Roanne asked for hints about communicating when you don't know the language. Last Sept. my sister and I met relatives near Zagreb who spoke no English at all. (We had been told they spoke some.) I took lots of pictures along with us. I made copies of old family photographs: my paternal grandparents (who came from that area), their children, and our current family members. I labeled each one with the person's name and birthdate, and occupation. (I used a Croatian dictionary for this.) I also drew a descendant chart with my paternal grandparents near the top, so they could see how current family in America fit into the big picture. I already knew basic genealogical terms, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, birth, death, marriage, city, town, years, day, month, etc. We took postcards of scenes around Seattle, both the city and the surrounding mountains, waterfalls, etc. One of the postcards had ageneral map of Washington state, and we could point to Mt. Rainier, and then point to it on a map, for instance. We had pictures of our Pike Place Market, the uiniversity campus, the marinas, the lakes, parks, etc. We communciated with pictures, 2-3 word sentences, a small dictionary, pantomiming, even writing things down. Basic words, how much, how many years, where, who, etc. We managed to communicate, however primitively, for several hours. A few photos of unidentified people were recognized by them. They served us a lunch of all homemade food....pickles, bread, cheese, sausage, bacon, wine, figs, and to our surprise and delight, orenjaca. They spread their hands over the table and said "domaci" - which I took for all homemade (domus= house, that old high school Latin came in handy). I pointed to the bread and the orenjaca and repeated domaci, then pointed to the rest and said the word for "store." They laughed...they got it.... Certainly, we didn't carry on fluent coversation, but we did communicate. You'll do fine. And I echo the sentiments about hospitality. Although they knew we were coming (we had written last summer) and we had arranged the day and time (with the help of the hotel staff's Croatian) we certainly never expected to be served a meal...they had obviously gone to a great deal of trouble. The only negative part of the trip was that my grandfather's 85 year old niece died 6 days before we arrived...we had hoped to meet her and her children, but they were not available, as her burial had taken place only a few days prior to our arrival. In fact, we were prowling the cemetery before meeting the relatives, and saw her grave. Otherwise, we might have embarrassed ourselves by asking where she was.