6-months later: a new beginning (take two) [Part 1]

So this is my first official post.

It has been 6 months, and a few days, since I landed in Serbia... and it hasn't been easy - to say the least.

I had never left home before (other than travel), and had never done anything else in Serbia than visit with relatives, eat, travel, and engage in Serbian nightlife; so tasks like finding a place, opening a bank account, getting a cellphone, and trying to figure out where I'm going to buy all my household items due to the non-existence of Walmart and Ikea was quite challenging.

However, those are the one-time things that you deal with and forget... what was most difficult was figuring out what to do with all my free time (reverting from a 9-5 job back to student life).

While I do have an abundance of family in Serbia - over the years, things (and people) have changed. It occurred to me that spending a week or two with this or that relative once every year in my childhood did not mean I really knew them at all, and it now takes a little more than ice cream to make me comfortable with establishing and maintaining any sort of relationship with people. In Canada I had my own "family" of friends and a well-established persona within my community, along with a multitude of responsibilities and familiar activities to pass the time - but in Serbia none of this mattered because it no longer existed.

So after an extremely difficult, but necessary process, I'm calling a do-over, choosing today to start my blog - to mark the real beginning of the new me.