and the beat goes on...

now what was i saying?
Oh yeah, my visit to small town Shqiperi (Albania). I had to abandon my previous post because I got a call that the bus was waiting for us. Let the journey begin.

I am in Krutje, a small town near Fier if you want to find it on the map or if you are familiar with Albanian geography.

I am visiting Mat, a current volunteer. He runs a telecommunications co-op, which is convenient because I have private access to the only internet connection in the area. Score!

Krutje is nice. The people are really friendly. We visited an Orthodox church built in the 1300's. The interior still had most of the original frescoes. Again, Score! There's not too much to do here but there are two different places with ping-pong tables, and they're in better shape than Nick's luckily. What else would I need? In fact, we're suppose to go play some ping-pong after this. Good thing I stepped up my game. And I was worried that they wouldn't have ping pong at all. Did I mention that I am the undefeated champ in my training town of Peqin (Pay-cheen)? And loser pays so I'm loving it.

As far as PC stuff goes, the language is progressing. We learned how to do plurals of definite and indefinite nouns in the nomative case. Did you follow that? No? Me either :) Basically, in Albanian, a noun can have six different endings. Yeah, good times. Oh and we still haven't learned past tense. Jealous? I've decided to create my own country and in my language, I will have gender-nuetral words and verbs that don't need to be conjugated. I will keep the whole the noun comes before the adjective thing cuz that makes sense.
Next week, I think we learn where our permanent sites will be. I'm a little nervous. I REALLY don't want to be in the north. I like it hot. There's a rumor that they are trying to place more of us in the north and rural areas. I know I said I'd go anywhere but I meant anywhere that had good internet and cafes and a cinema. Oh and I need to be within an hour of the beach. Is that too much too ask???

I had first experience with traveling in Alb. the road was narrow and decently paved. still it took over three hours to go what was prolly 75 miles. and the kicker? we were traveling on main roads. OMG.

all right, ping pong is calling my name.

holla
james