It’s Monday, and life is good

One look at the photos that I take ( look below and forgive the occasional typo) will tell you that I’m no pro. Like all amateur photographers, I can take a good photo now and then. But I just don’t have the expertise, nor do I have the equipment, to make up for the crappy lighting conditions that permeate all of Pristina at the moment.

(By the way, Pristina is pronounced “Prishtina” by the Kosovars.)

For the past few days, the sun has been hiding behind the kind of cloud cover that makes the entire sky look like a field of cotton. Dark, gray, dirty cotton. And so unlike the photo of the Hotel Afa , which I took our first day here a week ago, there is no blue sky to use as a backdrop.

Which makes everything look washed out. But, then, that’s the reality. This is now jacket weather, it rained most of the weekend, and as we commence on this Monday morning, it’s hard not to feel just the tiniest bit depressed.

Then I remember: I’m 5,400-odd miles from home (look just above Greece, in the extreme southern part of what is called Serbia and Montenegro), living in a foreign city, documenting life as I see it in an area that is so far below the radar of regular America that it might as well be Burkina Faso . Or Paraguay. Or one of the Stans not prefixed with Afghani.

If someone were to ask me , “Si jeni?” (“How are you?”), I’d have to reply, “Mire, mire” (“Good, good”). And I would merely be telling the truth.