water and mountains

This is Saranda. It is very close to Greece. You can actually see the Greek island of Corfu from here. It's a great place to relax and to visit.

This is outside of Elbasan on another hike. Special thanks to my dear sister Katie who uploaded these for me. I will send her some more, but these are what I had on my flash drive.

More Pictures

This is the castle of Girokaster which I visited several weeks ago. These are some old men playing chess in Delvine. One thing you quickly notice in Albania is that there are always men around drinking coffee and playing chess or dominoes

A picture is worth a thousand words

These are both pictures of the hills behind my town in Kuqan. On one of our many hikes.

Bushi or Clinton

So I'm at the counterpart conference in Durres right now. it's a great town that is right on the Adriatic Sea. Sigh, its tough to be a Peace Corp volunteer. No, actually its been really good. I've gotten to meet my counterpart (the woman I'll be working with for the next two years) She is really enthusiastic so I'm excited to get started. Next week, I get to spend the whole week in Kavaje experiencing the new site!!

I'm really ready to check it out and start to get an idea of what I'll be doing. Up until now, things have been a bit theoretical. Once I get there and start talking to people I'll be able to have a better idea of what I'll be doing.

Today, we went to Tirana which is the capital. We got to seea lot of resources and had an amazing lunch at the mexican/chinese place. Albanian food is very good, but tends to be a lot of repeats especially in the villages. It was good to get a different flavor. I also bought diet coke. Good to be in the capital and get a tiny piece of home.

I finished my 5 hour marathon language sessions. I give a shout out to those of you who put up with me for 5 hours a day learning Shqip. We still have a test in a few weeks where we have to speak to our teachers in Shqip. I think I should be OK, but I've got a little bit of practicing to do.

Tomorrow night is the talent show and my language group is doing a song and dance routine. Since I have no talent in either of those things it should be interesting. Cross your fingers. I will let you know how it goes

Also, my dear sister katie has come up with an idea for posting pics. It will be my weeks project. so hopefully I will have some posted soon!

Roasted Sheep Entrails

I was going to copy Greg and just leave it the title. But I will fill you in a bit.

I ate them....

It's Mire?!?

So another week of PST down. Just a few more to go and these ones should go really quickly. This weekend I went to Pogradec with my host family. It's this really pretty town with a lake. The lake is halfway in Albania and halfway in Macedonia. So I saw Macedonia. It was really nice, but the weather wasn't great. It rained a few times which made it less fun to talk around. After walking around for a while, we went to this restauraunt on a little river and watched the ducks swim. Then we took a rowboat around the river area for a bit. That was fun. I ran into a bunch of volunteers so now my host family thinks i'm very popular. It was a really good day. very relaxing. I have a friend who is moving to Pogradec. He's lucky. It is a really nice town.
I only have 3 more days of official language training. Then at the end of the week I go to a conference in Durres and then after that I head to Kavaje to check it out for a week. I'm really curious what it will be like. I'm going to live there for two years so I'm dying to see it. My host family offered to take me up earlier, but I figured that I would wait like everyone else.
Nothing else exciting to report except that we finished our community project!! We made English language posters with about 25 kids and they really seemed to enjoy it. It was fun.
Oh, one mini story. A four year old asked me today if I had a brother because she wanted to marry him. Unfortuately for her, my only brothers are happily married! (and possibly a little to old for her) It was really funny.

Speaking in a Silent Way.

I still haven't been able to get pics on my blog so I'm trying to send some stuff via email. Things have been going really well here. I'm more than half way done my training time which is good. I've lived in Albania for 2 months. I can't even believe it. The next few weeks should be interesting. I have one more week of regular classes and then I go to Tirana (the capitol) for a conference and then I head to my permanant site for a week to meet people and check it out. Of course, I'm really curious and can't wait for that part to get here.
The weather is really starting to heat up. It's now in the upper 80's I think. I'm not actually sure. Yesterday, a friend came out to my town and we went on this hike. First of all, i was in charge of finding our way. As many of you know, you should not trust me to be in charge of something involving directions. So we started up the hill. We backtracked three times because we got to dead ends in the road. Then we finally ended up at this spot where we had to cross a canal across a rusted out pipe. We actually did attempt to do this, but the pipe was so burning hot that we couldn't touch the pipe. Plus the water under the canal was so disgustingly dirty.. it would not have been cool to fall in. So then we were going to have to seriously backtrack to get across the canal. when a guy came out of his house and had the tightest shorts on I've ever seen on a guy or a girl. He took us through his backyard to a bridge. It was a silly moment and we cracked up laughing. So then we continue up the hill. Again. I have no sense of direction. We got lost again and three little boys helped us find the right sheep path. We finally thought that we would be able to find our way so we tell the three little boys to go home and then got lost again. At this point, we start jumping over these sheep fences which are made out of brambles. We did finally make it to an abondened miliatry base and got chased by a bat. My legs were bleeding in 8 different spots from all of the brambeles.
Advice...Don't ever go on a hike when I'm in charge. We did have a ton of fun, but my legs definitly suffered. And to be honest, I have led much scarier hikes. I'm surprised I still have friends after my Granadan hike.

The Ring

I still can't upload pictures. Maybe it is the computer or maybe it is operator error. who knows.

Right now, I'm in the middle of practicum and I have started to teach a few classes in the school here which has been an experience. It's really good practice. The kids give me flowers everyday so I'm constantly carrying around roses, callalillies, and other flowers. The guys always laugh at us and our flowers.

Last weekend, I went to another town and saw a culturla presentation with singing and children dancing. It was pretty cool. We also ate by the river at a cafe. It was a good break after the busy last couple of weeks.

In terms of cross cultural communication. My host mom came upstairs one morning and knocked on my door. What I thought she said was that breakfast was ready downstairs and that I could go eat it whenever I wanted. So I waited another 30 minutes and then headed down. The kitchen was completely filled with smoke. Apparently, she had left the eggs on the stove for me and I was supposed to take them off the stove when I came down. They were burned so bad that I had to throw the whole pan away. Incidentally, three perogies burnt to a crisp look a lot like three eggs burnt to a crisp. Just in case you were wondering.