Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
IRB
View from the top of the Castle
Can you find the Donkey??
Time keeps flying by, we had to stop and think about how long it has been since our last post and were surprised to realize that it was already three weeks ago. We still do not have internet in our apt, but we are hoping to fix that soon, we found a wireless provider that we think will work in our apartment or at least from our balcony. So that should cover us for the summer. That last couple of weeks have been interesting, we are still trying to figure out why the Peace Corps starts us in the summer when everyone is going on vacation and the schools are closed. It seems to make sense that we would start in late summer when everyone is going back to work and the schools are opening but such is the logic of the government! So our main focus for the summer is really to learn more Shqip and to do IRB (Intentional Relationship Building), which is a fancy term for making friends and having lots of coffees with people. We are constantly amazed at how friendly people are here, they will walk up to you and shake your hand ask you how you are, all without having any idea of who you are. Lauren even got a double toothless kiss from an older man just because she was walking down the street. We often get invited to have “coffee” (which can mean, beer, soda, raki etc) with people we do not know or have met only once. Here when you do the inviting you do the buying so it is strangers that are buying us drinks usually because they want to tell us how much they love America or because the want to practice their English. Just this week a taxi driver that had brought us and our very large bags to our apartment on our fist visit, saw us walking down the street and called us over. He then took us to his house, had his wife bring fresh fruit and drinks just so we could meet his 14 year old daughter who takes English in school. She wasn’t even home, so he told us that he, his wife, and daughter would meet us later that night on the boardwalk. He took us all out for ice cream and wanted to take us to dinner all so his daughter could practice her English.
When we went to talk to the guy about internet in our home, he gave us beers and asked us to sit and chat just so he could practice his English. When we compare things here to what we would find in America, it is kinda sad. I am not sure any of us would see a random Albanian walking around our city and invite them over to our house or offer to by them a drink, simply out of friendship. Yet here it is just what they do. Another thing that is very big here at least in the summer months is the nightly Xhiro (gyro), where almost everyone in the town gets dressed up and walks the board walk. Everyone says hello to everyone else or they might have a coffee, the older men play dominos or backgammon but you can see almost anyone in the community there. It is a great place to do some IRB. Lauren and I do the Xhiro almost every night, but we just can’t get into the dressing up. Some of the younger girls look like they are going out to a club, while the older men wear suits. So this makes the Xhiro a great place to see the old and new Albania as well.
It was on the xhiro that we met a group of Americans who are here searching for ancient ship wrecks. They are all SCUBA divers and work or volunteer for a foundation that goes all over the world looking for new dive sites. They have been here for a couple of months, so they will be packing up and leaving this week. But we have had a lot of fun with them. One night they took us up to the castle which over looks the bay of Sarande. The same castle that we can see from our shower, however, the view from the castle is much better than that from our shower. You can see all of Sarande, Lake Burtrint, and the island of Corfu. We were there for a beautiful sunset and then sat down for a great meal of roasted lamb and very good red wine. It times likes these when is hard to believe that we are in the Peace Corps. But we do get daily reminders:
We can only drink the water from 5:00 to 8:00pm otherwise it has to be filtered.
Despite living in a city, you can be startled when you turn on your street corner and find a large cow eating out of a dumpster.
We eat a lot of rice and pasta and little meat.
We had to tape trash bags up on our sliding glass doors b/c the bright sun was waking us up at 5:00 am every morning.
The beaches are full of broken glass and trash, and we get a lot of strange looks if we try to clean it up.
