just stuff

Last week while we were in Serbia, one of our objectives was to spend some money on behalf of the orphanage we were working with. They really need ear thermometers, so we were off to find a pharmacy that carried them.

In a typical Serbian city like Belgrade, there are "pharmacies" about every 100 yards. Like most shops, they're very small, about 10x15 feet, and they only have a few of each item, but man do they have a lot of stuff crammed into those shops! We were told the thermometers are very expensive and difficult to find, and perhaps we should wait until or friend Jasmina could go along with us to translate, but Shelley and I are determined (and very independent) so we went on a hunt ourselves. Somewhere in there I decided I needed tweezers too. Hmmmmmm

At the first pharmacy we visited, the staff just shook their heads at us, we assume because they couldn't understand our made-up sign language for "ear thermometer" and "tweezers". The second pharmacy was much the same.

Inside the 3rd pharmacy we found several staff, one of which was a young man who spoke a little English. He told the others what we were looking for, and they excitedly scrambled to get the one thermometer they had off a very high shelf. Based on the amount of dust on the box, they don't sell very many of these! Next we tried the tweezers. A staff person came with 3 or 4 pairs in cases, laid out on the palm of her hand. "Perfect!" I said, pointing to them IN GENERAL. I didn't look at the prices, since..well...tweezers would only be a couple of dollars, right?

The woman looked at her co-worker, held up one pair and repeated, "Perfect", and they gave each other a look of "this woman is nuts!" and I knew right away something was up! We managed to fumble through paying for our items and got outside. I took my tweezers out of the bag to check them out.

So yeah, here are my $8.00 gold plated tweezers.

Today we went walking around in search of touristy souvenirs. You know, the kind only tourists buy, like tacky t-shirts with writing you can't understand. Along the way we saw this monestry, which is the largest in the entire Bulcan region. Here's a picture of the outside. As you can see they're in the middle of renovating the building, just like the Basilica in Minneapolis was renovated a few years ago. The inside is MAGNIFICENT, but no photography is allowed in there. Really, my pictures wouldn't have done it justice anyway.

A few blocks away, I noticed this very pretty-and very old-fence, and decided it would be a good chance to play around with my camera bit. As I was taking this picture...

DeeDee, our guide for the day, called my name in a desperate tone of voice. I looked up to see her gesturing kind of insistently to put my camera away. I did, and when I caught up to her she told me this was the Italian embassy, and you're not allowed to photograph embassies, and if you're caught they will confiscate your camera and destroy it!

I put my new toy away.

Here's what I had for dessert tonight

Kullen had one too! We think it's the first he's had ice cream. He seemed to recognize the Bulgarian word for ice cream, (spoken by the waiter who seemed to get a kick out of the fact we couldn't understand, nor talk to, the kid traveling with us!) but when it came down to it, he ate only a few bites of the fruit, and feed the ice cream to his new mama. LOL

And here's my favorite photo from the entire trip so far.