Experience Albania: Travel, Pictures, History, Culture

I swear in as an official Peace Corps volunteer in about a week and a half. It’s hard to imagine that training, 12 intense months of adjustments, changes, ups and downs will wrap up and become part of the new and different “Two Year Assignment” chapter. I’m excited, slightly nervous … I, along with another Minnesotan volunteer will be delivering a five minute speech on behalf of our entire group of 40 volunteers. It will be an awesome day, full of wanting to move on, yet hesitant to leave the people and places that have become engrained into our lives for the past three months.
But this new address of mine is amazing. I just spent a week in Berat, meeting my new host family, counterpart (the teacher I’ll be working with directly), colleagues, students, city officials, etc. After a lot of coffees and meetings, I feel well connected, welcomed, and supported. My counterpart is amazing; well respected throughout the community, energetic, focussed, and full of ideas.
My host family is so great. I’ve been blessed twice with a great living situation. Two grandparents, host mom, host sister, and host brother (father lives and works in Italy) - friendly, hospitable, and fun. I feel like a part of their family after one week.

Here is a photo of my host mom and sister and I with some neighbor friends. Starting with me and following counter clockwise: Anila, my host mom; Estila, my host sister; two daughters and their mother, Alma, who live right across from my family.
Moving on to my new views …

The new Orthodox church being built in the center of town. It is gorgeous and slowly but surely coming together. There are also several mosques throughout town.
One of my new views:

Mount Tomorri, which is the mountain I admired all this time from Belsh. Now it’s in my backyard! It’s climbable and home to Albania’s largest national park. I plan to climb it at some point, which several PCV’s have done before.

Standing above the Ossum River, on one of the two bridges that connects the two sides of Berat. Here I am with the famous Mangalem neighborhood in the background:
Up the road across the river, Mangalem neighborhood again. This is a great walking road that gives you the view of Mount Tomorri that I showed before. Thank goodness I'll have more opportunities and leeway to exercise for the next two years in Berat.

The castle in Berat is awesome - takes a good hike to reach it, but the hike gives you a great panoramic view and I love the exercise and the fact that my walking around for fun is normal!

The City Hall in Berat sponsored a first ever “Tourism Day” on Sunday. There was music, some contests and a lot of vendors selling their goods up at the castle. It ended up raining which lead to a very long walk home, but all-in-all a good adventure.

The view from the top: