Meeting with Bosnian TV Journalist

Today I had a brief but productive meeting with Duska Jurisic, a journalist for Bosnian Television (actually I think now she is a producer as well and she told me she is also working on her Masters degree in Media). So no wonder it was a short meeting. Anyway I was glad that she had time to meet with me at all. She give me some advice about how to go about conducting my project, and I got to visit the BiH TV and radio station building! So Cool!

The best thing is that she gave me the contact information for a women who started the most well-known organization for survivors of wartime rape, which is called the Center for Women War Victims. I am very excited to finally have her phone number in my hot little hand because no one seemed to have it.

The other best thing is that Sarah found a translator yesterday, so we will be able to actually talk with some womens groups this week (we met with only people who speak English so far, but there are so many others who speak Bosnian). So this is exciting beyond all excitement! And Sarah is beside herself with happiness (I think she was starting to get stressed that she had been here for 2 weeks already with no translator). Plus the woman who will be the translator is the woman we were really hoping would take the job: she is very nice and also spent a year in the US studying at the University of Georgia. Hooray!

On my way out of the TV station, I talked with another journalist and I asked him what his area of focus was. He said, ˝HOT˝ and gestured outside. He reports the weather! So I asked if it was going to cool off at all, and he laughed, shaking his head. ˝Only getting hotter!˝ Actually, though, the temp has dipped under 100 degrees F. It is funny to say that it is cooling off when it si still 96-98 degrees F, but it sure does feel like a bit of relief!

People keep asking me how I can live in a place like California where it is hot and sunny all the time. They do not believe me when I say that is is mostly rainy and foggy where I live. There eyes widen and jaws drop and they ask me incredulously, ˝In California it is raining?˝ Apparantls they have heard that ˝it never rains in southern california,˝ so I try to point out that I live in northern california where we actually have seasons including snow in some places. they think I am telling a fairy tale or pulling their leg. I cannot convince them. After this type of exchange a few days ago, one Brit asked me, ˝don´t you get bored when the weather is all the same, just nice days everyday?˝ I gave up and said yes, it is boring to have sun all the time. I didn´t even try to clarify my point because obviously he was attached to the image of sunny California and I was runing it for him, so he was simply not processing what i was actually saying about the weather in SF. Very amusing. Next time I travel, I will bring photos of me in my heavy coat and umbrella in the rain. Then maybe my words will have some degree of relevance for their recipients.