Weekend Hiking Trip

This past weekend, my sitemate and I took a couple of kids from our Outdoor Ambassadors youth group camping. The area was absolutely beautiful and no one got injured, so it is going into the books as a great success. Camping is not very common at all in Albania, and since our youth group is environmentally focused, it made sense to take them camping, and it was a novelty for them.

We had to travel through Korce, which is a larger city, on the way to our hike/ camping site. As I was walking through the market in Korce, I saw a man casually leading a bear on a leash down the street. It was weird. Welcome to Albania. We then continued from Korce via public transportation (minibuses) to the village of Voskapoja. Voskapoja is a tiny village with a population of only around 200 people, but is known for its beautiful old churches.

From Voskapoja we headed out on a two hour hike into the wilderness and eventually found a good place to camp for the night. Most of you are probably wondering how I was able to manage to take a bunch of high school kids camping. I am not known for my practical skills, and my outdoor skills are essentially nonexistent. I am fairly certain that this was the first night of my life that had ever been spent in a tent that wasn't located in a backyard. Luckily, my sitemate, Mark, is well versed in camping and did all of the hard stuff (ie setting up the tent, starting the fire, cooking the food, and figuring out where the hell we were going.) Here we are hiking out to our campsite. The area of Albania where we went hiking is full of pine trees, which is not very common in Albania. The country is really small area- wise but has a lot of different looking physical landscapes. It makes for very interesting travel, and I'm lucky to have the opportunity to explore the different landscapes that Albania has to offer.

The end of summertime (means an attempt to get into blogging)

So I know. I have been terrible about updating this blog. It's been many months. But I am attempting to get into a schedule (for many things in my life,) which I hope will spur me to update this blog more regularly.

So here is a brief outline on what I have been doing.

I live in Pogradec, Albania. It is a medium sized town (pop approx 38,000), located in Southeastern Albania. The distinguishing features of Pogradec include it's location on the shore of Lake Ohrid, as well as it's proximity to Macedonia. The national border between Albania and Macedonia actually stretches across the lake. Here is a view of Pogradec from a hill overlooking the city.

In terms of my living conditions, I definitely have it better than I ever thought I would in Peace Corps. I have wireless internet and a fully furnished apartment. I live alone and generally feel comfortable and secure. Here is a view from the window of my apartment. It looks into a courtyard in which four apartment building face and essentially surround a private house, which they were apparently built around. I find the arrangement pretty amusing.

Domestic tourism is a huge part of the economy of Pogradec in the summer, and the entire town is buzzing with tourists throughout the months June, July, and August. This makes for a fun and entertaining atmosphere in the town during the summer months. It also means that during the summer I was mistaken for a German tourist almost daily. Above is a photo of some chairs for rent on the beach in front of the town.

After a fairly intense training period in which I lived with a host family and was scheduled for almost every moment of the day, it was a nice relief to be able to move into my own space and set my own schedule. This was compounded by the fact that work in this part of the world slows down considerably during the summer. This allowed me extra time to travel around the country of Albania, which is absolutely beautiful, and enjoy myself. I have heard some grumbling that my photos don't look particularly like what anyone would expect from the peace corps, but so be it! The above photo is of me jumping into a spring called Blue Eye, or Syre I Kalter. The water flows from an underwater spring and is overwhelmingly cold.

My summer was punctuated with a visit from my mother, Monica, and my brother, Joe, in late July. We had a great time, but if you consult them they can attest that not everything here is as easy as it might seem. Special recognition to Monica for navigating the absolutely insane roads here in a stick shift rental car!

I won't go into many work related things in this post, but I'll just give a brief outline. My primary work assignment here is with the bashkia, or the municipal government. I work in the department of tourism and economic development. I also work with a branch of a nationwide youth group here in the city, called Outdoor Ambassadors. Hopefully I will get the chance to also work with some local NGOs. Here is a photo of my counterpart, Majlinda, (my Albanian colleague that I work most closely with,) and I in front of the lake. The bashkia is situated very close to the lake, and I can see the lake from most of the office windows, which is very refreshing.

Things have been picking up in terms of work in the last few weeks and my schedule is a lot more normal, so I am going to make a concerted effort to update this blog. I also think that I have allowed my mind to settle and have adjusted to Albania enough to be able to voice my thoughts in a more coherent manner. I'll finish the post with a photo of myself and my PCV friends Liila and Sara standing on a crazy stone bridge stretching over a river in Liila's site of Permet.

I promise I will update again soon!