And what better way to celebrate than with a visit to the Center for Gender and Equality in Prishtina?! In the morning, our class split up into groups of five and went to a bunch of different NGOs in the city. At our meeting, we had the opportunity to learn so much about what the organization is doing in Kosovo, and since there were only five of us there, we got to ask a lot of questions in a setting that was much more informal than our usual meetings around a conference table.
After our visit at all our separate NGOs, we met back up, had lunch as a class, and took the bus to the KFOR (Kosovo Force) base, which assists local security forces and deals with current security issues. KFOR was actually sent out to the bridge in Mitrovica that we saw the day before, so it was interesting to go and visit their headquarters.
On the way back, we stopped in Garcanica, which is a Serbian municipality. We talked with a political leader in the town about the current situation, and then went for a guided tour of the Garcanica Monastery, which is an orthodox monastery that was built in 1321. It's on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and it was gorgeous!
Back in Prishtina, we had some free time to grab dinner before we met back at the hotel for our suprise evening activity. Our guide Eleanor got us tickets to a play at the local theater and ordered us fancy "London cabs" to take us there. We were a bit skeptical considering the play was entirely in Albanian (with the exception of strategically placed Adele and Beyonce songs), but it turned out to be really fun! Throughout the whole play, I tried to figure out what was going on, assigning a lot of deep, metaphorical meanings to what was going on.. only to find out that the premise of the play was two girls fighting over a boy. Oh well, my ideas about a coming of age tale and/or a symbolic battle of a man's two muses were a good effort, but overall completely incorrect. After the play, a few of us once again gathered at the restaurant across the street for a few drinks and snacks. Highlight of the evening was definitely the restaurant manager getting rid of the birds in the trees above our table using this cool firework wand thing, after which he compared himself to Harry Potter. Coolest thing I've ever seen.
Rachel & Ben on our way to the theater!
No comments:
Post a Comment