So this past week was my eighth week here in Albania. I only have a week and a half left of training. This up coming week is really busy. We have a big community day project in my village of Pajove on Wednesday and I have my language assessment on Thursday. That is when I find out how good (or bad) by Shqip really is. So it is really big week for me.
This past week was also extremely busy! On Saturday May 8th to Sunday May 9th, my group of volunteers went on a camping trip in the nearby town. We don’t have tents so we just slept out under the stars. To get to the site we had to hike up the huge mountain. My group decided to not take long and easy approach to getting up the mountain, but the more direct and straight up approach. It did only take us about 10 minutes to get to the top, but I was exhausted by the time we reached it. It was really steep.
Once we got up there, we explored the old communist underground bunkers, which were situated on the top. Here is a short history note for those of you who don’t know much about Albanian history: from the 1940s to the early 1990s, Albania was a communist country, however they were not allies with the other communist countries of the world. It was ruled by a man named Enver Hoxha, who ruled the country until the mid 1980s. He was extremely concerned about invasions, so he built almost 750,000 bunkers throughout Albania. Most of them still exist. It was a couple of those bunkers that we explored. It was pretty interesting. They were in fairly good shape for being as old as they are. They are made of concrete and metal rods.
Afterward, we played American football. Some people played guitar and most of us just talked and relaxed. It was a really fun and a nice break from the usual routine.
No comments:
Post a Comment