last saturday in Albania!

so we are an week on from my last update, and an lot has happened again.

i find it very strange to find that i am planning my summer camps in the UK which start this time next week; i still cant get over that i am in a different country to where i will be helping lead camps. so the planning is going well through emails, luckily i can still be involved due to the awesome technology that the Internet.

so it comes to this week, and we have been from one style of living to another through our experiences.

we started off last sunday with having an ill house, so it was me alone who took myself off to church and sat all alone while i didn't understand a word that was going on. i was then invited to lunch and off to the beach with one of the missionary families that have recently moved out here.

monday brought me up nice and early to go with besi out to an village next to sukth to visit one of the families that besi works with through his 'missions without borders' and i got the first glimpse of what it means to live truly rural Albanian. it was interesting place to see and also then to meet one of the local bar owners who helped them run summer camps last year in the village.

woke tuesday to no reply about what CEF had in mind for us to do that day. as we were getting up we then had two forms of information of ideas for the day. josh and i choose different ones; josh went off to CEF and to help run 'targeted' good news clubs while i went off with some of the missionaries to the pool. we then were joined by josh as the invited kids didn't turn up for the club. we had an great day playing with the kids and encouraging them in water confidence and starting to teach one of them a bit more swimming. from there we had a few jobs in town and back for an nap.
sadly i was woken badly from my sleep too early to then head up to the stadium (yes, where Albanian have been seen training) however we were there because it is one of the spots where people 'hang out' during the evenings. we were starting to build relations with people for CEF and spent the evening face painting (well, josh was while i hung around and kinda chatted and then couldn't, silly language).

wednesday saw josh and i standing on the side of an motorway while we waited for an bus to take up north. we took and 4ish hour journey to some town near puke. then waited for a while and a dodgy car journey further up the mountains to the top of one. this was to be our home for the next 3nights.

during our time in the mountains we sat in many conversations completely out of what they are talking about. and as the time drew on the amount of raki consumed each day grew. it started at 6:30 one morning and today as we left it was 5:45. so that has to be an record that i wont be breaking in an while to start drinking for the day. raki is an homemade spirit that is usually of high percent. i managed 5 throughout the whole day before i decided to draw the line after 2 in an row.

we were staying with an local who lived in sukth but had gone up to this land to work it for 2weeks. ok, well it was one of besi's uncles who took us with him back to his land up north. the forests of Albania was where we were; yes, i even say an dog that looked just like an certain black dog from harry potter (so i am debating the existence of the real harry potter, lol) ok; but it made for some conversation with josh while we were in the middle of nowhere without an english speaker around.

we were back in the stigs, and it was awesome. ok, it couldn't be much longer as not being able to understand what was being said, and as besi came to join us last night and brought us back this morning. it was a real communist style house, and it was definitely something to actually think about. also the local town, was just a communist style flats complex, just like everywhere.

it is making me think about what it was like to have been living in communist times, and it is hard to really figure it out. i still really cannot image it.