I was awoken at 4:30 this morning by the call to morning prayer, or the actual morning prayer from the neighbourhood mosque. I’m not sure which it was, as things were a little bit hazy when I woke at that early hour. Fortunately I was able to get back to sleep, and slept in until 7:30. After breakfast Mirko and I went to the local bazaar to do some shopping. I found a nice leather jacket for Heather (hopefully I got the size right), and some European soccer jerseys for the boys. I just need to find something nice for Emily and Jillian and I will be set for gifts for everyone when I get home. We also ran in to the cutest little puppy on our shopping trip, so I stopped to give him a scratch behind his ears.

We left Novi Pazar by 10am and started out five hour trip back to Belgrade. At least it should have been a five hour trip. They are doing some fairly major improvements to the road through the mountains, and we were stopped for about one hour for some work they were doing. At least it was a beautiful spot that we stopped at. On our way thought the mountains Mirko pointed out a monument that was built in honour of the soldiers that fought in World War I (see picture on the side). We also talked about the environment. Mirko is a bee keeper, and his production has gone way down the past few years as industrial production has increased in Serbia. Ironically, Mirko says that he had the best production and quality of honey at the height of the war in the mid to late 1990’s because a lot of Serbian industrial production was destroyed by US bombing. Factories Destroyed = Less Acid Rain = More and Better Honey. The only problem with that equation is that a lot of people are out of work and are going hungry, which is a key ingredient in the recipe for ethnic and regional tension. We arrived back in Belgrade around 4pm, and I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening report writing.