It has been a busy month for us as we returned from our week visit in Durres, the final two weeks of training consumed our time. One week was presented in a university course format where you choose from the 3 or 4 class offerings for each time slot. Language training was offered in each session The flexibility of this format was appreciated, but after 40 hours of sitting in a metal folding chair, we were ready for the weekend. Probably the high and low of the week was the language evaluation and we will let you decided who had the high and who had the low. It is sufficient to say while everyone is offered the opportunity to retain language tutoring, Criss is required to have tutoring.

While anxious to get to our permanent assignments, our final week in Peqin brought moments of sadness as we visited our favorite coffee bars for the last time and said good-bye to associates with whom we had spent the past 3 months. On Friday of our final week was the swearing in and our status changed from Peace Corp Trainee to Peace Corp Volunteer. Now, we knew this was a big deal because on Thursday night as we walked with Merita to see her mother, we were stopped at nearly every other house, offered coffee and heard people comment on the ceremony and how impressive it was that the president of Albania and the ambassador to the US were both going to be present

Our final trial was to get to our work site We were lucky as it was only an hour bus ride to Durres. Some volunteers had to travel as much as 5 – 6 hours. We had taken one duffle, 2 water filters, large bag of books and manuals and left them in Durres, so we only had 2 travel bags, 1 duffel and 2 small book bags. But with the temperature at 90+, it was going to be challenging. On Sat morning, we got up and went down to the fast food shop and asked Naim if he would take our bags from the house to the bus stop. At least that is what we believe we asked for. Yes, give him a call around 11:30 when we are ready. So at 11:00 he calls us and asks if we are ready. It is an hour before the bus arrives, but we decided it would be better to sit in the shade than carry our bags. He arrived, loaded the car and off we went, right by the bus stop to the shop to say goodbye to Merita. Back in the car and not to the bus stop, but to Durres. He dropped us off in front of our new host family’s apartment and off he went. Maybe both of us need language tutoring.

We are constantly amazed at the generosity of the people here. While we don’t always know what is going on, understand what is going on, or get what we asked for, we are treated well and people go out of their way to try and meet or requests or what they think our requests are.