Champagne in a Bunker

Well first of all, today, well tomorrow, we “loose an hour” with day light savings time. So does that mean that since I went through day light savings time in the states and now going through it again in Albania that I just lost two hours of my life? Not cool. Well today was our first Saturday in Bishqem… well Pajove. We’re going to school this entire week because Bishqem is closed because it’s a holiday, kind of like their spring break. Everyone is starting to feel behind on the language but seriously, we’ve been here a week today… if we think about all that we’ve learned and been exposed to in a week… it’s more than I used to learn in semesters in college.

After tutoring some of us went on a hike after lunch. We went to visit Alex’s home that you literally have to hop on rocks through a creek to get to and noticed a guy standing on an unfinished house taking pictures. He struck up a conversation with us, turns out he is from Pajove but is now living in Italy and wanted to build a home for his family where he grew up. He was a very well traveled man, all over Europe, Asia, South America, and we think he was a photographer as well as some other profession. Anyways he showed us around his unfinished home and told us what each room was going to be, who was going to live there, etc. and when the tour was done he handed us a bottle of champagne. We took a few pictures and continued on our hike. We ended up in some bunkers that were built when Albania was a communist country and we shared the champagne there. In a year or two we plan to return to Pajove to visit the man and hopefully his finished home and bring him a bottle of champagne to return the favor.