Many of you may be wondering what we do everyday, and that is a difficult question to answer. Not that our days are so varied but more so because we often feel embarrassed by the fact that we do not have more to do. I got to my office every day but since schools are out, and summer is upon us, and I don’t speak Albanian, there is not a whole lot I can do right now. For Lauren’s part, the university is closed until October so she does not even have an office to go to. Thankfully we have found two summer camps that will be starting in July one at an orphanage and one at the kindergarten run by Italian nuns. Lauren and I will be teaching English at both camps as well and helping out in any other capacity, like playing soccer and I might even teach some karate. So we are looking forward to July. Lauren will also be offering English tutoring sessions as a kind of summer school for the University Students so they can get a head start on next year’s classes. She also has been asked by the police, military and the hospital to do lessons with them. So eventually we think things will pick up.
We also wanted to send a BIG thank you out to those who sent care packages, we have been very gluttonous this week! Please if you are planning on sending us something let us know when you send it, so we know to go check for it. They don’t let us know when we get things, you kinda have to just randomly check in with them. Also, please don’t feel you have to send us tons of stuff, we know it costs a lot of money to send things here. We appreciate the thought but do not wish that you break the bank on us…unless you are sending steaks!
On a last note, today were parliamentary elections, so far they have gone off with only minor problems. Fair and free elections are key to Albania getting into the EU. So we should have a new government this week, either the Democrats or the Socialists. Ironically the Democrats are closer to our Republican party and the Socialist are closer to our Democratic party. Well I will sign off as the Call to prayer echoes across the bay. We miss you all.
Friday, June 5, 2009
May to June, Shume Pune! (lots of work)
Saying goodbye to our host family, yes I really was that much bigger than them.
Our first dinner on our balcony
Night view from our balcony!
The University where Lauren will work
Our first dinner on our balcony
Apartment pics of kitchen, bathroom, and joint bedroom and living room.
River and mountains on the road to Sarande
Community Project Fun Day, Ben playing musical chairs and Lauren teaching English.
River and mountains on the road to Sarande
Tirane city center
Flowers outside of Pajove
View from our host family's porch
Community Project Fun Day, Ben playing musical chairs and Lauren teaching English.
Training is over! The two "old" volunteers of Pajove had to show the rest that we still had ups!
Yes we know we have been very keq/bad these past couple of weeks about updating our blog. But in our defense we have been very busy, so busy that I am not sure where we left off, it is all blurring together. We did have internet at our host family’s house but it was very slow DSL and worked rather infrequently, combine that with a whirlwind of executing our community project, language interviews to study for, a visit to the capital and our new site, teaching a self-defense seminar and a sustainability seminar and swearing in as volunteers, saying many goodbyes and moving down to Sarande and I am sure you can understand our tardiness. So to help sum it all up we put things into categories:
Community Project
As part of our practicum each satellite site (town where each group of volunteers lived, for us that was Pajove, we had the largest group with 7 volunteers) had to develop and execute a community project. The idea is to gain an understanding of what it will be like to work in Albania when you get out on your own. Our group decided to do a school fun day at the local high school where we had our Albanian classes. We tried to have English as a theme, so the students would learn something at each station we created. We wrote up a plan and gave it to the director of the school, set the date and got the materials that we needed. On the day of the big event the director closed school early and told 60 students to go to our play day and rest were told the stand and watch. Some of the stations we had were, a game to learn body parts in English, water balloon toss, Karate, and flower planting around the school. It went pretty well, we did have some of the kids watching steal some water balloons, and one of the teachers cut our day short by sending the kids home early but all and all it was a good event. Now, I am not sure that anyone actually learned anything but all the kids definitely appreciated us getting them out of school early.
Tirana and Site Visit
Before going to visit our permanent sites, we all went to a conference in Tirana with our new counterparts. Counterparts are staff of the host agency where the Peace Corps Volunteer will be placed. They are not so much a boss but more of a guide on how to work in an Albanian hospital, school or town hall. So Lauren’s counterpart is a professor of English at the University where she will work, while mine is the lone staff of the Health Promotion Unit connected to the Hospital in Sarande. They both are very nice and professional; Lauren’s counterpart of course speaks excellent English, while mine does not speak any. So we spent one evening and the entire day together learning about our new jobs and getting to know our counterparts. We also got to visit the Peace Corps Office and take a tour of Tirana, led by current volunteers. Tirana is very large, especially when you are used to living in a village the size of Pajove. Parts of it are very European, you can almost forget you are in Albania, very sheik bars and coffee places and the current mayor who is also an artist had many of the buildings painted in very bright colors. Some have polka dots, some have stripes but all in bright reds, oranges and blues. The mayor is now running for Prime Minster so if he wins maybe our new apartment will get a makeover!
