Bridge Year Program

From my time here, I’ve learned to thrive off of the basic things: grabbing a coffee with a friend; playing Slagalica, a popular Serbian game show, with my homestay family; going for walks.  These moments color my experience in Serbia.  They are the little stories that I will tell when I get back to America, the anecdotes that best explain why Serbia is not just my house, but my home.  If my host mom didn’t insist that I wear slippers indoors, or if my other host mom didn’t require me to b

If I had the chance to be any professional for a day, a diplomat wouldn’t particularly be my job of choice.  That’s not to say that the duties and responsibilities of this internationally political career path aren’t interesting; it’s just that if I had one day to be anything, I would like to try something unconventional...

In case you should ever find yourself in Serbia, there are a few things you should know. Firstly, the people are amazing. All you need do is say your name and choke out a few words in Serbian and you’ve found yourself a new best friend. People are always willing to show you what Serbia is really like, (which is awesome).

Note: This was written in December while I was finishing up my term in Novi Sad. A group update touching upon the transition to Niš is forthcoming.
“Why Serbia?” Every time I interact with a new group of local people, I get asked the same question. For many youth here, it seems puzzling that I chose to leave behind “The American Dream” for a whole year--and, even more so, that I chose to spend it in Serbia. My response is always the same: the service opportun

t’s obvious that language is an important part of our lives. Most people understand that we speak one or possibly two languages natively, and that some of us learn a few more on top of that. Travel, adventure, and self growth are what we usually associate with the acquisition new languages. The appeal is clear; think of language as a window, through which we can see and experience the world. No window, no matter how big, can offer a complete view of life outside its panes.

I distinctly remember walking into Volonterski Centar Vojvodina for the first time on a pleasant September day and wondering what would become of my time at VCV.  Located just 100 meters from the main square in Novi Sad, VCV is an organization devoted to promoting youth volunteerism and providing both long and short-term youth exchange on an international level.

In Novi Sad, I work with Novi Sad Humanitarian Centar (Novosadski Humanitarni Centar), more commonly known as NSHC. Founded in 1998 in response to the influx of large numbers of Serbian refugees from Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, NSHC originally focused solely on humanitarian aid. Over the years, NSHC has expanded the scope of its aid and now works largely in four areas...

My time in Novi Sad has been spent volunteering at Omladina Jazas-a Novi Sad, a very “for the youth, by the youth” oriented organization primarily focused on HIV/AIDS education and prevention but also on drug abuse education.  In 1994, the first Omladina Jazas-a in Serbia was founded.  Two years later, a group of young people –sponsored by Jazas– came to Novi Sad and organized a campaign for World Aids Day on December 1st.

During our eight-day orientation, Novi Sad was a giant amusement park; each day we were introduced to some new rides and our exploration continued as we moved into home stay families and got situated in our new lives.  Just as there are roller-coaster lovers and lazy river fanatics, we each developed a soft spot or two for particular places around the city as time went on.

One month has passed since Dominique, Jacob, Tucker, Yentli and I arrived in Serbia, and during this month we have been exposed to many new experiences and challenges as Americans living in a foreign country.  I think I speak for all of us when I say that Serbia is not how we pictured it and that we gain a greater understanding of the cultural nuances each day we spend here.  As our knowledge of the Serbian language progresses.

Looking back on these two lessons, I can only think of the phrase I saw printed on a poster advertising the Gay Pride parade here in Split, Croatia: Nije sve crno-belo , or “it’s not all black and white.” Looking past the obvious—looking for root causes or for answers found in small details is not something one should relegate to analysis of world events. It’s something that applies to life on a day to day basis.

In all these experiences and changes a few things remained constant because a part of accepting this nature of transience was selecting, out of a plethora of factors, those that would be a catalyst to change. I still was aware of the weight my identity as an Indian carried with it. I still love the idea of and value commitment, discipline and persistence, endorse and subscribe to them with all my heart.

Despite this feeling of accomplishment, I still must come to grips with the fact that my impact on these students won’t solve the problems of their people. I came into this position as their teacher with a slightly grandiose idea of the change I could make, but I’ve come to the realization that in merely four months there is only so much that can be done.

