Coffee in Bosnia is the social backbone. You drink it with business, with friends and with new or old loves.

One of the things I love about Zagreb is how the locals flock to the city center on Saturdays.

You see those horns? They are called vuvuzelas and they are LOUD and they are everywhere here at the World Cup. They actually come from South Africa and they definitely enjoy using them here as the sound of this blaring horn can be heard all over the city. I'm told that if I don't where earplugs at the stadium, I'll get permanent ear damage from the 40,000 plus vuvuzelas that will be blowing through the matches.

Our new friend Hisham in Syria showed as an simple, yet amazing day.
It was so cool hanging out with him and seeing his home and happiness
through his eyes. At the end of the day, he capped it off with the
rest of the locals sharing a cup of tea on top of a mountain
overlooking the city. There, with a great view, he reiterated the
message of the day: Happiness in Syria is simple.

Leaving Cyprus to head to Beirut, we had to stop at the lost and found to get our bags and we met the most amazing lady. She had the most infectious laugh and as you can see from the pic, she couldn't hold it in. She told us that a day without laughter is a lost day.

She also told is that when the sun shines in a place almost all the year round you will have happy people. The sun was super intense today, which may account for her extraordinary cheer.

And lastly, her parting words to us were, "Eternity is always in silence so we should enjoy the sound of laughter while we can."

This lady made my day. I definitely enjoyed the sound of her laughter.

We went to the beach today in Cyprus and one activity that dominated the beach was this game with two paddles and a ball. It seemed that everyone was playing it, lined all up and down the beach. Antonio and I would have loved to join but our luggage was lost, for the second time, and we had no swim wear.

One thing that people in Iceland adore is their beautiful country itself. With views like this, I can't blame them. Standing on moss-covered volcanic rock that stretched to the horizon, I could feel the earthly pleasure that the locals here must feel everyday.

So, we were headed to Sierra Leone from the Ivory Coast, flying through Ghana. When we arrived in GhanaN we were told our visas weren't in order for Sierra Leone and we couldn't go. We also realized that our bags were no where to be found. Having no visa for Ghana either, we hopped the next flight to London. Now we are in the UK, with only the clothes on our backs and dressed in shorts for the African heat. Lol, this is going to be interesting.

On our road trip from Togo to Benin, we could see very quickly that something as simple as shade was a very sought after thing in this blazing heat.  It seemed that literally every piece of shade we passed was occupied by people trying to escape the sun.  It was crazy the many different things people were sitting under including the shade of low brick walls and as you can see in the picture, the shade of a parked eighteen-wheeler.  Wherever there was an eighteen-wheeler parked, you could bet that there were people take shade from it.  Once, I even saw people laying on the road under the parked truck and another time I saw ladies sitting under a truck selling wares.  With this type of heat though, shade, I can understand, is very important.

Bahrain has a huge expat population and it has it's benefits.