Last week turned out to be a busy week. I started off the week with a World Child workshop, planning the next 6 weeks of strategy and explaining exactly what a strategy is and why it's important. Amazing that after 7 years in operation they haven't had a need for a strategy until now!
On Tuesday I attended the International Women's Group of Pristina. It was half-funny, half-strange, half-reminder of what I never want to be come - a Woman of Leisure who doesn't work and isn't fussed by the world around her. However, something did come out of it - within a few minutes after arriving they heard that I did yoga, and swiftly organized a class for me to lead before I even knew what was happening. So, I'll start Wednesday morning. Check this space for what will be an interesting experience.
Later in the week I visited an elementary school to talk about environmentalism. The children were extremely excited to have a guest, and each had prepared a report on different aspects of global warming, everything from the Kyoto Protocal to the role of Communication and Industry on Global Warming to Sea Levels Rising. I was very impressed, and it was just priceless to see each stand up and start their speech with 'fellow scientists, concerned citizens and special guest Ms. Elizabeth...'. The children were 8 to 13 tackling some very sophisticated stuff. My favourite part was when one child, after listening to me speak about the connection between industrialization, globalization and climate change, shouted, 'I want to be an environmentalist when I grow up!' I told her, why not start today? All the children became very excited at this prospect. I ran into one of the students and her family over the weekend and apparently I had quite an influence on her household! They will be separating their garbage in the near future, I can feel it!
Before the end of the week, I met with the Director of Academics at the American University of Kosovo, and we discussed teaching opportunities as well as freelance marketing and graphic design projects. Oddly enough, I'm just completing a small project for the University of Pristina designing a logo and slogan. I'm getting a very good overview of the academic situation here which I will certainly be writing more about this week after a few more meeting scheduled on Thursday.
Lastly, I finished off the week with a second workshop at World Child, with the whole team involved in setting the vision. To do this, we started by looking back to 2002 at the situation in Kosovo and the nature of their work compared with today. It was fascinating to hear each of their views about where things are going in the next 3 years (albeit translated for me from Albanian), and where they've been, what they've seen in their work.
The weekend was just phenominal. Milce (Boss) took Xav and I into the mountains on a two hour ride that included galloping at full speed on a mountain ridge. We were instructed not to tell the riding teacher that we did that! I was invigorated, Xav was scared shitless, but neither of us fell off our horses and we saw some beautiful vistas as well as some very rural villages where people still use horses as transport and looked a bit like nomads with the bulk barley bags piled on the back of their buggies.
Now I'm off to Skopje once again, by bus, to visit the US Embassy there to get a document needed for my Dutch status. I hope to be better this week about keeping current. Things are getting busy and interesting here...and the political situation is losing stability, stay tuned for an interesting upcoming period.
