stephanie and joaquin near the end of the trip

Unlike some of you, we have no jobs or homes and we are hundreds of dollars over budget. Luckily, even though we are both sick, we took all the drugs we could fit in our bags from PC Malawi before our departure. So we are well-drugged.

On New Year's Eve we felt like we were really in Sarajevo as we ducked and ran for cover as people threw M80s everywhere. Our hostel owner said, "Ah, that is not good. People here are used to having things thrown at them. And then they die."

We had been at this concert where crazy Eastern European platnium blondes were pretending to sing during guitar solos and people were throwing fireworks into the crowd. We didn't like it and so ran home and celebrated the stroke of New Years being afraid and annoyed. Luckily we'd had 5 cups of Turkish coffee and shots of homemade God-knows-what earlier in the night, so we ran quickly and easily.

Now in Bulgaria, we have screwed up our sense of time by staying up until 4am and getting up at 3 pm. It seems good to me. All I have to do is keep this up for another week and a half until I get to the US, and I will suffer no jet lag.

We saw bomb damaged buildings in Belgrade as we waited for train to leave on our way back from Sarajevo to Bulgaria. The people we were travelling with assumed that this was bomb damage from NATO, but the McDonalds in Belgrade was packed and made very good cheeseburgers.

Glad to hear from those of you who are posting. I hope more people post soon so we can get updates all around.