Saturday, April 18, 2009

The City of 1,000 Windows

Friday was torture. The Peace Corps staff waited until the very last second of our training day to give us our site placements for the next two years. At 4:00pm, the 3 technical heads stood at the front of our conference room waiting to give us our assignments. After what seemed like the longest announcement of my life, Darina- the health coordinator, gave each of us a large white envelope full of info about our site and also a picture of ourselves. After finding out where we were going, we all taped our pictures to a giant map of Albania so we could visualize where we were going to be.

Me, personally.... I'm going to..... BERAT!!!!! (and I'm SOOO very excited about it!)
Feel free to google it or check out the 2 pictures I have of the city so far. Berat is located in Central Southern Albania and is a fairly large town with a population of 65,000. It is well known for the castle (see picture) and for the name - city of 1000 windows (see picture again). I'll be replacing a volunteer from group 10 who leaves in June when I move to my new home. I will NOT be with anyone else from my group (#12), but there is currently a TEFL Volunteer there from Group 11 (she's been there for a year). I do have a lot of friends in my group close by, so I'm okay with being somewhat alone. In 4 weeks, I will meet my Albanian counterpart...the person I will work with on projects for the next two years. She is from Berat and works for the Public Health Institute in the city. After a 2 day conference with her, I will go visit my site for 4 days and get to know the town, MAYBE see my future apartment, and get to meet some people!!
I think everyone was fairly content with their placements and I'm am ecstatic. GOOGLE BERAT... It is BEAUTIFUL! (This means you should all attempt to come visit me soon!)
More soon!
love, Kate


Pic of the 1000 windows from the top of the mountain
The Castle in Berat!
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2 comments:

  1. amyymaApril 18, 2009 at 12:35 PM

    it looks amazing! i love all of the buildings set on the side of the mountain. i couldnt tell from the pictures but does it extend down into a valley? im so excited, i think im going to go look at some more pictures!

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  2. c. schedelApril 19, 2009 at 7:59 PM

    weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! sounds good. It's weird that you will be without anyone from your #12 group, but I am happy that you are excited about the place you will be. It's crazy looking, in a good way. Seems pretty densely populated, which means you might be more likely to pick up the language and traditions, and stuff a little quicker than if you were in a small place. We miss you!

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