20-IX-1999.
No emails for this day, apart from those for aman (where there's a report of a member of Otpor! who got beaten by the police in Kragujevac, under the pretense of "your gathering wasn't registered and is therefore illegal", and the technical side of reporting - the guy there should call by landline, as the price of a mobile call would be too much for him, and someone on the Belgrade side should record everything and then type an article from that). Actually, there's a lot of mail on the subject, things are cooking up back home.
Afternoon, was driving Nina and Lena to some doctors' outfit to get checked and vaccinated for school. We eventually managed to convince the nurses there that the dates in their booklets mean what they mean - nobody here ever saw dates with roman numerals for months, and month in the middle of a date - and still they administered at least the pertussis one, that was completely unnecessary, as a booster (and then later they both contracted it anyway). But they're admissible to school now. Their schools are both within kind of walking distance, but that's relative. The high school is only four blocks away, and the elementary is six, but the size of a block here, away from downtown, formally out of town, is a lot. So they'll both have to ride their school buses, which stop at the nearest corner, which is only two houses away... though it's actually down the hill, across the creek... about 100m.
The „formally out of town“ bit matters, administratively. The city is one of those virginian standalone cities, surrounded by the county but not part of it, and the county's seat is in town. The border between the city and the county is next street, so we're not in town. Greg explained that this is important, the county schools are much better. We later gathered that the county has more money, as that's where the richer guys, like he, live in them suburbs, while the city is mostly students, retirees and the actually poor. More money, better schools.
Lena still doesn't speak a word of english. Whatever we had on that CD with "fish for dinner, please" doesn't seem to help much. She later recounted how she just stared around, understanding nothing, just did what others did. Then by lunch end her teacher asked „are you finished?“ and she understood that. That's what started the ball rolling. Within a month or two she spoke english like old.
The picture was taken by some disposable camera I got - the darker corners make that obvious. It being not digital, we had only prints - don't even remember whether we got the negative. Only four prints survived. This is Lena in front of her school, first day. About one third of the school grounds is the parking. I love it how they have forest everywhere in these parts.
Mentions: aman bre, Greg Reubenthal, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), in serbian