Pershendetje--Greetings

We made it, and somehow we got all our stuff from philly to new york to munich to tirana to elbasan to pajove. We did lose a bag at the airport and forget one at the hotel but all and all it went rather smoothly. The first couple of days were spent getting to know the peace corps albania group 12, which is the 12th group of PCVs in Albania. There are 34 of us and just one other married couple.

The hotel was nice, it had a normal toilet and shower that worked well with some duct tape and was even heated. The food was very good, lots of french fries, served at almost every meal, along with a lot of meat, chicken, steak, veal etc. They also have a lot of fruit, apples, oranges and bananas. We did a lot of orientation activities as well as got started on our language instruction. The weather has been on the cold side, with one day of snow and rain mixed together.

Yesterday we went to our host family's house and met, Islam the dad, Sheqere the mom, Griselda the sister, 17, and Alban the 13 year old son. Fortunately Griselda speaks English but she is at a high school in tirana, so she is only home on the weekends. So tomorrow it will be much harder when she goes back to school. Griselda and Alban have been very nice to us and are constantly trying to teach us new words. The mom and dad rely on Griselda to talk to us so this week we should get to know them better. Islam's parents live above us and come down to visit all the time. The Grandma really likes Lauren and asks her lots of questions.

We have taken over the kids' room so Alban and Griselda are sleeping on the pull out couch, while we have their two twin beds. There are a lot of posters all over the room from WWF Smack Down to Hillary Duff. The house is very nice Islam built the house, it has anything that we would need including internet. They have a beautiful yard with apple trees, orange trees a vineyard and lots of chickens. They even have a dog named bubee. I am not sure he likes us too much, but we can work on that.