The nutshell version.

Friday, July 9, 2010:

It’s been a busy few days in Sarajevo, hence the lack of substantive blogging. So here we go with the whirlwind version of what the group has been up to this week:

Monday:
• Tour of part of Sarajevo with Miki
• Mennonite Central Committee meeting
• War Crimes Tribunal and Courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina meeting

Tuesday:
• United Nations meetings
     o UNDP: United Nations Development Program
     o UNICEF: United Nations Children’s Fund
     o Director of the entire UN mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• National Gender Agency meeting
• Women to Women (NGO) meeting

Wednesday:
• United States Embassy meetings
     o Deputy Chief of Mission
     o Culture and Education branch of Public Diplomacy
     o Media and Information branch of Public Diplomacy
• Research and Documentation Center meeting
• Nasa Stranka (political party) meeting

Thursday:
• Bosnia and Herzegovina Ministry of Defense meeting
• Jewish community meeting
• Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meetings
     o Advocacy for Roma and other national minorities
     o Education reform

It’s been an astounding week—especially in terms of access. I don’t know how Miki, our program director, knows absolutely everyone who’s anyone in all of Bosnia (and around the world, for that matter), but somehow we have gotten to meet some of the most prominent movers and shakers of this country. I won’t fill this post with the details of what we’ve learned in meetings—I’m writing separately of some of the things that have challenged and interested me most. But I felt like I needed to at least write an overview of what’s been going on. My imagination has been ignited, dreaming of coming back as an intern…