Cock-a-doodle-doo……. No prizes for guessing what chuffing time I woke this morning??? Yes – that’s right – 6am!! An unearthly hour…. This time, until recently - about 12hours ago in fact – I didn’t know existed.

Thankfully, I went back to sleep, and slept until I was, well… fashionably late for youth church. Nice. I was kind of thrown into the deep-end a little today. The leaders were having a meeting, so they just said to me ‘make sure the kids behave’, and then closed the door. Erm…. Ok…. I know the words for ‘don’t touch’ and ‘I don’t understand’….. Thank goodness Genci turned up.

Genci then asked to play some guitar!! Given that my chord vocabulary is as awful as my Albanian…. It wasn’t an easy task.

At lunch today, I was asked if I slept ok. I dropped into the conversation about my aforementioned encounter with the cockerel, and my host – Liri – replied ‘Don’t worry – we will cut its head off’. A slight unnecessary overreaction, but I would sleep much better!! This afternoon, I had the opportunity to visit the Cuka – the Gypsy community near to Sarande. On my arrival, I was greeted by one of the girls, Christina, who recognized me instantly, shouting ‘Sioni’!!! This is now my new Albanian name apparently. Superb.

The church here in Sarande supports the Gypsy community in many ways. One of those ways is by once in while providing them food (ham and cheese rolls, which looked fantastic. The thought of them is making me hungry!). These rolls are given to those attending schooling in the area, provided by a charity called ‘The Lydia Foundation’.