After the conference we got up at 6:30 to catch the 8:30 bus from Tirana to Sarande. It was a long ride, despite it only being about 200 miles it took us almost 9 hours. At least the mountains and the blue/green rivers were picturesque enough to keep us entertained. The roads here are either really good or really bad and that combined with having to stop due to an accident on the mountain pass it took us about 3 hours longer than it should have. Fortunately they build in a pilaf break about halfway through, where you can get off and use the bath room and get a 50 cent bowl of rice.
Once we finally got to Sarande we were met by my counterpart’s husband who used to be a policeman (and did anti-terrorism work in the US for 3 months) yet I think we were able to shock him with the amount bags we had brought. We brought half of our stuff so we would not have to lug it all down at once. They took us to our apartment which is right next to their’s, they own it and usually rent it out during the summer, but I am sure they figured 24 months of steady rent would be better than just the summer. We have a studio apartment, it is spilt in the middle with sliding glass doors that separate the bedroom/living room from the kitchen. We have small bathroom and a balcony that over looks the bay of Sarande. Since the bathroom is so small the shower does not have a stall so if you wanted you could sit on the toilet, shower and brush your teeth in the sink all at the same time. There is a cool little window in the bathroom that overlooks the bay and you can see the 5th century castle sitting on top the hill across from us. On the mountain next to the castle is a monastery called the 40 Saints, which in Greek is Sarande. There is a large Greek influence here, the island of Corfu is only a 30 minute ferry ride away, and during the summer there are two ferries a day between Corfu and Sarande (it is 19 euro each way). We get Greek TV channels and almost all the packaged food is imported from Greece.
We spent the majority of our three days just walking around and exploring the city. Sarande is a very walkable city and it feels more like a big town which we were quite excited about. There is a promenade along the rocky beach, and every night people dress up to the nines and do the "xhiro" which is a slow paced stroll where you chat and people watch. There are also ice-cream stands, bumper cars, and bars lining the promenade. During the day we went to the university, health center, and met with some of the local community leaders. There is a mosque and a Greek Orthodox church in Sarande. The Catholic church is in a nearby village. We hear the Islamic call to prayer from our balcony several times a day as well as the church bells ringing on the hour. We went to the Greek Orthodox church and we met the groundskeeper. He was about 60 years old and spoke a little English. He explained that he tried to sneak out of the country to Greece when he was 18, but was caught by the communist police and imprisoned for 30 years. It is so hard to imagine what life must have been like for Albanians during that time. On another sad note, in 1997 when Peace Corps Albania first shut down due to civil unrest caused by the pyramid schemes (like the US Madoff situation), many Albanian families lost everything they had. They invested all of their savings, and never received anything back. Needless to say, people were furious, and they picked up arms, and fought brother against brother. You can still see evidence of the barricades on our apartment building that the tenants constructed in order to stay out of harm’s way. Ben’s counterpart was struck by a stray bullet on her way home one day. Although she says she is ok now, I can’t imagine how long it took her to recover physically and emotionally from such an incident.
