Up, Up, and Away

Mat and I are headed off to Montenegro. It's straight across the Adriatic Sea, East of Italy. I didn't know at the time where this country was when we were assigned to do this humanitarian mission, so I had to look it up.  Very Mediterranean and about the size of Connecticut. It reminds me a lot of our first mission to Armenia.



Beautiful huh?


This guy from Oregon was chatting with Mat about his travel guitar in the SLC airport.  Mr. Oregon and his wife are on their way to Italy for three weeks with his very small, packed, minimal bag. I had to chuckle when I saw both of them get on the plane with their matching guitar cases.



After a long day of travel, we were picked up from the airport by the Senior Missionary couple, Russ and Marge Westwood.  We managed to retrieve all our bags, except for one.  Unfortunately, the suitcase that was lost, was the bag with the medical equipment we were donating and needed for surgeries.  It also contained Marge's desperate to have Crystal light. A big burley man with a white button up shirt helped us figure it out.  I noticed some amazing tattoos under his shirt.  Very impressive artwork, when I tuned back in, he said our bag would arrive Tuesday. Got it.

Montenegro is very safe and doesn't really have muggings or thefts. You can walk around at night, unlike some countries we've been to when lock down in our hotel began at dark.  The people of Montenegro are very apathetic you could say.  Not much really changes, they are just kind of content to live with what they have.  The majority of the people smoke here.  In Armenia, it was just the men who smoked, but in Montenegro, the women smoke too. to each their own, just thought it was interesting.  They know of the health effects, yet they say the nicotine helps to balance out the stress, therefore, it evens it out. The health effect is zero. They are also very tall, long legged, spidery humans with bigger size noggins (like Mat's).  The average height for women is 5'10" and men it is 6'2". Mat was just excited that the scrubs and hat would fit him here, unlike the Vietnam and the Philippine flash flood scrubs. The older generation doesn't really speak English, but the younger generation is learning it in school.  We've had to stop several teenagers to translate. Those are my curious facts so far, I clue you in on some more as I get into my detective work about this unknown country.

 Mat and I got settled at the hotel and decided to venture out to an Italian restaurant down the street. A little jet lagged, but in good spirits. I think it was because the restaurant was playing amazing American artist cover songs.  I need to request the CD before I leave.