We were soon back to facing busy Serbs who do not hesitate to serve as reminders of our lack of knowledge of both the Serbian language and the Serbian way. But, it did allow us to recognize that though we spend most of our time thinking about how much we do not know, we have in actuality learned a great deal.

It is incredibly difficult to think that four months have passed already and that my experience in Novi Sad has come to an end. The hardest part of it all is to leave behind the comfort that was built up. After all, it takes time and a lot of hard work to get used to another culture and a foreign city. It almost seems unfair that in the exact moment in which our life in Novi Sad is properly structured we have to part with it and start anew.

While service has been an essential component of my life in Novi Sad, the highlight of my experience so far has been the people with whom I have interacted. This is a realization that came to me as I stepped out of the bus after coming back from our excursion in Belgrade. I felt like I had returned home.

The Serbs I know have been interested to learn about the world I am from. They are not xenophobic at all. They ask questions about everything from the way the Texas countryside looks, to whether or not all Americans really listen to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. Many are eager to practice their English, and it seems that every other person I talk to is saving money for a trip to New York City.

Thrusting myself into a new family felt more surreal in reality than it seemed to me in theory. It has entailed more than just slipping into the family’s routine, respecting their ways, mending my own. Living with a group of people who do not just share the same private space, but whose blood runs in each other’s veins is sharpening your judgment and knowing when to blaze new ground and when to willingly decline treading undiscovered territory.

In her words, a Single Story is created when a people are shown "as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become." Adichie's stories resonated with our Bridge Year group in many ways that caused us to reflect on the single stories we carried in our bags when we arrived in Serbia: The single story we had of Serbia as a politically and....

The end of April marks the closing time of the Serbia Bridge Year teams stay in Serbia. At the end of May 1st, an important Serbian family holiday when people around the country join together for a day of rostilj (barbeque) and bonding time, we will travel to Montenegro where we will participate in a environmental group project and then to spend a week in Croatia where we will have "re-entry" workshops where we will reflect...

It hits even the best of us around this time of year, when the melancholy of winter begins to melt away and sun on our faces reminds us of a time when we could leave the house wearing less than seven layers. In cafe cultures like Serbia's, spring fever tends to strike especially hard; umbrellaed tables have vaporized in the city center...

Now that we are at the halfway point of our new lives in Nis, it seems that life has once again taken up a semblance of regularity, something which we had all hoped for but was difficult for us to envision happening so soon after leaving Novi Sad. After such a short amount of time, though, we have already started forming unique ties with our new hometown and the people we have met here.

Our trip to Nis began just as our journey to Novi Sad had: a van ride through the Serbian landscape, our minds creating fantasies of the coming months as the countryside rolled by the windows. This time, however, a few things were different. We were driving south, past Belgrade for the first time, to a new part of Serbia that at times can feel worlds away...

Who would have thought we would find ourselves here so quickly? Four months have passed and here we are preparing to pick up and move again to start a new part of this journey. Katherine, Mariam, Alex, Lelabari, Ceca, our program leader, and I don’t know what to expect of Nis, the place that we will soon call home...

During the third month of the Serbian Bridge Year program, Ashley Vinson, Alex Rafter, Katherine Mount, Mariam Wahed and I encountered a wide range of exciting experiences including excursions to Belgrade and Subotica, a merry Thanksgiving Day celebration, a joyful evening spent at a friend's cottage by the Danube.

October started off with Alex Rafter turning to me and saying, "We're at a castle, staring down an ostrich, and we're in Serbia. How crazy is this?" These "we're in Serbia?" realizations happened on a daily basis at the start of our time here - I used to wake up every morning and the first thought in my head was "I'm in Serbia?"

This first month has been a period of adjustment for all of us – Alex Rafter, Lelabari Giwa-Ojuri, Ashley Vinson, Katherine Mount and myself – but an exciting one. Though time seems to have sped up since our arrival, we are really enjoying ourselves here in Novi Sad.