An addendum to the trash talk:

Kyle is the most super awesome supervisor a girl could ask for. Which is why I don't feel bad making fun of him. There are probably some flaws in that logic, but I'm sure it evens out. (Jen can attest to my flaw filled logic.) I plan on doing some tribute posts to all of my teammates, but until that time comes here are three things you may not know about Kyle:
1. He loved the Hunger Games trilogy. In fact, he is haunted by the Taylor Swift/Civil Wars collaboration for the new film.
2. The other day he got to chill in the back of a police car. One of his first reactions: I should blog about this. And he did. In fact, the first three weeks I was in Serbia he claimed he was winning the imaginary blog war between the two of us. It should be noted that he didn't get me internet for those three weeks either.
3. Kyle runs. A lot. And for a long time/long distance. One day I saw him running while I was on a bus going somewhere in the city. I almost cheered for him, but you don't really talk much less cheer for people on buses here. The Serbs were pretending that he didn't exist.

Lest any of you be confused about how awesome and ridiculous my supervisor is, you should just take my word for it. Everything I speak is truth anyway.

Ginger Bread Domination

I've been slightly under the weather the last few days so I didn't get this up as quickly as I would've liked. My landlady says that I should inhale shark oil and my immune system will become horse like. I'm debating the pros and cons of this advice as we speak.

But on to more interesting things: Those of you that know me personally know that I love to win. The only thing better is thwarting my closest competition. The Israels have discovered this first hand and I have become a worthy opponent for every game they can think of. So what is an Israel to do? Team up with me of course.

My bestie, Connor, is a bit on the smart side. When it came time to work on our ginger bread creations he suggested we team up (he had been hanging around scouting the guests) and that we should build Sveti Sava. For those of you not in the know, that would be one of the biggest and most important Orthodox temples and it resides right here in Belgrade. His mother laughed. She laughed! She said that no way could we build it. And so we built it.

We did have a moment where she threatened to disqualify us because we had non edible parts, but we stepped it up and finished with an entirely edible construction. We weren't alone, in fact, we probably would've failed without our friend Val's help. So prepare to be amazed and just in case you were confused about how hard we dominated I also included the other building constructed by adults.


So first things first: This is Sveti Sava.

And this is our creation:

Its pretty close and was constructed out of entirely edible materials. Check out some other photos from that night:

Close up of our finished project.

Our competition. This team was Serb men led by none other than Kyle.

Perhaps you need some perspective. This building was suggested by an American and then built by Serbs...this is what it should've looked like:

Yes, they built it incorrectly.

We made a huge mess, but ours was pretty darn correct when compared to theirs.

Connor and Val hard at work.

The ugly underneath.

The two Belgrade landmarks side by side.

"Hey look how flimsy it is!"

Val is a design genius and our secret weapon.

We also made a gigantic mess. It should be said that we cleaned up the mess left by both adult teams, because we're good sports.

Team Awesome. Two Americans and a Macedonian building the Serbian Orthodox temple and landmark.

At the end of the night I looked over to see Connor munching on the Zepter building. He said it calmed his stomach ache.

We're already making plans for next year, rest assured that it will culminate in fantastic victory.

p.s. This post is dedicated to Kyle and his pitiful attempt to lead his Serbs to victory.