Dayton to BiH 2018 - First Impressions

Dayton to BiH 2018!

We're back in Bosnia Herzegovina! This year's group from the Dayton Regional STEM School includes some great representatives - Nate, Griffin, May, Kayla, and Anya. I'm excited this year to be joined by my wife, Amanda Grieve, and fellow Dayton Sister City Committee member, Peggy Kelly.

We left Dayton and traveled through Chicago and Munich, finally landing in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on June 9. We spent a fun night exploring the city, including traveling across the top of the wall of the city, going into the shops, and (of course) eating a ton of great food!

The view from the top... of the wall! Watchers of Game of Thrones or Star Wars may recognize Dubrovnik as Kings Landing or Canto Bight!

Another view from the wall.

A wedding was going on at the main cathedral at the center of town.

We caught the processional while getting a "light" snack of meats and cheeses.

Seems like we try new food each time... this time it was smelt, which I've never had before. Delicious!

Some of us got up early the next day to go swimming and wading in the Adriatic...

Others of us missed checkout and had to be shamed accordingly.

Thankfully we all made it to a delicious breakfast before we got picked up!

The next day we were glad to see Ana, Gorana, and Mateo, who picked us up to head into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our first stop was Vjetrenica cave, a beautiful cave that contains the greatest level of biodiversity in the world. The rock formations that were formed over millions of years were beautiful, and we were blown away not just by the views, but also by the continuous wind that flows through the tunnel, sometimes as high as 55 miles per hour.

It was hot outside, but right here in this spot at the mouth of the cave was very cold from the wind!

Inside the cave was beautiful.

The rock formations are millions of years old and it was amazing to see what slow sediment accumulation does when you have so much time.

These creatures live in the cave and we got to see one (will have to go in person to see it!) I didn't know they could live for so long, the one we saw was over 50 years old! The "human fish" is pretty cool.

We also went inside to learn more about the museum's history and how they've learned about what is inside.

Next up we headed into Mostar to meet our homestay families and have dinner. The next day we got up early to check out the Economics Faculties of the two local public universities that make their home in Mostar - The University of Djemal Bijedic and University of Mostar.

Touring the University of Djemal Bijedic with Dr. Azra Bajramović, who gave us a tour of the facility and told us about the projects their students do, which sound a lot like what we call project-based learning.

Jelena Jurić showed us around the University of Mostar and provided an overview of the programs and degrees students can pursue.

We were excited to see that the University of Mostar's economics magazine (which their students run) is now edited by Dario Šaravanja, one of the students who came to the United States to participate in our first year of the exchange program! You can find their Facebook page here.

After a lot of walking we had a delicious lunch at Restoran Radobolja, an upscale local restaurant that Amanda and I were fortunate to have eaten at on our first trip.

The food was delicious!

We had some time to kill, so we stopped at one of the many places you can get gelato and had all kinds of delicious flavors.

We also had a chance to catch up on what we'd learned from all of our experiences so far.

Up next, the students learned how to fly a drone at INTERA Techology Park, our amazing partner organization in this exchange program. They ended the night with a visit to Code Hub Mostar (Facebook page here), an awesome new project of INTERA's whereby they have started a co-working space in downtown Mostar.

Dino Jolić of AirRec gives the students a demonstration on how to fly drones.

Nate gives drone flying a try.

After drone flying it was time to head to one of INTERA's newest projects, Code Hub Mostar, a beautiful co-working space located in downtown Mostar. The students got to join students in the Mostar Summer Youth Program for Code Hub Mostar Movie Night: Vol. 1.

The next day we went into town to visit the US Embassy and Telemach, a major internet, television, and telephone sponsor for our trip for the second year in a row. It was a great opportunity to meet people at an innovative company in the country and learn about their work.

Anya talks to the cameras after we learned a bit about Telemach to discuss the things she likes about the country and the experience she's had so far.

Nate also got his 15 seconds of fame in the spotlight.

After Telemach we stepped briefly back on US soil to visit the US Embassy and learn about their mission here in BiH and how an Embassy functions.

Unfortunately we didn't get a picture inside this time, but here's us outside the United States (in BiH)!

While we didn't get to stay in Sarajevo long (we'll be back on Sunday for sightseeing), we did get a chance to have some ćevapi!

Mmmm... it's been too long.

One of the many views on the train ride from Sarajevo back to Mostar.

The waiter explained that one meat plate wouldn't be enough to serve five of us...

This is one meat plate. Delicious, and enough for five people! We had a great dinner at Šadrvan.

After a beautiful train ride back home from Sarajevo to Mostar and some dinner in Stari Grad (Old City) we got some rest, then woke up refreshed as the internship experience kicked into high gear as students visited the Center for Technology and Culture, a local makerspace and educational organization that teaches students how to use a range of different technologies. For the second year in a row, students were grateful to have Ivan as a teacher as they learned how to do Arduino programing, which allows students the opportunity to program controllers that can complete tasks using switches, LEDs, and potentiometers.

Nate working hard trying to get his program to play a favorite song of his.

Griffin worked on programming a message board.

Agreed.

Many thanks to Ivan (far right) for hosting us once again and teaching the students some valuable skills!

Up next was a visit to the American Corner Mostar, where local students from 16 different schools in and around Mostar were showing off the collaborative projects they'd been working on at STEAM night. The American Corner of Mostar is one of 9 in BiH and one of over 400 around the world. These educational organizations are sponsored by US Embassies and work with local student groups to further the missions of the embassies in the countries in which they are located. It was great meeting some of the students who have benefited from these programs and seeing their amazing work!

Our tour guides Lemeana and Marija greeted us when we arrived and showed us around.

Our tour guides were exceptional and it was clear that they were proud of the work they'd done, as well they should be. They've been doing 3D printing and Adobe software and much more!

We got to watch a video compilation of the Photoshop projects they'd been working on, which allowed them to place themselves in locations all across the US.

It was a packed house, and with over 140 students in the program they had to have multiple STEAM nights to accommodate everyone. Glad we got to visit!

We enjoyed learning through some of the games/apps they showed us that they like to use.

Before turning in for the night we went to the Old City to climb up into the Karagoz Bey Mosque, one of the mosques in the city which allows guests to climb up into the minaret. It's an amazing view of the city!

There were so many of us this year we needed two pictures to fit all of us!

The other half of the group!

The view from the top!

Later on that night we tried our hand at painting the bridge... I would say the success levels were mixed.

That's it for now, although we've barely had time to sleep so far, let alone write, so more to come soon!