On Monday I got up early and headed for Tirana (the capital of Albania). Some current volunteers gave us, trainees, a tour of Tirana. We learned were the Peace Corps office was and the Embassy. Then we learned where the major furgon and bus stops were in the city. We found some of the international restaurant locations. I had enchiladas for lunch. It was probably the best part of the day. It might not have been up to my standards had I been in the US, but here they were delicious.
Tirana is a very busy and hectic city. There are cars everywhere. There are stoplights and cross signals, but you still need to look both ways because cars do not always stop at the lights. There are a lot of times you just have to chance it and run. It is a pretty easy to get around though. The streets are pretty big and are laid out in an understandable pattern. With that said, I am not sure if I could get back to the PC office without a bit of a reminder of where it is. After our tour of Tirana, we headed for Durres for our counterpart conference.
In Durres (a coastal city), we had our counterpart conference for a couple of days. This is where we meet our Albanian counterpart. The PC sets you up with a person from your host country in your sector. My counterpart is the high school English teacher in Fushe-Arrez. Her name is Valbona. She is already an amazing teacher. She puts a lot of time and effort into her work. She has many classes and then in the afternoon she also teaches at a private language school in town. At the private school she teaches people of all ages who want to learn English. At the conference we went through the process of what it means to be a counterpart and a volunteer. We also had time to get to know our counterpart. We stayed in Durres for only one night and on Tuesday afternoon I left with my counterpart and her husband for Fushe-Arrez. It was a four hour trip through some winding mountain roads.
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