My Placementt... Drumroll....

I found out where I will be working and living for the next 2 years. Don’t you want to know….

The city is called Vlore. It is the 2nd biggest port (read: beach) in Albania. It has a population of 112,000 and is in the southern (read: warmer) part of the country. You kinda can’t beat that. The best part is that I’ll be both working to help establish a new branch of an recognized environmental NGO that helps citizens in the developing world get involved in decisions regarding their environment and connected to Bashkia (municipality) working on the mandated mapping. I also heard that one can buy tofu in Vlore for pretty cheap- is this the dream or what? The organization I’ll be working for is called Aarhus, named after the city in Denmark where the Aarhus Convention was signed (http://www.unece.org/env/pp/). I strongly recommend you look it up.

Of course, since I’m living on the beach, I mean port city, I expect to have tons of visitors so book your flight now! Remember, I’m allowed to have visitors after the first three months, so come after September 1st. Remember, if you're coming from America, feel free to bring any of the below. In fact, in that case, being as I currently make so little that I am not legally required to file a tax return, feel free to send any of the below so it gets her in time for my birthday (May 24th).
Workout cds, yoga mat, resistance bands, magazines, packages (not cans) of tuna (the kind without the water), brown sugar, brown flour (oddly enough the later two are completely unavailable here), spicy or dejon mustard or mustard seeds, ketchup, pie crust, foot warmers (the kind you put in ski boots), sharpies or any other permanent marker, oatmeal for cooking, chocolate chips, nail files, dental floss, an old working but worthless laptop for my host sister to practice/learn typing on.
Other exciting news today includes Rina’s (my host sister) birthday. She officially turned 17 today. We celebrated with a cake and some friends came over. That’s about it. It was actually a bit sad. I thought there would be more of a party, but Rina was already cooking by the time I got home and put her candles in her own cake she had bought herself. I would have done it had I known they had candles. I did sing to her which was probably more punishment than reward. I also need to buy her a present, so if you have any suggestions for a 17 year old post them, please.
We met with a few Ngo/ International Aid Agency representatives, including a rep from World Vision, UNDP , Women’s Center, and SNV. SNV is the Swedish equivalent to USAID and had developed a pretty extensive and through tourism action plan for Albania. IT is in the 2nd year of working on the plan and I think it will truly help Albania’s economy, as it is such a beautiful country with so many assets.

The rest of the day was as good as it could have been given the circumstances (we were pretty a anxious to find out where and who we were going to live with for the next 2 years). As we got closer and closer to 4pm no one wanted to talk. We all held our breaths and prayed for the best. We were handed our envelopes and ripped them open, turned to the person next to us to ask which town we never heard of they were going to, walked to the map and stuck a picture of ourselves on our town. It was quite the scene.

Got back to town, and met some village boys on the road. They started talking to me, so I figured I should talk to them. Somehow, after we exchanged names and realized we couldn’t really have a conversation else (there were about 7 of them and one of me) we ended up racing up the second hill. Now, at the end of the second hill, near the pseudo cement factory (is it a factory or not?) at the corner of the long road and my road there is a pretty vicious loud dog. He was in full force and the kids asked me about it. I told them I don’t like dogs which they understood. I already like them more than American boys. They continued down to long road, but pointed down my street to a stray and yelled for me to watch out. We parted ways and but I was prepared for the stray and thanked the boys for their help.