Week 10

I started the week meeting my counterpart Fitore. She will be the person I work with in Berat. I then got an orientation trip to Tirana. It was very hot and instead of wanting to see the city I craved air conditioning. The city is similar to a city in the US and will be a place to go when I need some normalcy. The next day I went to Berat. I went to the school where I will be working and met some of the teachers. School will be out when I get there so summer projects will be difficult to find. Lauren, the volunteer coming with me, will work with the municipality and I might find something to work with her on. Lauren has an awesome apt and I will probably spend most of my time there. There seem to be some major difficulties with my place. First, it is under construction but they say it will be done when I get there. Second, it is about an hour walk to the school where I will work. Third, it is the size of a shoebox. I will be discussing the problems and trying to find a solution this week with the staff. Saturday we hiked up to the castle and you can see it in one of the pics. Berat was built 2400 years ago as I have been told many times and is one of the hottest places in the summer. We were shown some cafes with air conditioning and generators because of the frequent power outages. My language test is this week and that is about all. I don’t have anything exciting coming up but the countdown has started. 10 more days of training. One of the pics is Lauren and a British guy living in Berat. The rest are of Berat.