Last 2 weeks of training and our final language interviews
After our three night stay, we took the 6am bus back to our town which took about 6 ½ hours. The second to last week of training was called PST University which allowed us a lot more flexibility in our schedules, and gave us the opportunity to attend sessions on various topics that we wanted to learn more about. We also had language interviews that were recorded and analyzed in order to rate our proficiency in the language. I think we all did ok despite only being in Albania for 9 weeks. Ben and another volunteer taught a self defense class, and showed us quick and practical ways to get out of wrist grabs, choke holds, and even knife attacks. Ben also gave a very inspirational speech at the end of his sustainability session which was a great kick off to our group camping trip that weekend. The group camping trip has been a tradition from former groups, and I think everyone but three people attended from our group. We had a bonfire, ate smores, saw an awesome sunset, talked, and slept under the stars. We were awoken by a flock of turkeys that came into our camp, and Ben somehow began to talk to them, as only he would be able to do, and herded them back out of the camp. It was a good time, and we got to bond before heading off to our respective sites the following weekend. The last week of training consisted of regulations, living on your own, and wrap up sessions. We found out Ben was selected from his sector as the representative for VAC- the volunteer advisory committee. Basically, he will serve as the go between for all issues between volunteers and staff, and work to change any policies that need to be modified. The rest of the week, we said goodbye to Agron, the restaurant owner where we ate lunch everyday. We gave him a picture of him with the "Pajove 7" volunteers which he promptly hung up in his restaurant. We also had a goodbye dinner with Sabrio, the guy who stops us on our way home everyday just to tell Ben how handsome he is. Evidently he had a son that looked like Ben who died several years ago. We gave him a picture of him and Ben and enjoyed a very nice dinner with him and his family. Our host family also had a nice dinner for us the night before we left for Sarande. They got a bunch of veal and let Ben BBQ it with salt, olive oil and lemon, it was really good just really fatty. The grandma gave us a pair of socks as a parting gift and the mom hand crocheted a doily for our new apartment.
Swearing In
On May 28th, 2009 all the volunteers headed to Elbansan for one last meeting, the swearing in ceremony. We had it at the large theater in town, the Mayor came as did all of our teachers, Peace Corps staff, host families, several current Volunteers and the American Ambassador. He gave the keynote and swore us in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. It was a really nice ceremony we all got dressed up and made our host mothers proud. They are very into formal dress here, especially in the villages. The men usually wear dress pants and button down shirts with a sweater vest year round and the women do not leave the house with out getting all decked out regardless of where they are going. So we have been somewhat of a disappointment with our jeans and hiking boots and more recently shorts. After the ceremony there was a small reception and later on that night there was a blues band from NYC that was playing at the old castle in town. They are part of a State Department Initiative to spread American Music around the world. So they had spent the day in the local high schools teaching music classes. It was fun to listen to live music that did not have a blaring clarinet, which Albanians love.
Welcome to the Next two years of your life on the Albanian Rivera
So that finally catches us up to today, we have been in Sarande for 6 days now. The University is in its final weeks of classes so Lauren is getting to know people and try to drum up some business for the summer. She is hoping to teach some high schools kids during the summer months. I on the other hand go to work every day from 8 to 2. I have been on local TV twice so far, talking about the health promotion unit and the Peace Corps all in very broken Shqip. Two ladies stopped me today and said you are the doctor from TV! I wish my Albanian was good enough to say, no I am not a real doctor I just play one on TV. The high school seniors here had their exams for university this week. Parents went and waited outside the school all day waiting to hear if their son or daughter did well. I walked by one school and the police where there to keep the parents out. The kids were yelling from the windows about how they thought they did and all the parents were wishing them "success".
Sarande is really beautiful, we have not been in the ocean yet, but it is only a 5 minute walk away. There are great restaurants that we can not afford to eat at, we really only get about 3 dollars a day for food. I really like the Crepe place and there are really good gyros here as well. There is also a pizza restaurant about every 15 feet. You can get a medium pizza for 3 dollars. They have lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, all which are reasonable, eggs are cheap as well, the only real expense is meat, especially fish. Which I don’t understand since we live next to the ocean, I guess I should invest in a good fishing pole. So we made it to being Volunteers, we made it to our apartment with all of our stuff and through our first full week of work. The hardest adjustment will be the pace, everything here is avash, avash, slowly, slowly. So with the summer coming up and all of Albanians going on vacation for July and August, it is going to be a very slow summer. We have been in touch with an orphanage in town that we might be able to help out with and we are sure other opportunities will come up as well.
