Albania, Elbasan, Paper etc.

So we have officially been in Paper, a small village about a 15 minute drive from Elbasan, for two weeks now. It finally feels like we are making some progress with the language and our host family. Agron, our host father, has consistently been our best resource for Shqip (Albanian) at home but recently Arisa, our 13 year old host sister has opened up and we have been trying to teach her some English. We have mainly focused on greetings and colors for now but she is a very good student and will give us small English phrases when we least expect them. Mariglen, our 10 year old host brother, is still shy and just stares blankly at us when we mis-conjugate a verb but we have been playing with him and have found that a soccer ball has been a successful way to bring him out of his shell. Violsa, our host mom, has also been talking more now that we have a little more language under our belts, she is extremely nice and an excellent cook, and Terry has the chickens working over time to make enough eggs for breakfast and dinner, her cooking skills also mean that there has been no weight loss in Albania, so far. Tomorrow we head north-west for a volunteer visit to Lezhe. We are excited to see a different part of Albania and are hoping for a little more connection to the outside world. There is no Internet cafe in Paper and our days in Elbasan are full with other activities. Please feel free to comment on our blog or shoot us an E-mail and we will try to respond as quickly as possible depending on when we get back to an Internet cafe. We also hope to get pictures up of this beautiful country as soon as we have Internet access on a personal computer, as many of the PCs in the cafes have viruses that we do not want to transfer. We hope that all is well in the ShBA (Shqip for USA).