Pogradec, part II

Seeing as how Friday's blog post was a bit- shall we say- brief, I thought that I would try to take a minute to elaborate on the news.

After I complete pre-service training, I will be moving to Pogradec, Albania, where I will be living and working until June 2012. Pogradec (pronounced Po-grah-dets) is located in southeastern Albania. The center of the city is only 5 km away from the Macedonian border. It is home to about 35,000 people-- small by American standards, but a major city by Albanian standards. It is located along the shores of Lake Ohrid, a huge (138 square miles), deep (mean depth: 508 ft!), and crystal clear lake located high in the Balkan Mountains. It is a very popular tourist destination, especially in the summer.

While I am there, I will be working for the municipal government. I will initially be placed in the Economic Department, but they told me that I can expect to become involved in projects with several different departments during my employment there.

I will have two site partners in Pogradec. One, named Connie, is a part of Group 12 and, has thus been living there for one year already. She is also a Community Development volunteer, but she works with a local NGO that acts against domestic violence. She is an older volunteer (she has children that are slightly older than I am) whose personal history is remarkably similar to my own mother's. She grew up in a small town in Iowa (my mom grew up in South Dakota) and then moved to Austin for many years for college and work. Austin! Well, Austin and Cedar Park for all of you that may know the difference. My other site partner is a fellow group 13-er named Stacy. Stacy is a health volunteer from Denver who was going to school up in DC for the last couple years. She has all those qualities that you would want in a site partner-- fun, easy to talk to, hard worker, etc. All in all, I am very excited about my future site family.

So that's Pogradec in a nutshell. If you had asked me last summer where I expected to be living if I was in the Peace Corps in a year, I think that "a resort town next to a beautiful Alpine lake" would have been on my list right around "Canada." I am sure that I will have plenty of challenges, but really, I feel pretty lucky. Plush Corps, I think the industry term is. And yes, you should definitely visit.

Pictures! Look at them!
http://www.pogradec.info/pgallery_s/index.htm