Da Vinci Challenge & Slovenia

Tuesday was more classes and then I had a Basic Beliefs and Strengths seminar. I had no idea how many seminars we would be going through in order to learn more about ourselves! The Slovenia trip meeting was at 7 p.m. so, since dinner is from 7-7:30, we had to go across the street to get a sandwich. They make it right while you stand there! She sliced fresh turkey, fresh mozzarella (thick slices!), fresh tomatoes, and then toasted the bread. All of this was under 3 euro and I know it will last me another meal. This is just one more opportunity for me to use my handy-dandy window sill as a refrigerator before it warms up! It’s really weird hearing the other group go through LIFE in the room below our bedrooms. We’re kind of reliving the whole experience and remembering how we felt at certain moments and what we were thinking. It just makes me wonder what the other group thought we were doing last week!

Wednesday we had an all day seminar about Problem Solving and Decision Making for our Kepner Tregoe certificate. It’s definitely getting hard to concentrate with all of these workshops so close together but it’s better than doing it once we have daily classes with daily homework. One thing that will probably be beneficial for me when I’m backpacking after this program is over is a decision analysis chart and our example was how to choose where to go for the weekend. I don’t have any solid plans about where I want to go or what I want to do until my family gets here in the middle of May so if it gets closer and I still have no idea I could fill one of those out. We’re finally getting some R&R time so we can do homework and get to sleep in. Now that we’re booking transportation and hostels for our traveling, people are starting to realize that going out every night will deplete money you could’ve been spending to get to another country. The wine and food might seem cheap here but it adds up pretty quickly! Those long nights have also taken a toll on everyone. I’m crossing my fingers that I do not get sick!

Exciting news…an Italian girl walked past me as I was leaving dinner and said, “Freddo,” and I knew that she meant she was cold!

Thursday was just seminar stuff all day and then we got homework. We went out to celebrate being done with the seminars (for now) and being done with LIFE. There are so many kids’ 21st birthdays this semester, especially these past two weeks, that it’s almost a given that any night you go out someone is going to be celebrating

Friday was the day the Red group had been looking forward to for awhile…the Da Vinci Challenge. It’s advertised as a low ropes course but really it’s just a bunch of team building exercises that happen on the ground (mostly). We did one game where a person stands in the middle of a circle, falls backward, and is passed around the circle. Another game that was lots of fun was holding hands/arms in a circle and getting an entire circle of people (we had fourteen I think) to stand up and sit down simultaneously! After lunch we started the more physical activities. On the first one we had to stand on a five foot high platform and fall backwards into the arms of six guys. Seeing as how being dropped is one of my top three fears, I was pretty nervous. Nobody had any problems though so that was quite reassuring. We then had to divide up into our three groups again and go to three stations “in the jungle,” aka in the different corners of the gym. The first station my group had was a 12-foot wall we had to get all of our group members over. Every group only had about five guys and they were put in charge of lifting for every exercise, so by the end of the day I’m sure they were flat out exhausted! We were very proud of ourselves the first time and when we did it a second time we did it in a third of the time it took the first time! Once again I had to trust that the people pulling me up from the top and the people pushing me up from the bottom would not drop me. The next exercise…well, my group didn’t do so great at it. We had to use these two boards to get from one platform to another without touching the “lava” and we could do that just fine. We kept getting disqualified however when we would all be standing on the platform on the end and we needed to pick up our boards (I guess to take them with us on our hike through the jungle?). I don’t know how many times we tried but we just kept dropping that in the “lava.” We also had to carry props with us…mine was a bucket. I wore it on my head to keep it out of the way haha. The third exercise yet again pushed at my fear of being dropped, except by this time I was not worried about it much at all. There was a giant spider web with thirteen holes and we could only use one hole twice since we had fourteen people. I was assigned one of the holes on the top row so they had to lift me like a board and pass me through that hole without touching the spider web and in the fastest time possible. By the way, we set a record for the day with this exercise and got all fourteen of us passed through the spider web in 1:02! Our final exercise for the day was a full group activity. We had to pass each person over our heads with our arms extended and at the end of the line we had to do a back flip to get down. This was exhausting for everyone because some of those strong boys we were so glad to have earlier are heavy! We didn’t drop any of them though so woo hoo for us. I really think that my fear of being dropped was not only tested but it was probably cured. That doesn’t mean I’m going to start falling off of 5-foot platforms and expecting people to catch me but I won’t put myself at the bottom of any more pyramids just because I’m scared of being dropped!

