Well – I haven’t written for a while. My apologies for that. I’ve been busy, and hiding from the rain!!

To those of you who are thinking that I’ve probably got a tan by now, and that the weather is always wonderful here (and i wouldn’t blame you for thinking that – i have been praising the weather a lot) I can definitely refute that rumour. For the past two evenings, we have had horrendous storms!! We’ve had wind, rain and thunder!! Its been atrocious weather. Definitely doesn’t help your sleeping patterns either.

Life in Sarande has been plodding along really. I went to church on Sunday twice, and both times had English sermons… The first was preached by Jeff, who spoke about the consequences of sin, and the urgency to commit your life to God. The second was by Richard, who spoke about his recent trip to Tirana, when he attended a day conference on ‘trafficking’. He told of horrific examples of women and children who have been taken from their homes all over eastern Europe for sexual exploitation in western Europe, including the UK. He challenged us by asking what would we do if someone who had been trafficked came to us for help. Would you be a Good Samaritan?

I have been very busy learning Albanian over the last few days, but the last two lessons have totally blown my mind…. Did you know that Albanian has 9 past tenses? Two of which doesn’t even exist in English!! It’s driving me crazy!! And they’re only verbs. The nouns all change their ending, depending on who’s article they are, and whether they are plural or not. And don’t get me started on the male female… Depending on whether the article is male or female, the endings change again!! Its nuts!!

I went to have dinner with Richard (a missionary here) and his wife on Tuesday. Food was delicious, especially the bread and butter pudding we had for desert. I couldn’t help having seconds! Richard and I then went to a very nice bar showing the champions league footy. Once again, I can’t believe that Manchester United lost!! Rubbish. We kind of watched two games….. There was a huge thunder storm happening at the time, so each time the tv signal got a bit dodgy, they changed the channel. I found this quite annoying, but no-one else seemed to care. Part of the life here, I guess.

A group of us came together yesterday to translate some church songs into Albanian. An easy task, you would think. Hmmm…. Try fitting the words buzëqeshur or pandryshueshëm into a song… Its not easy!!

I was going to go to Tirana for the weekend, but I won’t be going any longer – there’s no room in the makina(car, but car is a rude word here!!). So, it’s a huge shame that I will be missing out on another 7 hour journey!! Ha ha…. Not!!

I will leave you with my trip to the seaside the other day with the kids. Top left are Elda and Joni showing me what they won in a packet of crisps (with Sarah in the background). Top right are Elda and Alma, having a right laugh, although I'm not quite sure what they were laughing at!! :o)Bottom left is a banana plan we came across on the beach. Finally, I've included a photo of the storm clouds which were over Corfu island at the time, but eventually arrived early that evening.