Sorry again it took so long to update, but thank you all for your concern. We do have a new address now, which were advised not to post on our blog, so if you want it please send us an email and we can give it to you. You can send packages to this address, (hint, hint) It’s funny you really can find everything that you need here it is just a matter of being able to pay for it on what the Peace Corps gives you. That goes for internet as well, we are hoping to have it in our apartment but not sure how long that will take or how fast it will be or what it costs. So it’s the internet cafes for now, maybe we can shock some more people by speaking Albanian. People here and very used to tourists, so when someone who looks like a tourist speaks their language they find it very shocking, but then are extremely pleased. I only took me 2 hours to upload this blog!
Yes we know we have been very keq/bad these past couple of weeks about updating our blog. But in our defense we have been very busy, so busy that I am not sure where we left off, it is all blurring together. We did have internet at our host family’s house but it was very slow DSL and worked rather infrequently, combine that with a whirlwind of executing our community project, language interviews to study for, a visit to the capital and our new site, teaching a self-defense seminar and a sustainability seminar and swearing in as volunteers, saying many goodbyes and moving down to Sarande and I am sure you can understand our tardiness. So to help sum it all up we put things into categories:
Community Project
As part of our practicum each satellite site (town where each group of volunteers lived, for us that was Pajove, we had the largest group with 7 volunteers) had to develop and execute a community project. The idea is to gain an understanding of what it will be like to work in Albania when you get out on your own. Our group decided to do a school fun day at the local high school where we had our Albanian classes. We tried to have English as a theme, so the students would learn something at each station we created. We wrote up a plan and gave it to the director of the school, set the date and got the materials that we needed. On the day of the big event the director closed school early and told 60 students to go to our play day and rest were told the stand and watch. Some of the stations we had were, a game to learn body parts in English, water balloon toss, Karate, and flower planting around the school. It went pretty well, we did have some of the kids watching steal some water balloons, and one of the teachers cut our day short by sending the kids home early but all and all it was a good event. Now, I am not sure that anyone actually learned anything but all the kids definitely appreciated us getting them out of school early.
Tirana and Site Visit
Before going to visit our permanent sites, we all went to a conference in Tirana with our new counterparts. Counterparts are staff of the host agency where the Peace Corps Volunteer will be placed. They are not so much a boss but more of a guide on how to work in an Albanian hospital, school or town hall. So Lauren’s counterpart is a professor of English at the University where she will work, while mine is the lone staff of the Health Promotion Unit connected to the Hospital in Sarande. They both are very nice and professional; Lauren’s counterpart of course speaks excellent English, while mine does not speak any. So we spent one evening and the entire day together learning about our new jobs and getting to know our counterparts. We also got to visit the Peace Corps Office and take a tour of Tirana, led by current volunteers. Tirana is very large, especially when you are used to living in a village the size of Pajove. Parts of it are very European, you can almost forget you are in Albania, very sheik bars and coffee places and the current mayor who is also an artist had many of the buildings painted in very bright colors. Some have polka dots, some have stripes but all in bright reds, oranges and blues. The mayor is now running for Prime Minster so if he wins maybe our new apartment will get a makeover!
After the conference we got up at 6:30 to catch the 8:30 bus from Tirana to Sarande. It was a long ride, despite it only being about 200 miles it took us almost 9 hours. At least the mountains and the blue/green rivers were picturesque enough to keep us entertained. The roads here are either really good or really bad and that combined with having to stop due to an accident on the mountain pass it took us about 3 hours longer than it should have. Fortunately they build in a pilaf break about halfway through, where you can get off and use the bath room and get a 50 cent bowl of rice.
