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.