--Sunday, 17 September 00-- My weekend off.
Up at 8 AM. Walked up Germia street until there were no more houses and then turned around and walked back. During that time I walked by five goats and a few cows. I was on the edge of the developed area of the city. Smile told me later that if I had continued on the road, I would have come to a lake. I will have to go and see for myself.

Walked to the Hotel Grand to check out. I was going to beg for forgiveness because my cash was locked up in the office safe but the desk clerk told me that a woman had come by and paid the bill! The same woman had already paid for a Roderick Macdonell who had left for Canada so I will try to trace her down through the Canadian connection.

I went to the Beauty Point, an expensive tanning salon. Spoke to Erin, a handsome American in the US Army, who knows Ed Woodhouse because he works with Ed's son. I gave him one of the new $1 coins as a good luck charm and then had a tanning session, my first since leaving Chicago.

Smile came by at 5 PM to see the apartment. He liked it but complained that it was located too far from his. We watched the Olympics and then had some intensive English training. Afterwards Smile went next door to talk to the gent who had intruded earlier.

My apartment gets light on three sides which will be nice in the cold weather. It is on a hill to the northwest of downtown and in a great position to view beautiful sunsets. It is right on the edge of the old city, a warren of incomplete streets, ending, twisting, turning, sloping, intersecting and leading nowhere in general. Like all of Prishtina, it is choked by parked cars.


--Monday, 18 September 00--
Had lunch with Smile at the Fjala and I brought enough sliced pepperoni for us both to have a delicious pepperoni pizza but the idiot waiter screwed it up by bringing us calzones instead. Now I know why I don't like calzones, they are dry. Smile later told me that he didn't like calzones either.

Smile and I walked over to the BPK so that I could catch a No. 4 bus to my apartment and get my tanning eye protection. He needed to go to the UN headquarters and sign an employment contract.

Smile came by around 8 PM and told me that he had to learn everything about the computer and Word and Excel as well. He wants to get a good job in an office and give up night work as a guard. I told him that he had to learn typing in order to be able to do word processing.

Smile insisted on beginning at the beginning and closed the lid on my G3 and put the computer to sleep. From there we progressed to the desktop and active windows and buttons and insertion points. I had both an audio CD player and a text editor showing at the moment so I was able to use Smile's knowledge of the buttons on a CD player. We carried this over to the text editing program and learned about insertion points, deleting, scrolling, and closing windows. It was a lot for a single session.


--Tuesday, 19 September 00--
Up early and to the office early, exploring the myriad of fascinating and confusing streets that lead toward the Government Building. My apartment is on the edge of the old city and few steps from my door I am in a low scale, primarily one and two story section with walls along property lines. The streets are pot-holed and the views are not very elegant but behind most of the doors in the concrete or mud brick walls are small sunlit gardens and private outdoor spaces that are as much a part of the homes as the rooms within but closed to the prying eyes of the outside world.

Today I had the usual varied collection of interruptions. My plan was to work on the 2001 Treasury Budget but no hope. It was the a case of endless distractions.

I met a Kosovar in a bar who was will to talk about the wars here. I knew that he had spent time in Sweden so I asked him if he was a draft dodger. "I'm no draft dodger, I am a deserter!", he said with a clear intent to clarify the record. He told me that he, like many Kosovars, was drafted into the Yugoslavian Army and sent to Bosnia during that war. He couldn't bring himself to do the dirty work of the Milosevich regime so he deserted and went to Croatia and after that to Slovenia where he was able to contact his parents.

From there he went to Sweden where he was a refugee (he would have been shot if he returned home) and then to England where he was able to go to school and work. He is completely Westernized and only came home because, his father, the family tyrant, told him he had to. So he returned and is unhappy. He told me that outside of Kosovo he has no problem attracting girls. There, he knows how to chat them up but not here. He says that he does not know how to do it in Albanian.

Smile is proud of his uniform -- and the salary it commands.

--Friday, 22 September 00--
Smile stopped by to re-establish communication now that he is working the swing shift. We will have lunch tomorrow.

When a beloved one dies here, it is traditional to take out an ad and write paragraphs expressing your sense of that person's loss. Kimeta showed me the one she had placed for her mother and beside it I saw others placed by her brother and sister. They were all different so I guess they were individually written.

Had a successful tanning session and then went to the happy hour at the OSCE 9th floor bar/restaurant. This is the international upscale version of the Kukri in a very nice setting, safe, internationals only. Here the professional internationals meet and salute each other.

As usual I found the upscale happy hour a bit dull so I went to Kukri, despite the light rain. I found Gary Smith, Hilary, and Thomas and we chatted as people came and went. Gary and I chatted at length. He told me that several expats were having dinner tomorrow at the KFOR restaurant and was I interested in joining them? I was.


--Saturday, 23 September 00--
Worked on reconciling Treasury designated donor grant codes to our reports to donors. I did this instead of the completing the 2001 budget request which is due Monday. Got the differences down to 6 items.

Smile came by and we agreed to meet at my place at noon. Did so and had some English training and went to Napoli for their wonderful thin crust pepperoni pizza. Smile ate all of his but I had 2 slices left. I offered them to Smile for Kimeta and he took them.

The feral dog issue: I saw six dogs together as I entered the KFOR restaurant. Tim Terrel said he had seen twenty in a pack. Not like Bucharest but it explained all the dog howlings I had heard at the Grand and here. Is the problem growing? Maybe yes.

Dinner with Gary Smith, Mike Ives, and Tim Terrel at the KFOR. The conversation and the food were good; it made for a most pleasant evening.

Joe