At the end of October we attended a Language Refresher in Pogradec, a small community on the edge of Lake Ohrid and near the Macedonian border.

The primary purpose of these three days was to work on language. However, since gathering all the volunteers together is a challenging operation, this time is also used to have various committee meetings and to see how others are settling into their new communities.

We got there early on the first day and had time to wander around the city. Lake Ohrid is the deepest and oldest lake in the Balkans and was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1979. The lake is nice, but like much of this country, the pollution is starting to impact the health of ecosystem. Because over 50% of the inflow to the lake is freshwater springs, the lake does not appear to be receiving the full impact of the development around it. The lake is known for a fish called the Koran which some claim is found only here and others claim it exists in 2 other lakes. In either case, in the wild it has been over-fished, so most of the restaurants serve farm-raised fish. It is like a freshwater salmon at least that is what it tastes like to us.

In our free time we explored the city, met up with other volunteers and participated in committee meetings. It was a very busy time as we both are on committees. Carol is on the Gender Development and Tourism and Criss is on the IT committee and Tourism committee. There is never enough free time to do everything that needs to be done at these events and many activities were double scheduled. The day started at 9:00am and often had evening programs that ran until 8:00 or 9:00pm. So at some point, we just decided we could not do it all.

The last night of the seminar was celebrated as Halloween. Many of the volunteers dressed up in costumes and went out. The language teachers seemed to enjoy this touch of Americana as they dressed up and went out with some of the volunteers. No, Carol and Criss took a few pictures and called it a night.