response was "we will deal with this at 8am".  It was clear that I had woken him up.  I then try to call the landlord, but he doesn't answer his phone.  I send him an SMS to let him know the situation.  He replies immediately that he will fix it at 8am.  So then I call work to tell them that I will not be at the factory by 8:30 because even if everything works perfectly and my car is unlocked at 8:01, I won't be there until 10.  And I now have enough experience here to know that this will not be resolved by 8:01, and that I will be lucky if this is resolved by noon.  I have to reschedule my factory trial.  I was so angry that my hands were shaking.  Finally, around 12:30, my car is sprung.