The 4th of July in Croatia

I don’t know why this memory popped in my head today, but it’s one of my favorites (I may have changed my mind by the end).  In the summer of 2003, I went on a short term missions trip to Croatia.  While I was there, I taught English classes, helped at a children’s camp with the Roma, cleaned the church and offices, and made friends.  Making friends was the best part.  I got to practice my minimal Croatian, and they got to practice their English.  It was a hot summer, so I also had rides to pools and local lakes to swim.  Oh, and I got to eat some delicious, home-cooked food and gelato!

The 4th of July was one of our last nights in town, and it was the last night before we went on “vacation” to the coastal city, Dubrovnik (there are even more stories to tell with that!).  All of our friends gathered that night in the church’s free cafe for karaoke.  Apparently, the “tradition” was for all of the Americans to sing “I’m Proud to be an American”.  Oh my!  That was my first karaoke experience and probably my last.

Afterwards, the missionaries who were hosting us took us out onto the street to set off sparklers and small bottle rockets.  I’m terrified of fire, so I stayed away from it all.  Also, the warnings of my paranoid father rang in my head about fireworks blowing up in people’s hands or misfiring back into the crowd.  When the bottle rocket got stuck in a tree, the group decided to move to the banks of the river.  Two people from our group successfully launched the bottle rocket over the river.  I quickly moved away when I saw a police officer approaching our group.  What we gathered from translation was that we’d basically just broken international boundary laws because on the other side of the river was Bosnia.  Yikes! This part I can look back at and laugh because I’m a rule-follower and overly cautious, and this is my only brush with trouble.  What’s not so funny is the story we later heard from our friend that people at nearby cafes had heard the noise and, out of fear and bad memories of a recent war, had ducked under their tables.  He’d said, “If you shoot something across the river, you should expect a bullet in return.”

So, my story that I’d expected to be lighthearted and fun has turned dark and serious and sad.  I want to erase it and start again (but it’s already after 11 and I can’t).  And isn’t this where I said I would share the truth?