Currently I'm in PST - which is pre-service training, so there aren't many fun and interesting things to write about. This weekend however, we set off to different locations around the country to meet with a current PCV. I went to Durres, which is an ancient port city, aka the beach. It really isn't warm enough to go to the beach, but it's the 2nd largest city in Albania, and I was looking forward to getting out of the small town for a bit and into a big city.
It has rained almost non-stop since we've gotten here. The first day we went on a tour of the archaeological museum, which was filled with artifacts that have been found here in Durres. We also saw the ruins of a marketplace in the center of town and and amphitheater, which is proposed to be the most endangered ancient site.
The next day we went out for Pizza - my first of many in Albania, I'm told. We then went to a really fancy coffee place where the prices were 3x the normal. Normal is 50 Leke, and these were 150 Leke - at 130 Leke to $1, that's highway robbery. I didn't get a drink, just took some photos of the others and theirs.
After that we went to watch a Roma band play some classical music - they were practicing for their performance at the Model UN, which will be held in Durres next week. They were quite good.
Then we made our ways back to the same place we had lunch to have dinner with some other volunteers and their visitors from my group. While we were in the restaurant, the brute force of the storm that had been peeing down on us all day hit with force. The down pours were peppered (or salted) with pea-sized hail and continued until we gave up on it giving up and left in the flooded streets. The streets continued to flood even more the closer we got to my hosts apartment, except one random dry street, and we hit water that was at times knee deep on the sidewalk. It was not fun, but the worst experiences are the best stories.
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