So we are finally back….back home …. back to our silly bedroom behind the silly computer room…and it is wonderful. I am ready for the best of all vacations now, the one where you sit in your room and don’t move for several weeks.
Albania…is….. absolutely gorgeous! those communist stricken, still recovering from 600 years of dictatorship people are sitting on the biggest tourist gold mine I think I’ve ever seen. We had camp in a place called Llogara (i think can’t be sure of the spelling because albanian definetly still escapes me as far as that goes…besides the other more than 20 words I learned there ways it escapes me)…Llogara is a set of mountains on the neck of a peninsula that sticks out into the Adriatic sea or the Ionian…it gets kind of fuzzy right around there which sea it is. Anyway, so this mountain is a heavily wooded, fern glade enchanted, breathe of cedar filled beauty between rocky cliffs covered with sage and thyme that look out and down onto a sparkling blue serene expanse that finds Corfu and Greece as it meets the horizon. Like I said gorgeous! the camp is in one of the valleys so to see the panorama you have to hike or drive out onto the mountain tops but the view of the mountains themselves is breathetaking.
The problem is that in Albania you really want to be able to be permanently near sighted. The things you see up close … like houses and tables and restaurants or bathrooms are not great….to which comment I have to add that I was expecting much worse. Albania is no worse off than the parts of Mexico I’ve been to which on the scale is not actually third world. I found out that the United States sends Peace Corp people there which makes me wonder if we send them to mexico which I didn’t think we did. don’t know. Any hoot.
so our three weeks or camp were best known … near Greece I remind you… for rain! It rained 3 days a week while we were there. Which was taken as proof by the people we were with that global warming was really impending upon us because they said it never rained more than 3 days a month the last 6 years they’ve done the camp. Which didn’t turn out too great for us because since it had rained so little before they really hadn’t worried about making camp water proof, rather they were worried about making it cool so … for example our out house had no roof! great idea if you don’t want the out house to get hot and stinky, bad idea if it’s poaring and you need to answer the call of nature.
So we were a little damp but over all it was a good experience. Kind of hard to talk about in a way. I don’t think I’ve processed the experience well enough to really know what I think. It’s been one of those trips that has kind of left me speechless as far as that goes. I know for sure that we were supposed to be there, why though I’m not really sure except that I hope we were an encouragement to those who needed encouraging and a light to those who needed light….I hope God reflected himself in us.
other comments: Albanian teenagers, which I think is a miss nomer I think it is just teenagers as a general rule, are difficult to get excited about anything. and I hereby give an official apology to all the people who tried to get me to do things and participate when I was 16 … you have my full sympathy now.
Roads in mountains can be very scary especially when there is a sea at the bottom of them.
oh and here is the albanian or shiepe ( I think ) that I learned;
Une jame Lauren. Une nuk flasse sheipe. Boscone. Hest. Natenamire. Mire Pafshim. Hiede. ti je maymun.
(translation: I’m Lauren. I don’t speak Albanian. Shut up. Be quiet. Good night. Good Bye. come. you are a monkey!)
(most of which I just wrote horribly wrong I know for any Albanian who may be reading this)
So I think I’m going to head toward bed now …. I’ll let matt write more and make the story of the last three weeks more full fledged.
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