Once we finally got to Sarande we were met by my counterpart’s husband who used to be a policeman (and did anti-terrorism work in the US for 3 months) yet I think we were able to shock him with the amount bags we had brought. We brought half of our stuff so we would not have to lug it all down at once. They took us to our apartment which is right next to their’s, they own it and usually rent it out during the summer, but I am sure they figured 24 months of steady rent would be better than just the summer. We have a studio apartment, it is spilt in the middle with sliding glass doors that separate the bedroom/living room from the kitchen. We have small bathroom and a balcony that over looks the bay of Sarande. Since the bathroom is so small the shower does not have a stall so if you wanted you could sit on the toilet, shower and brush your teeth in the sink all at the same time. There is a cool little window in the bathroom that overlooks the bay and you can see the 5th century castle sitting on top the hill across from us. On the mountain next to the castle is a monastery called the 40 Saints, which in Greek is Sarande. There is a large Greek influence here, the island of Corfu is only a 30 minute ferry ride away, and during the summer there are two ferries a day between Corfu and Sarande (it is 19 euro each way). We get Greek TV channels and almost all the packaged food is imported from Greece.
We spent the majority of our three days just walking around and exploring the city. Sarande is a very walkable city and it feels more like a big town which we were quite excited about. There is a promenade along the rocky beach, and every night people dress up to the nines and do the "xhiro" which is a slow paced stroll where you chat and people watch. There are also ice-cream stands, bumper cars, and bars lining the promenade. During the day we went to the university, health center, and met with some of the local community leaders. There is a mosque and a Greek Orthodox church in Sarande. The Catholic church is in a nearby village. We hear the Islamic call to prayer from our balcony several times a day as well as the church bells ringing on the hour. We went to the Greek Orthodox church and we met the groundskeeper. He was about 60 years old and spoke a little English. He explained that he tried to sneak out of the country to Greece when he was 18, but was caught by the communist police and imprisoned for 30 years. It is so hard to imagine what life must have been like for Albanians during that time. On another sad note, in 1997 when Peace Corps Albania first shut down due to civil unrest caused by the pyramid schemes (like the US Madoff situation), many Albanian families lost everything they had. They invested all of their savings, and never received anything back. Needless to say, people were furious, and they picked up arms, and fought brother against brother. You can still see evidence of the barricades on our apartment building that the tenants constructed in order to stay out of harm’s way. Ben’s counterpart was struck by a stray bullet on her way home one day. Although she says she is ok now, I can’t imagine how long it took her to recover physically and emotionally from such an incident.
Last 2 weeks of training and our final language interviews
After our three night stay, we took the 6am bus back to our town which took about 6 ½ hours. The second to last week of training was called PST University which allowed us a lot more flexibility in our schedules, and gave us the opportunity to attend sessions on various topics that we wanted to learn more about. We also had language interviews that were recorded and analyzed in order to rate our proficiency in the language. I think we all did ok despite only being in Albania for 9 weeks. Ben and another volunteer taught a self defense class, and showed us quick and practical ways to get out of wrist grabs, choke holds, and even knife attacks. Ben also gave a very inspirational speech at the end of his sustainability session which was a great kick off to our group camping trip that weekend. The group camping trip has been a tradition from former groups, and I think everyone but three people attended from our group. We had a bonfire, ate smores, saw an awesome sunset, talked, and slept under the stars. We were awoken by a flock of turkeys that came into our camp, and Ben somehow began to talk to them, as only he would be able to do, and herded them back out of the camp. It was a good time, and we got to bond before heading off to our respective sites the following weekend. The last week of training consisted of regulations, living on your own, and wrap up sessions. We found out Ben was selected from his sector as the representative for VAC- the volunteer advisory committee. Basically, he will serve as the go between for all issues between volunteers and staff, and work to change any policies that need to be modified. The rest of the week, we said goodbye to Agron, the restaurant owner where we ate lunch everyday. We gave him a picture of him with the "Pajove 7" volunteers which he promptly hung up in his restaurant. We also had a goodbye dinner with Sabrio, the guy who stops us on our way home everyday just to tell Ben how handsome he is. Evidently he had a son that looked like Ben who died several years ago. We gave him a picture of him and Ben and enjoyed a very nice dinner with him and his family. Our host family also had a nice dinner for us the night before we left for Sarande. They got a bunch of veal and let Ben BBQ it with salt, olive oil and lemon, it was really good just really fatty. The grandma gave us a pair of socks as a parting gift and the mom hand crocheted a doily for our new apartment.
