mtcowgirl's VirtualTourist Home Page

Hello :) While my home is Las Vegas, NV, the bright light city with the big casinos, I actually have not regularly lived there for the past six years! Instead, I am working overseas in Kosovo (Serbia) for the United Nations.

I work for the Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations of the UN. This means that I work mostly in field missions. I have spent some but very little time at the UNHQ in New York City.

As my job is considered stressful and sometimes we work in less than ordinary conditions, I have a generous vacation package. Almost every two months I am allowed to travel for one week to recooperate. This means that I get a lot of traveling done!

Anyways, I was checking up on some destinations that are on my wish list and this looked like a great site. I think this website is a great resource and am happy to be part of the VirtualTourist community!!!

One theme will keep popping up in my travels...Scuba Diving! Most of my vacations involve warm weather, crystal blue water, and lots of fish :)

Yeah, I'm a diver...

I'm a PADI Rescue Diver working on Divemaster :) I don't know if I'll ever get into instructing but just in case I decide to retire from the UN and go be a beach bum, I'm working on becoming a dive instructor.

I'd be thrilled to meet other dive fanatics and maybe meet in some tropical location. If I'm coming to your area or you'll be in the same location, drop me a line and maybe we can have a drink!

Over the course of this year I've been wondering if it isn't time for me to move on to another mission. The Albanian population has not been happy with the UN lately because the Security Council has not made them independent as they expected.

For the time being, it is my idea to stay in Kosovo until the end of 2007 but I know that if the UN mission will remain, I will likely be asked to stay longer. The question then is should I stay or should I go? It's not a good feeling to have part of the local population telling you to "go to hell" as they did during last week's demonstration.

At the same time, my work is important as we are turning over communications capabilities to the police and government that were formed after the end of the war. If the UN would not have been here the past eight years, Kosovo wouldn't be as good as it is now...sure there's always room for improvement but I wonder if anyone has thought about how bad it could be if we would have just stood back and done nothing...kind of like what the world has done in Darfur.

Anyways...just a collection of thoughts :) Be happy to hear from anyone who has an opinion (other than go to hell!)

I've been absent for a while here but next week I'm off to Thailand for three weeks so I'm sure I'll have a wealth of new information to share on nice places to stay and new things to do! This will be my second trip to Bangkok and I can't wait.

Other upcoming trips are to Paralia, Greece for Christmas and Vienna, Austria for New Years :)