ROM

"Big Sinisa," Hillary, and Nada singing with the ROM music team.

Lindsay and Kristin (Utah) being cute!

Hillary's ROM small group, "Chayal," creating their flag.

Chayal is Arabic for "imagination," and Hebrew for "soldier."

Fellanza (Kosova), Vedrana (Croatia), Sithabile (Zimbabwe),

Hillary, and Jeanmarie (Texas) at Golubinjak Park after repelling into a cave.

It was a great day of team bonding with our small groups.

Hillary, Mirta, Lindsay, Marta, Bojan, and Jan at a Pizzeria in Punat

ROM group at monastery on Kosljun Island

Lindsay, Jan, and Hillary on the boat from Punat

to Kosljun during ROM's visit to the island of Krk

Hi, everyone! We apologize for not updating the blog recently. We have been so busy with ROM that we hardly have time to sleep. But it has been great. All the people here are amazing, and we are learning a lot from each other. The first two weeks of ROM are over now. Our first week of ROM was really fun, and mostly spent getting to know each other and our small groups. The second week has been really intense, and we have been talking a lot about painful memories of war and ethnic conflict. We watched some footage of the recent Balkan wars, and heard people's stories of their experiences as victims and refugees. It had been eye-opening and very emotional. Next week, we will be talking about where to go from here, and how we can make a difference in our hometowns. The brief summary we have given here really does not capture what has been going on here. As everyone keeps telling us, you just have to experience ROM to understand what it's like. It hasn't all been work, though. As you can see from the pictures, we got to go to the coast again, and tomorrow will be going to Zagreb for the day. Tonight we did some great karaoke, and they are still going strong downstairs! Our time here is going so fast! We have 6 days left until we are back in Seattle. We will be glad to see you all, but sad to leave this beautiful country and all the great people we have met and grown to love. We will send another update before we leave. Thank you for all your support. We love you all.

~Hillary and Lindsay