Today I jumped off of a 30 ft. cliff into the water. It was awesome. I was terrified. The plan was to get up early, and head to Lokrum on a ferry. There were stories passed around that there was good cliff jumping on the other side of the island from the dock, so when we got there, we just started walking. And walking. And walking. We walked for the first 2 hours. It was fun. I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t dehydrated and if it wasn’t so hot. But it was, and I was, so it was a pain, BUT I’m alive and the island was beautiful. I have never seen so many butterflies and so many varieties of butterflies around even in Phipps! And the island has a ton of peacocks everywhere that just kind of walk up to you. It’s so weird. We ended up walking around the entire island and didn’t know where these cliffs were, so when we got back to the pier, we asked the one guy at the restaurant. He told us where they were, but to be careful because the water was really choppy today in that area because of the wind direction. We went over to the area and scoped it out. None of the locals were there 
jumping, so we opted for the second option – jumping off of this cliff into this small salt water lake that was fed through a cave. The water was so clear that it looked like you were jumping into 10 feet of water or less, but in all actuality, I think it was more like 20-25 ft of water.We watched some other people do it before our whole group did it. It was so much fun! It is so far down! You just keep falling and falling! The worst part is standing at the top getting ready to jump. It was definitely worth it though. I have a video! (Thanks Grace!) After that, I caught the ferry back to the Island without everyone else, and went to the post office. NOTE: buy your post cards at the post office. They are only 1.8 kuna instead of 3! (that’s not even a dollar, but still). Oh well!
I then went to get ice cream and wait for the bus back to the harbor. I went in and asked the guy for Hazelnut in Croatian and he looked at me and asked me where I was from and I told him the US and he asked my why I knew Croatian. I told him I was studying for 2 years and he was so happy! He told me that I had to practice and wasn’t allowed to speak any English any more to him. He was so nice! I really liked it when the locals were excited that someone was learning their language. I never thought about it, but I guess it is a weird language for someone to learn. I would love to use this to my advantage and perhaps work over there someday! Not in Dubrovnik, but just in Croatia in general. In Spain, and Italy and France, they just kind of expect you to know their language in most cases, and usually people know a few words from highschool classes, but I guess Croatian speakers from the US are hard to come by. I feel special! Haha. Someday…
After getting ice cream, and waiting for the bus and running into Rachel, we decided to walk back. We hit up the grocery store where we tried to spend our remaining Kuna (I have like 30 left, which is about $6, so I’m not concerned). We went back to the ship and chilled. Then there was an announcement that we’re not actually leaving the port until tomorrow morning at 10 am, which sucks! We could have had at least an extra few hours here and had everyone back by like… midnight or at least 11pm. It would have been SO much better. But since we had already been cleared by customs, we couldn’t leave the ship.
Out of all of the ports that we’ve been to so far, this is my favorite. I had no idea how beautiful of a country Croatia was. It’s amazing. I really need to come back here. I’m very sad to leave. Yeah I know, I’m going to Greece in 2 days, but still. This was amazing and 4 days definitely wasn’t enough. I wanted to hit up Split and Korčula. Eventually I want to make it to Zagreb. I definitely think I’m going to look into coming back here for something, whether it’s a job or school, in the future when I get back to Pitt. I want to see Montenegro and Serbia and Bosnia. This area is great and I really really want to make it back! I was talking to a few of my friends and they said that so far out of all of the countries we’ve been to, this is where they see themselves coming back to first. It’s just so beautiful here! Hopefully I’ll get some pictures up soon!
So, tomorrow is classes, then a day of sea Olympics and then Greece!!
Doviđenja!
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