Archive for March, 2009

Sick

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Bleh. I don’t get sick that often. When I do, it’s either, “Oh Lord, put me out of my misery” or everything just runs about .2 seconds slow. I’m dealing with the latter kind right now. I’ve stayed home from work, more to not infect others than anything else. I probably could function at half-capacity or so if I went in, but I know I wouldn’t be happy about it. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, but I’ll keep the DayQuil at hand.

Today was the 10th anniversary of the beginning of NATO bombing of Serbia. An air raid siren went off at noon, I’m guessing in remembrance. Every day I walk by bombed-out buildings, right in the middle of the city. It’s a bit surreal. It’s also surreal that Serbians wouldn’t have insisted that they be taken down by now. Serbs are a proud people, and I think somewhere deep down they don’t want to admit they were wrong. Were they wrong? From what I’ve learned, yes, but it’s always hard to know exactly what’s true and what’s portrayed as true when you’re this close to history. I think in the end a lot of hatred was unleashed and the Serbs ended up on the wrong side of a world thinking “never again”. Hopefully some day they’ll be able to extricate themselves and make this country as nice as it could be.

Where I’m At

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

So, I’m going to try to get to this more often, just shorter. I think that may be the ticket.

Since our last episode, life in Southeastern Europe has been pretty good. We’ve moved into the new place, got our car, and even took a trip up to Budapest which was neat.  Many of these things are chronicled in a better manner on Jessie’s blog.

Bottom line is that while Belgrade stinks (literally, it doesn’t smell good here for the most part), I’m pretty dang happy being here.  The job is pretty good, we’ve met a lot of cool people, and Jessie is healthy. I’ve been walking 25 minutes each way to work every day, so I’m getting a bit of exercise on top of everything.

The weird part (for me) is that several people have already expressed interest in visiting from the States.  I’ve never had anyone visit me overseas who wasn’t already overseas themselves.  Strange things are afoot.