soccer craze

Well I definitely know how to watch soccer now... these Europeans are CRAZY about their soccer! Sunday night we watched the Croatia-Austria game, which Croatia won 2-0...it was like Badger game days...after the game walking home everyone was honking their horns and driving really fast and cheering all over the city. Everyone wears jerseys and clothes with the Croatia flag design on them, which reminds me of NASCAR...its like red and white checkers. So I did wear red and white to get in the spirit ;) Oh, and I won a t-shirt by buying a beer! What a great deal...

Then last night we went to the same outdoor bar, the Riviera, and watched the Italy-Netherlands game, which Italy was supposed to win but the Netherlands did really well, so that was kind of exciting. We also met up with a group of writing program graduate students from the University of Iowa at the bar. They were not all that excited about meeting us, so it was slightly awkward, but one lady around 50 years old talked to us for a while...she seemed really nice. For one of her assignments she was telling us she had to write this very descriptive passage about some place...and she was choosing to write about the cats of Rovinj. I wish I could read it, the cats here are all over and crazy! We also found out later on that the guy sitting behind us at the bar is Roman Abramovich, this billionare Russian who owns the Chelsea soccer team. His yacht was parked in the bay of Rovinj. Whoa!

We are going to a new beach later today, this 15 year old kid from Rhode Island is staying a month with his grandparents who live here...and they know Tsia and Bora (our inkeepers). So he has been hanging out with us a bit, so he is going to show us this beach thats supposed to be cool. It is beautiful here today....it was a little cooler, which is nice because I went for a run (to see how behind I am going to be starting training for my half marathon when I get back). I think I ran close to 2 miles and hiked around the peninsula and saw a GREAT view of the open sea with all these sailboats...it was great. It was kind of nice to do something off on my own and enjoy the natural beauty here!

Alrighty, well thats all for now as I only have 5 more minutes of online time. Ill write again soon!

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