Off the beaten (goat) path

And we're back! After a very busy day involving disassembling the entire office, reassembling the entire office, and then having to repair the phone lines for ADSL, we have both A/C *and* Internet at the office! Living the life of luxury, that's me. Also, a warm welcome to all of those visiting from blogwatch; the fridge is to your left, so help yourself.

So now that the internet has returned, I figured I should update with what is going on. The party in Pristina was fun, met many internationals there, swapped stories and songs, talked about free trade (yeah, I've become an Econ-Geek..) and generally had a good time. Monday was a trip to Skopje where I met with my supervisor over lunch, discussed my moving there for a few days in July as I finish my paper. Tuesday began the great exodus from the old office to the new office as we made a giant fort of binders that I could barely see my coworkers over. After bombarding Davor with balled up bits of paper for a few minutes, we started to take down the furniture, losing most of the cam shafts in the process. Started making small trips in Davor's car with the basic items, which only took two trips due to the fact we were waiting on the Land Cruiser to bring the desk and table parts.

Land Cruisers in a town where everyone drives compact cars is a hilarious site. I know what a Monster Truck Driver must feel like. took the parts of the 3 desks, 2 tables, enclosed shelves, 5 chairs and the filing draws all in one trip.

And looked very cool doing it, thank you very much.

Set up a meeting with a student of Public Health from John Hopkins for this upcoming week - he's doing work on crisis preparedness, so we're helping him connect with NGOs and municipality people. Cuz we're nice people.

After an intense week like this, we decided we needed to take a break. So Davor invited me to go on a picnic in celebration of a feast day with his family. So me, Davor, his wife and kids loaded up in the car and met up with Davor's brother-in-law and family for a fun picnic lunch next to a really nice stream.

Highlights included breaking the language barrier with his 4 year old son using sign language (thumbs up, high-five, and the Rina famous 'pound') and the hat game (which was basically him throwing his hat to me, me throwing it back.

Davor's daughter tried to teach me some Serbian words and I taught her the English equivalent, with some help from Davor.

Played football with his 14 year old nephew (which turned into 1 on 1... I scored one goal though!)

His 5 year old niece asked if I would bring her and her grandmother to America with me, then scratched my beard and kissed me on the cheek, to the amusement and "awws" of everyone there.

Kicked a bee's arse, which also means I got stung on the toe. Still aches.

Waded in the stream to keep said bee-sting cold.

Tried a new beverage that's pronounced "bamboo", and entails mixing wine with either water with gas (if the wine is white) or with cola (if the wine is red). It was very refreshing.

Ate food cooked over a fire for the first time in ages, and remembered how much I missed cooking chicken on a spit back at camp.

But perhaps nothing so impacted me as yet another lil old lady story. Different lil old lady, this one dressed like she stepped out of a fairy tale storybook. Our campsite was next to a path that was mainly traversed by goats. Sheep and cows sometimes also used it, but mainly we saw goats. Then this lil old lady comes over and asks if she could join us. So we give her some juice and some bread, and the 5 year old sits on her lap and talks to her, and generally just share some company with her. After she goes on her way about a half hour later, I ask Davor about it, and if it is customary to let lil old ladies join you for food. He thought about it for a moment and said that it was, a long time ago. But now people sometimes forget about the elderly. This lil old lady in particular probably had children living in the suburbs of Vranje, too far for her to walk to an visit, and without income she probably can't get on a bus and travel. They might visit her once a month or so, but even then that's doubtful. So it made me feel really good that we got to share some of our bounty with the lil old lady. Keep earning my karma, thats what I say.

So that's all for now. Keep it tuned here for more misadventures, and feel free to check out the blogs of some of my classmates through the various comments left around. Comments on this post, as all posts before, are very welcomed.