street performers and construction in croatia

Kim and I spent what seemed like hours today looking for our hostel. We were wandering the streets of old town and could not seem to figure out where the place that we had reservations was (little did we know, it was actually outside of the walls of the city up the hill.) As we were wandering the streets, we came upon some street performers and among them was none other than Tyler Waldron. He was doing some incredibly lame magic tricks using playing cards and making no money whatsoever. As we walked by, he started begging us for a donation, but there was no way that I was going to pay for such a poor assortment of tricks.

I decided to take it upon myself to teach him a cool trick that he could use, so I asked for a card from his deck. I took it a flicked it sending it spinning it the air, only to have it turn and arc back to me like a boomerang, whereupon I threw it again to have it turn a little circle and come back. I explained that it was all in the wrist and the flick, and that he should use this trick to make money. I then showed him the advanced trick that I could do, making the card fly a figure 8 around us. Tyler tried, but every time he threw the card it would just sail away and hit some onlooker. After showing him repeatedly and he still could not get it, I told him to quit his day job and find something new.

Kim and I continued on our way and searched some more. No one spoke any English, so our search was that much harder. We managed to run into my home students who lived in Croatia and they offered to let us build our own dwelling because that would be easier, right? They had an empty lot next to their house, so we grabbed some wood and started building. There was a hardware store on that street, so I went looking for parts to a broken sander that I had, got it all fixed up, and came back to continue the building. Everything was going so smoothly and it seemed like we finished our four story house in record time. We forgot to add stairs, so every floor had a ladder and each floor was successively shorter than the one below it. It must have been because we got lazier and lazier as we built it up higher. I climbed the ladder to the fourth floor and realized the the door was too small to fit through. So much for my penthouse room with a view. I guess I'll just settle for the third floor.