Shijak and a long trip back to Fushe-Arrez

The morning after the Embassy party, I made my way to Shijak (a town between Tirana and the port city of Durres) to go to a game night at Libby’s house with some of the other Group 13 volunteers. Libby, Brad, Molly, and I spent the day relaxing, playing cards, and preparing some of the dishes for the potluck. Then around 6pm, the other volunteers arrived. We started to cook some more and by 9pm we had a feast. We had couscous with eggplant and cinnamon, a sushi salad, gazpacho, smoothies, brownies, ice cream, cake, potato salad, and bean dip. It was fantastic! A lot of this food we could not have made without some of the packages that that some of the volunteers received. It was so good! After dinner we played Cranium. When it came time to sleep we were all over. Some people slept on the patio, in the hallway, on couches, chairs, and in the middle of the living room floor. It was a crowded place, but it was so much fun!

The next day, Brad and I headed back to Fushe-Arrez. Brad is a volunteer in Pogredec, who was coming for a visit. We decided to go to Durres and catch a bus from Durres to Fushe-Arrez. I knew that there was a bus that went had the direct route, but I didn’t know when it left. So, we went to the bus station and asked around about the Fushe-Arrez bus. No one knew anything about it. (Just to let you know, I was right and there is a bus that does that route) After we didn’t get any positive responses, we got on a bus headed for Shkoder and the driver said he would drop us off where we could catch a bus headed for Fushe-Arrez. It ended up that the place that he would drop us off at was at a turn-off for another highway. We had to try and stop a bus headed in the direction of Fushe-Arrez. After about 45 minutes to an hour in the hot sun waiting for a bus to come that was headed in the right direction, we stopped a bus headed for Rreshen. I knew that I could get off at Rubik. From Rubik I we could catch one of the Tirana-FA buses and get home that way. We had a pleasant two-hour wait in Rubik with Leslie and then boarded the bus for FA. We finally arrived back home at 5pm. It was a long day. The rest of Brads visit we had coffee with the cleaning lady at my school and went on a short hike and just relaxed. It was a nice couple of days.