So Mel and I are sitting on the patio of the HIB restaurant which is attached to the HIB gas station. Kenny Rogers is singing Lady on the radio. Boy that song has legs. Anyway, Joe Biden is why we're here. His caravan has traffic snarled and we can't get to the grocery store. He's making a 3-day tour through the Balkans to heal hundreds of years of ethnic turmoil. "You guys (Serbs, Bosnians, Kosovars, Croats) better find a way to heal past wounds or there will be more violence," Joe said (Gary paraphrased). Well thanks Joe for that new spin on things, now can I get to my eggs and paper towels? He also said that the US considers Kosova's independence to be "absolutely irreversible" which was a huge comfort to the Kosovars.

They do roll out the red carpet for high American officials. Kosovar Albanians are sincerely thankful for our friendship and support. I hope you saw our little country in the news and thought of us. Biden was within a few miles of our school. I tried to get him to come do some integration with me and my Precalculus class, but...well...he didn't bring his TI-83 calculator with him.