Rowing Rave

I’m sitting outside on my terasa, working my way through a brand new English/Croatian Dictionary, a rather heavy tome that I have no idea how I will get home. But home it must come with me as it is impossible to buy these dictionaries in New Zealand. This tome cost me 369 kuna and only translates from English to Croatian – I have the other half at home (the Croatian to English), a gift from my dear friend Diana, who encouraged me in this craziness.

I’ve had a wee siesta (yes, very odd for me to stop at all in daylight hours) but I have a migraine - and apart from that there is a festa (with a ‘sh’) in the kalalarga veceras (with a ‘ch’ on the ‘c’) and it will be a late night – one that I don’t want to share with a migraine.

I was thinking about rowing, and wanted to tell you about a few of the children.

I took Ante out in the boat yesterday – he has been to rowing once before, is ten, with mischievous green eyes. We were rowing along nicely together when he suddenly stopped and said ‘samo sekunda’ and very carefully removed a folded tissue from his pocket, blew his nose, thanked me, and continued rowing. So cute.

Tomislav is a chubby thirteen year old who only comes to row in the summer because the rest of his spare time he is playing the violin – his parents want him to have some exercise during the holidays. When we finished our session in the boat, he shook my hand and said in his most polite English ‘thank you very much for your helping me’.

Marko has wild blonde hair and is about ten. We didn’t discuss whether he spoke any English, and I was doing my thing with my Croatian rowing vocabulary. We had to keep correcting the direction that we were heading in (avoiding boats, avoiding swimmers) and I explained that my right blade was only half a blade and so there was more power on the left hand side (don’t ask me how I explained that but it was creative) – I could see him nodding (I sit in bow seat), and then after a few more strokes he said ‘maybe it was a mouse’ and continued rowing.

And then Luka is a shy and handsome sixteen year old – perfect build for a rower, tall and strong. Trener said he was to go in the double with me (he hasn’t rowed much and the coach wants him to get to the same standard as the other boys as quickly as possible) and he looked a bit concerned. He said he spoke a little English. At the end of the row he stopped me and said in perfect English ‘thank you, I underestimated you’. Last night I bumped into him on the way back from being destroyed at the gym and he smiled a big smile, said ‘hi’ then corrected himself as though he had overstepped the line by being too familiar and said ‘good evening’.

In Croatian there are two forms of the word ‘you’, and one of them is a more formal and polite form for use with those who are older or in authority. The children struggle with what to call me and so often don’t call me anything- the brave ones are calling me Allison because the coach does, but you can see the struggle of how best to treat me in the younger ones.

There are about 30 children when they are all at the rowing club, their behavior is disciplined and they show the utmost respect for the rowing coach, Kazimir Boric. He is old school but treats them as though they are his grandchildren. Sometimes I have to remind him about the girls because the boys certainly get the boats before they do! (cure trebaju prednost!) Girls need the advantage.

Rowing is one of my favourite parts of life here. I really enjoy the children and love that nearly all of them will stop in the street and say hi if they see me. So…. I just wanted to share them with you.