people watching jackpot

There are many updates to be written of my recent life, but they probably won't make it to the blogosphere until Monday.

warning: I sent some letter across the Atlantic and some of the stories will be repeats. I had a talk with my brother a while ago and he said that it is okay to blog, e-mail, and write the same story more than once. I still have my doubts.

In the meantime, a little story:

Last weekend, I went to a village in Southern Serbia (8 hours on terrible busses each way) for a conference for work on ‘Warning Signs of Fundamentalism and Feminist Responses.’ The conference was interesting, but, for me at least, it was outshined by the people watching in our hotel.

The village is known for its hot spring, which people visit for medicinal reasons. It is right across the street from the hotel & the only reason people come to the village, as best as I can tell. At all hours of the day, there were old people wearing bathrobes and swim caps wandering the hall or waiting for their friends in the lobby. Very entertaining.

That would make it good, but overly dressed high schoolers made it amazing. On Saturday night, the local high school had their prom in the hotel’s dining room. The place was filled with girls in fancy revealing (and generally ugly) dresses and boys in T-shirts and jeans dancing surprisingly awkwardly. The prevailing theory was that the kids were drunk. This prom prompted others to tell stories of their proms, which were very entertaining.

I had no idea that Serbia even had proms.