The Balkan Islands: Kosovo!

Yesterday morning, we left for Kosovo at 8:00 A.M. It was a three and a half hour drive to our next destination: Kosovo! We got another stamp in our passports, so we were all in good spirits. We stopped in Pristina and immediately got some coffee. The people on this trip are addicted to coffee, I swear. I still don't like coffee, but they all talk about how wonderful it is. How odd. Anyway, once we got to the coffee shop, we were all scrambling to get the wifi to work. We were getting a little annoyed because some people's wifi would work on their phones and others wouldn't. It's actually quite comical to think about how much we depend on the internet, and if we don't get our social media fix for the day, we get grumpy! After our coffee, we went to the museum of the war in Kosovo and Serbia. The pictures were gruesome, but it gave us a hindsight of what the people had to endure. Women were a constant target for abuse, and it really hit home that women as war victims are common in not just Kosovo, but all over the world. It really saddened a lot of us, especially the girls, to imagine what they had to go through and how they are healing. That being said, the museum was one of my favorites because it put everything in perspective. We were all young when this war was happening, but in reality, it wasn't that long ago. After another museum, we went and ate lunch, saw a mosque, and walked around the plaza. We then stopped for coffee, and I had some delicious chocolate cheesecake. We then headed for Prizerin, the city that had our hotel in it. The town reminded me of Barat, one of my favorite towns we have seen. The hotel, on the other hand, was a little bit too open for me. Miranda and I entered our room, and you can imagine our shock when we saw a see through shower, in the middle of the room, right in front of our show. We made lots of jokes because obviously that's the only thing you can do in that situation. It was a little awkward, but I just hung out in Makyala and Rachel's room while she showered. It turns out that two other rooms had the same problem. It was, as Dr. Bego puts it, quite the European experience we had. There was some more excitement that night as Makayla had an allergic reaction to some peanuts and was rushed to the hospital around ten o'clock at night, but she's okay now. Because of that, we took it a little easier today. We met at nine, went to another castle, mosque, museum, and then ate lunch and came back to Tirana, the place that we all now call home. It's so nice to have a consistent hotel waiting for us. We don't have to take our whole suitcase when we go to other countries because we can just leave our luggage here. This hotel even did our laundry for us. The staff here is so nice. The Sars'Otel is definitely my favorite! Tomorrow seems busy, as does Thursday, but then I'll be home! I'm excited to come home and get some good sleep, see my friends, and just hang out in Hastings, but I'm going to miss Albania and all the nice people we met!

A bunker with graffiti