Open YOUR hearts!!

I just came back from downtown.

My mom, aunt, grandpa, brother, 2 cousins and I attended a kind of festival. It can't exactly translate properly into English, but it's kind of like "The Street of Open Hearts."

There were hearts all over the place, red balloons, everything!! The point of the festival was to raise money for charity. You could buy food, drinks, toys and so on and all the proceeds go to charity. There was a particularly neat idea I'd like to let you know about. You could buy a clown nose and, once again, all proceeds go to charity. But the reason they were clown noses was also to promote happiness and laughter for the new year... 2009!

From 2008 - Beograd

Speaking of which, I'd like to wish you all the best New Year!! I hope your year is full of happiness, laughter, and love.

But back to the heart festival. There were clowns, horses, music, everything you could want.

From 2008 - Beograd

The music was neat because for half the time, it was rock. Meaning drums, guitar (both electric and acoustic) backup singing and all. The other part was full of symphony-style music. Meaning tubas, baritones, trumpets, trombones, base and snare drums, and clarinets.

We have lots of pictures, and wonderful memories. I was really satisfied and pleased with the way things turned out. But I was just as surprised at the number of people who showed up! I can bet you they sold at least 300 clown noses!! It was a busy place.

Afterwards, we headed to a street called "Skadarlija."

In Serbian, rice pudding is called "Sutlijas." And here's a funny story. The day before I tried the heavenly food we call "Rice Pudding," I was reading my grandpa's shirt that had written really famous streets in Serbia. One of them were, as you must have guessed, "Skadarlija." So when they told me the Serbian name of rice pudding, I kept on mixing up the 2 words. Shortly, my parents, brother, aunt and almost all my closest relatives started calling it "Skadarlija" as well. And we still do today. So that's the Skadarlija story.

And after 3 years of calling it that, and never seeing the actual street, itself, I saw it today. It was really old-fashioned and interesting. I liked it.

But don't make me mention the cold today. I froze like a popsicle, literally! But that's another story :)