Hello from sunny Saranda!

Wow, have we been busy. Tuesday after the orphanage party we called Bethany to arrange our drive down to Saranda that they said they would do for us. But they changed their minds about that so Fredi feeling bad about us missing our chance to take our trip quickly saved the day and arranged for Mandi, a friend to drive us. The only thing was that we had to get to Tirana that same day! So we packed up and cleaned and hoped in a taxi and showed up in Tirana about seven that same night. We stayed at our boggy friends Cydil’s place again. This quite frankly was WONDERFUL! Then early the next morning we were on the road. We have been enjoying Saranda very much; I love the fact that it has more than 310 sunny days a year! It has been in the 70’s everyday and the town sits right on a bay, it’s beautiful. I have not been able to use my computer though, we do have an Internet café right next to our hotel, but it’s so slow that I can only get Skype to work, and it was closed for the New Year. Speaking of New Years, here in Albania well it’s huge, New Years’ Eve is crazy, Saranda is built into the side of a mountain and it’s mostly condo buildings, but that does not stop people from blowing off thousands and thousands of fireworks! Some off the balconies, but mostly from the street, and since we are on the 4th floor we had the pleasure of them blowing off right about face level! It’s crazy, easily the most dangerous thing I have seen them do yet and thats saying something! But it was fun. Then New Years Day EVERYTHING is closed so we found one little café that was open and the guy took pity on us and made us a few sandwiches I have no idea what was on them but whatever, we were starving and they where good. We have a few more days here and we hope to take in few sites on Monday, then head back to Tirana on Tuesday, my mom leaves on Thursday and that is the last day of the 15 day waiting period, so on Friday we can start the paperwork to come HOME!!!


So far we like Saranda very much!

The view from our hotel room, that the Greek island of Corfu, but Mariada isn't allowed to go without a Visa, so we'll stay put.

This doesn't do it justice, but it's an idea!