Our time in the wilderness...

Our team just got back this evening from our excursion up into the mountains. The camp here owns some land up in the mountains about an hour away from the main site, and up some awesomely bumpy logging roads, and so we spent most of this week there. When we got there, it was just a slanted sort of meadow, as well as just being Megan, Lisa and myself (Kurt and Kyla were sick--They're better now!), and our first act of business was to clear a 12 feet by 20 feet area to place an American army tent (it still belongs to them). It's really cool to think back to what the place was when we got there, and how it is when we left it. We brought some Albanians with us who worked on plumbing the whole time; They diverted a spring running out of the mountain through hoses to bring running water to the camp. When we left, there was a sink with three basins all hooked up, two bathrooms with flushing toilets, and a shower, which was soon to have heated water. The team ourselves leveled and cleared a lot of ground, set up a few big tents, and a lot of littler tents, as well as a volleyball court.

Now we're all back though, sporting some new blisters, some pretty big bug bites, and lots of scratches. It was pretty nice having dinner made for us tonight and set in front of us to eat, instead of making our own, but we had a really good time. At night we'd hike up the mountain a bit above our meadow and sit on a ledge to watch the sunset, and each day we had a shepherd come through our meadow. The sound of the bells on their necks is really the most soothing sound ever. We also made friends with one of his dogs over our stay as well, but this morning she betrayed us and brought the rest to ransack our food. We ended up eating apple sauce, crackers and watermelon for lunch. One of the days we hiked down the mountain out to a nearby lake, which was a lot of fun. It was about a 30 minute hike both ways, and some rocky, hilly terain, but that made the water feel all the much better!

Anyways, that's our week. We enjoyed it a lot, but I think that everyone is happy to be back. It's crazy to think that we only have one more camp left here in Erseke, and then we'll be back in Tirana for a few days before we head home. This next week will be more Jr. Highers, which is good because they're a fun age to work with. Hope everything is going well at home, and I suppose we'll see you all fairly soon!