Pictures from Kosovo

So first of all, I want to show you some pictures to demonstrate how much Kosovo loves the United States. This is a picture of some posters that have been plastered on a wall for "The Association Friends of USA." You can see that there are pics of Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Laura Bush, and some other famous political Americans.


The next three pics are of a Bar and Disco called Hillary. I tried to take a picture of the inside where they have big photos of Bill and Hillary.


This is Bill Clinton Boulevard which is one of the main streets in Prishtina.Okay, now we are off the topic of loving America. The next couple of pictures are of a castle in Novo Brdo (about 45 minutes from the capital of Prishtina) that was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's super old (13th century) and not very well preserved but still was interesting and up on a hill with beautiful views.

This is a picture of the monastery I wrote about yesterday. Sorry it's a little dark.

Back in Kosovo

For those of you who don't know, I'm back in Kosovo now, but only for a week. I came back to help with another proposal. This time I'm crazy busy and working so much I don't have time to see much or think about much outside of work. But I did get the chance to visit a monastery (will post picks of this soon). The monastery is Serbian Orthodox (Christian). Most Kosovars are Muslim. During the conflict, the Serbs (Christians) burned down the Albanians' mosques and vice versa. 73 churches and mosques were destroyed during the fighting. It's sad because Kosovo lost a lot of its rich cultural history and potential for tourism because of this.

Anyway, at the monastery they were selling some souvenir items and one of them was a book with a title something like "The Churches that were Burned Down by the Albanians during the Conflict." Yeah. It was a little intense. In the book they had a picture of every church when it was complete and then after it was bombed. There were pictures of bloodied people who were either dead or seriously injured. Most shocking was the fact that for each church they had a description of what happened to it and then the flag of the country's forces that was occupying the area at the time. So there were Italian, British, American, Irish, all sorts of flags and sentences like this "The American KFOR forces allowed the Albanians to burn this church." Or "After the British KFOR arrived in town x they stood by while Albanians torched the church." They even went so far as to show pictures of soldiers in churches (they appeared to just be looking around.)

This monastery survived because it was located in a predominantly Serbian town and the citizens protected it. Now it has Swedish KFOR there protecting it.

Alright, that's it...I will be heading back to Costa Rica on Tuesday and will try to post some pictures this week.

New Pictures of Lucy

Here are some new pictures of Lucy. She's now almost four months old and it so much bigger then when I left for Kosovo just three weeks ago. Her coat is also changing colors - which is normal for Beagles up until a year old.

Pictures from Kosovo

Here are some pictures from my trip to Kosovo.

First, here is the "monument" to their independence. It's been signed by all sorts of people - legally, not graffitti.

This is the University Library. I think it looks pretty cool for a building in a communist country but people here tell me that it is ugly.

Here is the office where I was working and the view from that office.

The view looks exactly like Bulgaria.

Also, while I was in Kosovo, The Wall Street Journal published an article about tourism in Kosovo. My mom saw it and sent it to me. Here is a link to it:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121452066620808827.html