ONE
On November 1st, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to town. Wow! It was her first visit to Zagreb, first stop on her tour of other nearby Eastern European countries. And, apparently, she makes it a point to visit U.S. diplomatic families at every stop. So, we were invited to see her just before she left town, it was a can't miss opportunity, but of course, was also quite a racket. She was scheduled to speak sometime between 8-8:45 am in the Hotel Esplanade, a fancy historic hotel in downtown Zagreb. That meant we had to be at Ava's school at 6:30 am, to take a bus to the hotel, be searched by security and then hurry up and wait. And wait. And wait. Madam Secretary chooses to take a picture with the children at each visit so a gal from the Embassy staff was trying desperately to get them huddled together on a set of risers. And then wait some more. If Apple needed any further adverstising...this would have been opportune. Ipads and ipods and iphones were distributed by parents like candy in the interest of keeping the kids occupied and quiet. And miraculously, it pretty much worked.
She came in, she spoke for a few minutes, stood with the children, shook a few hands, and exited...all in about 20 minutes. And then the Embassy photographer snapped this awesome shot...
Unfortunately, I didn't get a turn to shake Hillary's hand. After she took the photo with the children, Ava rushed up to me crying because a boy had stood in front of her...so I was busy consoling her and lost my spot on Hilllary's walking path. Sigh. But it turns out Ava's complaint was legitimate, in the Embassy photograph you can't see her at all. Alas. We have this one anyway...
Maybe there are some folks out there who don't agree with Hillary's politics, but for me, to be able to be with the U.S. Secretary of State, who just happens to be a woman, was a great honor. And most certainly a proud example for both Scot and me to share with the girls. Even better, she's now a household name :-) We prepped the girls ahead of time and tried to explain who she was...and Scot just happened to have a magazine with her picture on it, so we used that as a talking point also. The other day, when we were relaying the story to Grandpa Chuck & Grandma Sandy on Skype, Reese heard Scot say "Hillary Clinton". She immediately went over to the end table, picked up the magazine, showed it to Grandma and Grandpa and said "This is Hillary Clinton." If anyone's going to go into politics, though, it will be Ava.
TWO
On Sunday, November 4th, we took the girls to Arena Zagreb for Disney On Ice. The girls didn't even care that Mickey and the Gang elected to perform in their Croatian tongue. Otherwise, it was all the same as the shows we've seen in the U.S. The one moment that did give us a little pause...was during the Toy Story act. Jesse, the cowgirl, started rustling up her gang shouting out "Gihad!" over and over and over again.
Later we were told it really translated to "Yeehaw", but the jury's still out...
THREE
Ava's school held a mock election on Tuesday, November 6th. Ava may have voted for the same person as her mom. But I didn't tell her to. Obama won at AISZ too.
I love how confident and happy she looks in this class picture. :-)
I think I mentioned that Scot and I voted before we left. It was absolutely refreshing to be out of the country in October and November...to not hear a single political ad or receive any wasteful campaign mail. I could have saved myself even more election related heartburn if I stayed off Facebook (but we all know that's not going to happen). Being away from it all does have its advantages.
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