These two pictures are both from Tirana. The first is of Amy and I at some sort of night club, I dont really remember which one right now. I think that this was from the night of the Embassy party. The second is of Tirana at night. I think that this is actually the municipality of Tirana building. These buildings were built by the Italians (when the facists occupied the country for a short period of time) and they are probably the most attractive government buildings in Albania.


This photo was taken in Elbasan I believe. Panaroma restaurant is one of the best in all of Albania. If anybody decides that they would want to visit me here, I might take you there. We can see how things go. It is of me, Katy, and John. The second one is of a sunset in Puke. It is a really beautiful place and (I may have said this before) reminded me of home (colorado) more than any other place in Albania yet.
Anyhoo, I am in Tirana right now. I had to bring in some forms and eat some breakfast fajitas at the Stevens Center. They were great.
School has begun (two weeks and counting). The students haven't killed me yet, nor have I killed them. That is a good sign. I am teaching two to three classes a day at the high school (my counterparts are afraid that I'll get tired). On Mondays and Thursdays I also teach three after school classes either with my counterparts or at the youth center. Its enough to keep busy I guess.
Next weekend I might be going to a conference in Macedonia. A TEFL conference in a town called Struga. I am kind of excited to leave the country. I think that it will be really fun. I will write a little bit about how it goes.

I am again sitting in Elbasan, where I spent my three months of training. I figured that it was about time to visit my first host family again. I am at the good ole Rosevelt, the kind of posh internet cafe. I miss the days of fast internet and air conditioning. And Cake playing overhead. Oh well, I will survive.
I have had a few apprehentions about going back to visit my host family. I don't know if I said this earlier, but my host father is kind of a lush. Tonight will be a drink fest if he has anything to do with it. That doesn't excite me as much as it should. I am excited to see them though. It is strange coming back here, it almost feels homey still. I went to a good fast food place and got the sanduic ala mexicana. It is probably one of the best sandwiches that you can find in all of Albania. I then came on over to the Rosevelt, probably one of the nicest internet places in Albania, even if it is overpriced and everyone is kind of an asshole.
I was in Berat last night. Good times as always. We drank a little wine and got a little fast food with some Albanian friends of Katie's. We then ended up at a strange club. I don't think that there are gay bars in Albania, but if they exist I think that we were at one of them. It was entertaining anyways.
School starts on Monday (ahh). I hope that I can be a teacher. I'm not really even sure what I'll be doing for the first term. I think that I will be shadowing my counterpart for a little while and then eventually begin to teach some conversation. It will take time to work my way into the teaching of grammar. Maybe when I have my own classes or am at least a little more independent after the beginning of the year I can start to teach a little bit of grammar.
Another interesting link from the good doctor. I saw Ridge on the news here, but the volume was down and I didn't know what was going on. This cleared things up for me. I dont really know why this is happening, I think that it is pretty random, but here ya go!

Albania to employ Ex-Homeland Security chief Ridge
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2392445

Not too much has been going on here in Albania. School begins here in the 18th, so the teachers have begun to go back and hang out at the school. Nothing is really happening with that yet though, we go and drink coffee, and then I usually go home.
I went to the school this morning, but neither of my counterparts were there. There is really no other reason for me to hang around there, so I went home for a little bit and then ended up here at the internet cafe.
I was in Puke again this past weekend though. We went up to camp. Juliete and I went up on Friday morning and were waiting for Joey. The last bus out of Tirana was at 1:00, and Joey arrived around 2:00. I stayed in Tirana with him though and we saw Pirates of the Carribean 2 which was pretty good but a little confusing... Its a movie though, and I dont really have any standards anymore. I would go to see just about any movie that is in English here, maybe some that aren't. After the movie we went to get some crepes and then sat and had some wine. We had to catch what we thought was the 5:30 bus for Puke (actually it was a 6:00 bus, but we didn't learn that until we got there at 5) and we woke up at 4 to walk across Tirana, so we didn't stay out very late the night before.
Anyways, we got to Puke on Saturday and hiked up to a hill to camp. The wind was blowing and it was pretty cold. We all assumed that the wind would die down, but nope. We were kind of on a plateau where the wind was the strongest. We slept there and froze. Its not like we have tents or anything either. It was really cold. It was fun though. It is always good to hang out with these people. Yesterday was also interesting, sitting for around 7 hours in a bus.
Albanians dont really camp, nor do they understand the concept, or even why people would want to camp. It isn't something that they do generally. One of our program managers came with us though and that was really nice. It is always good when the staff makes an effort to make connections on more of a personal level with the volunteers.

I haven't had much internet access lately. My internet cafe here in Kucove closed. There are two others, but almost every time I go into either one of them I have some sort of problem. Either the internet goes down, the power goes out, or there is a room full of boys playing on the internet and yelling profanities. The thing that I liked about the other place was that it was just internet and not a bunch of boys playing games on the computer. Oh well, I guess I am in Albania.
Before I forget, I want to post a link that Dr Frantz Murphy sent me:
http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-albania3sep03,0,1808491.story?coll=la-home-travel
It is a travel article, but it talks about some good sites in Albania. I was in Butrint while I was in Saranda (see Saranda! post), but I haven't been to Apolonia, nor have I heard of this other place. Too bad she doesn't say where it is. I think that it is a good article though.
I went to the school today. We start school on the 18th. I finally found that out last week. I had heard different things from both students and teachers. I knew it was around the 15th, but there was a rumor that it would start as early as the 4th, but I asked Bruna last week and she told me the 18th.
My two counterparts were in England with some students at the beginning of August. I hadn't really talked to either of them since they returned. One of them was telling me, though, that while they were leaving, at the airport one of the students disappeared. She didn't know what had happened to him and she went to the information desk and they were calling for him, but they couldn't find him. It turned out that he had escaped. I guess that he had some extended family in London, and he wanted to go and live with them. It is very difficult for Albanians to get visas to live or even to travel in most countries. England is no exception. Because of this it was very difficult for the teachers to get travel visas for them and 11 students. The student ran away because it would be difficult for him to get a visa to live there. He didn't even have his pasport or any paperwork. She was holding on to all of the student's passports. Anyways my counterpart was very upset by this whole thing and she is going to have to go and talk with the British embassy tomorrow to explain. Could you imagine, as a teacher loosing a student? In a foreign county much less? They ended up having to leave without him once she figured out what was going on.
I am nervous for school to begin. I guess at first I will be team teaching with both of the counterparts. This is better because I don't really know English grammer well enough to teach it. They will be doing grammer while I will be teaching conversation, class activities, and games and what not. I guess that I need to learn some of these as well. If anybody has any good ones, send them my way.
I have stayed around for the past two weekends now. I was supposed to go to Fier this past weekend (pronounced fear), but I wasn't feeling well. I am going to go to Puke again next weekend to camp, depending on the weather. It should be a good time and I think that there will be a lot of people there. I guess with the added structure of having a job, I'll have to cut back on my traveling a little bit.