Swearing In
On May 28th, 2009 all the volunteers headed to Elbansan for one last meeting, the swearing in ceremony. We had it at the large theater in town, the Mayor came as did all of our teachers, Peace Corps staff, host families, several current Volunteers and the American Ambassador. He gave the keynote and swore us in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. It was a really nice ceremony we all got dressed up and made our host mothers proud. They are very into formal dress here, especially in the villages. The men usually wear dress pants and button down shirts with a sweater vest year round and the women do not leave the house with out getting all decked out regardless of where they are going. So we have been somewhat of a disappointment with our jeans and hiking boots and more recently shorts. After the ceremony there was a small reception and later on that night there was a blues band from NYC that was playing at the old castle in town. They are part of a State Department Initiative to spread American Music around the world. So they had spent the day in the local high schools teaching music classes. It was fun to listen to live music that did not have a blaring clarinet, which Albanians love.
Welcome to the Next two years of your life on the Albanian Rivera
So that finally catches us up to today, we have been in Sarande for 6 days now. The University is in its final weeks of classes so Lauren is getting to know people and try to drum up some business for the summer. She is hoping to teach some high schools kids during the summer months. I on the other hand go to work every day from 8 to 2. I have been on local TV twice so far, talking about the health promotion unit and the Peace Corps all in very broken Shqip. Two ladies stopped me today and said you are the doctor from TV! I wish my Albanian was good enough to say, no I am not a real doctor I just play one on TV. The high school seniors here had their exams for university this week. Parents went and waited outside the school all day waiting to hear if their son or daughter did well. I walked by one school and the police where there to keep the parents out. The kids were yelling from the windows about how they thought they did and all the parents were wishing them "success".
Sarande is really beautiful, we have not been in the ocean yet, but it is only a 5 minute walk away. There are great restaurants that we can not afford to eat at, we really only get about 3 dollars a day for food. I really like the Crepe place and there are really good gyros here as well. There is also a pizza restaurant about every 15 feet. You can get a medium pizza for 3 dollars. They have lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, all which are reasonable, eggs are cheap as well, the only real expense is meat, especially fish. Which I don’t understand since we live next to the ocean, I guess I should invest in a good fishing pole. So we made it to being Volunteers, we made it to our apartment with all of our stuff and through our first full week of work. The hardest adjustment will be the pace, everything here is avash, avash, slowly, slowly. So with the summer coming up and all of Albanians going on vacation for July and August, it is going to be a very slow summer. We have been in touch with an orphanage in town that we might be able to help out with and we are sure other opportunities will come up as well.
Sorry again it took so long to update, but thank you all for your concern. We do have a new address now, which were advised not to post on our blog, so if you want it please send us an email and we can give it to you. You can send packages to this address, (hint, hint) It’s funny you really can find everything that you need here it is just a matter of being able to pay for it on what the Peace Corps gives you. That goes for internet as well, we are hoping to have it in our apartment but not sure how long that will take or how fast it will be or what it costs. So it’s the internet cafes for now, maybe we can shock some more people by speaking Albanian. People here and very used to tourists, so when someone who looks like a tourist speaks their language they find it very shocking, but then are extremely pleased. I only took me 2 hours to upload this blog!
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