Saturday morning we awoke to snow on the ground…and on the palm trees hahaha. The roads seemed pretty clear though so nobody backed out of the bus trip to Slovenia. The bus trip was interesting…once we made it out of the small towns and onto the interstate I couldn’t even tell (except for the signage) that we were in Europe. I felt like I could’ve been driving in Colorado. We even stopped at a truck stop for snacks and to use that bathroom and it was just like any other convenience store/gas station/rest area that you would find in the States. The bus was really nice though. It had two television sets and a dvd player so we watched some movies. The boys behind me said that they saw the symbol for Mercedes Benz on the bus but I didn’t look or care to look. It wouldn’t surprise me though. The dump truck I saw back in Paderno was Mercedes Benz. The bus parked at the train station in Ljubljana (the capital city of Slovenia) and guess what restaurant was there? McDonald’s! Everyone went inside but most people just grabbed some food to-go and left for the hostel. Four of us were procrastinating going back out in the cold so we just sat there to finish our meal. We had heard that Europeans think it’s rude to eat and walk. Somehow, even with looking at a map, we couldn’t find the hostel. We stopped on one street corner and pulled out a map (Fact: Not all streets in Ljubljana are marked with signs) and we hear a female voice from above, “Are you lost?” My first thought was, “God really is a woman!” Then we looked up and a woman was leaning out of her fourth story apartment waving at us. We told her we were trying to find Hostel Celica and she gave us directions and, like any mom would, made us repeat them back to her. Hostel Celica was a military prison from 1883 until 1991 when Slovenia gained its independence. A group of eighty artists decided in 1993 to turn the former prison into a hostel but it wasn’t approved for a very long time and the renovations were completed in 2003. Overall it’s a very nice, cheap place to stay! In all of that time the other CIMBA students hadn’t made it through check-in so we did not miss a thing by relaxing at McDonald’s. Once we checked in we took our backpacks to the luggage room and five of us headed out to explore Ljubljana. Our first stop was the Dragon Bridge (Zmajski Most) on the way to the Ljubljana Castle. It was still snowing so our view wasn’t that great but it was still pretty awesome. I fell asleep during the movie (“interactive museum”) because it ended up being about Slovenian history instead of the castle. Then we stumbled upon the Cathedral of St. Nicholas (Stolnica Sv Nikolaj) and went inside. The amount of artistry and work that went into the interior of this building was astonishing. The huge ceiling was just one big mural! We wandered back to the hostel with our soaking wet shoes and hung out with everyone for a bit. Our group gained two more when we decided that we weren’t really in the mood to eat horse (traditional Slovenian food) and REALLY craved Mexican food. One thing that I liked was that most people in Slovenia speak English so we did not have to use sign language as much as in Italy. It was just a nice break to know that the person you were talking to actually understood what you were saying. We wandered around the Presetnov Trg (the square in between City Center and Old Town) and saw the France Preseren monument, the Triple Bridge (Tromostovje) and the (pink!) Franciscan Church of the Annunciation. The main portion of our group had stayed at the hostel since check-in so they were leaving when we got back at 10:00. We initially thought of joining them but our feet were freezing from being soaked for so long so we decided to go upstairs and play cards in the common room. We sat in the common room with some people from Australia and some people from somewhere near Slovenia. I think we had more fun eavesdropping on them talking about “that group of Americans” than we did with our card game! The next morning we had to return all of our sheets and towels to the front desk so we could check out. Three of us showed two of our friends how to get to the castle and planned to meet up in an hour. While we waited we went exploring further down into Old Town. We found the Robba Fountain in the middle of Mestni trg. It was modeled after a fountain in Rome so I’m hoping I can find it and compare the two pictures! We bought some postcards at one of the very few shops that was open on a Sunday. After we met up with them we tried to find a shoe store that was open. A girl in our group had only brought one pair of shoes with her to Slovenia and she was miserable. We were told that the only places that were open were in the mall across town so we put her in a cab and decided to find a place to sit that was warm. Want to try to guess this time where we went? Another McDonald’s! We felt pretty pathetic but we sat there for four hours watching ski jumping on tv and just enjoying each other’s company. There was nothing left for us to see in Ljubljana unless we wanted to take a train to somewhere else in Slovenia and our bus didn’t leave until 8:00 p.m. I think I’m going to try to hit up a McDonald’s in every country I go to…my McDonald’s European Tour I guess! I know it sounds pathetic and I don’t enjoy McD’s that much when I’m home but when you’re spending all of your money on travel it doesn’t make much sense to have more than one or two expensive meals per trip. All of the little locally owned cafes that we saw were closed so McDonald’s was really our only option. It was pretty fancy though. You need a special passcode to get into the bathrooms and you can only find it on your bill…so only paying customers can use the bathroom. The only not-nice thing about it was that a drunken homeless guy bothered us twice about wanting money or food. We said sorry and felt genuinely bad until he cussed us out in Slovenian and basically told us that if we were really sorry we would’ve given him food. What I don’t understand is why he thought that people who were eating at a McD’s and were our age would have any spare cash? We finally decided to go back to the hostel to get our luggage and hang out until it was time to go to the train station and find the bus. It was a great trip but Sunday just dragged on and on!