Back to the Chaos of Tirana:

We are thankful for all our family and friends that have been so good to us while we were state side. The time flew by, and we are thankful for all the support that you have given and continue to give us.

Below is a little glimpse of our first morning back in Albania; I trust that you will enjoy it!


Well we made back to Albania Tuesday May 15th. Currently we are writing this blog entry without any Internet so who knows when this will be posted, hopefully tomorrow (May 17).

Currently we are getting the house back to normal around here. Today (Tuesday, May 16th) was utter chaos around here. It started at 8:00am this morning with the pounding of tools on the floor in our upstairs neighbors' bathroom. While we were gone they had developed a leak that has now soaked through our hallway ceiling. Because of that leak our hallway lights don’t work, in fact when you try to switch them on you blow the entire house worth of fuses.

At about 9:00am a plumber came over to fix another leak, except this leak was from the dishwasher pipe that runs under the sink. Well those pipes were covered by concrete, yes that’s right concrete, so the plumber proceeded to take a pick ax of sorts and break the concrete wall that covered the pipes. After breaking most of the wall under the sink, he found the leak. He took out the old pipes only to find out that the new pipes didn’t fit, so what did he do? Go down to his truck and get the right piece…well if he had a truck maybe he would do that, but he didn’t, instead of a truck with different size pieces he had a blow torch, yes that’s right a blow torch that he lit using a cigarette lighter and lit his propane torch. At this point the flame was at least three feet long and it was sitting on the kitchen floor with no one holding it or for that matter even watching it. The plumber had gone back under the sink to do something, I looked at Kreshnik and Arbi (the son of our landlord), they seemed to not notice the three feet flame on the floor, well I guess they noticed but didn’t pay much attention to it, so I proceeded not pay much attention to either, I mean come on this was Albania and three Albanians didn’t care about the thing, and for that very reason I assumed it was safe.
Well you might be asking what was he doing with the three-foot flame? Since he didn’t have a truck of parts that were different sizes, he just decided (or perhaps this is how they always do it) to take the part that was too big and well, melt it down to size. Don’t ask…

Finally at 9:30am the electrician came to fix an outlet in our bathroom that melted so bad our first night back it had oozed some plastic out. The outlet is for the dryer and the water heater, and apparently the dryer gets to hot for the extension cord that we use and it melted.

Enjoy some picutres...