My Thotful Spot: The Last Couple of Days

After almost 50 hours, I finally heard from Brianna! It was a long 50 hours...for me anyway. She had tried to send an email the day before and for whatever reason, it didn't go through. So here's the update:

On Friday, the student delegation had a very busy day! They met with the Minister of Internal Affairs, Bajram Rexhepi, who was Kosovo's first Prime Minister and has held several public offices since. They also met with several NGOs. In addition to the two I mentioned in my last post, they also met with UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), and KFOR (Kosovo Force, which is a NATO led international peacekeeping force). They also met with an EU (European Union) rep for Kosovo. Friday night, the National Security Advisor for the Prime Minister took them out to "see Kosovo at night"! Brianna said that it was a "very busy, but very fun day"....love when she says things like that, makes my heart happy :)

Saturday brought them to a cathedral, and also to a memorial for the Jashari Family. Adem Jashari was one of the chief architects of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a militant group of ethnic Albanians who sought the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia. He, and his brother Hamza, acted as guerrilla fighters often engaged in attacks against the Yugoslavian military. They were considered terrorists by Yugoslavia, and on March 5, 1998 an attack was led by the Yugoslav national army and police. This attack, know as the Prekaz Massacre, killed Jashari and about 60 of his family members, including woman and children. The Albanian government considered Jashari a freedom fighter. Protests against the attack followed and eventually spiraled out of control...the Kosovo War ensued.

Saturday's email also stated that they went to a local coffee place, and drove to Peja for a lunch Brianna described as "very good". They also visited a monastery which she described as being surrounded by mountains, and very pretty.

Today's schedule was a little light. They visited another security organization and had waffles at their base for breakfast! They stayed the afternoon and toured the base. She said that tomorrow they have another busy day planned, but should be done around 5pm and was hoping to get a chance to shop! She also said that the weather there has not been nice, and that it's rained almost everyday.

While anxiously awaiting word from her during that 50 hours, I decided to do a little investigating and see if there happened to be any pictures posted anywhere from the trip. I was lucky enough to come across some! Seeing them, satisfied me just enough while I waited to hear from her. On the website of the Prime Minister, there were pictures from their meeting with him, along with a narrative, part of which read... "The Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, received in a meeting today John K. Menzies, dean of the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International relations at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, US, and a group of students from this university. The group of students is in a study visit to Kosovo in an effort to make a research on the Kosovo case, as a country that has gone through war, a state building process and is now in the process of the consolidation of the state and society into a democratic state and society. Prime Minister Thaçi briefed the students on the processes that Kosovo is going through like the process of European integration, the process of ending of the supervised independence, judicial reform, economic development, affirmation and lobbying for the state of Kosovo and other ongoing processes. The Prime Minister also answered several questions from a very interested group of students."

Here are the pictures!