Gearing up for summer vacation part 2. . .

Normally, taking off for a few weeks in the summer is no problem as not much work really gets done in the months of July and August anyway since most of the Albanians are off on vacation too. But in the World Vision office that I am working with, we have a lot to do, mostly because there was not a lot to do in May and June. We finished the main product of the past year- the Project Design Document (PDD) a detailed plan for the projects for the next three years- at the end of April and May and June were spent mostly in the process of hiring new staff. Only two of the four staff members were kept on for this next phase and 5 more staff members were hired. So now that the staff is complete, we have a lot to do to start implementing that big plan that we spent the last year working on.

The problem is of course, that I already had made plans to take a trip to Istanbul and Romania with a few other volunteers. It was originally planned for the end of August but was moved up due to various schedule conflicts. I almost canceled the trip (in fact I did cancel the trip and then uncanceled the trip), because this is just not that good of a time to go. But it is a better time to go than later when we are likely to have even more to do in the office, not to mention side projects that will really get going again when school starts like MUN and OA. Maybe I'm alone in this and no other PCVs end up with this dilema, but finding a balance between travel, vacationing and staying in site can be hard. I travel much, MUCH more than the average Albanian. Most of my friends and coworkers have not been to many places in their own country besides Tirana and maybe to Durres or Vlora for the beach in the summer. That being said, I generally feel justified with most of my travel. I usually take trips for work/training/meetings and will occasionally add a few days (the weekend) for fun (like my recent trip to the beach). I also feel justified in taking some vacation time and going out of the country. When else will I have the chance to take an overnight bus ride (rather than a plane trip) to Istanbul? Part of the great thing about being in a country like Albania is that it is right in the middle of a great region of the world with easy access to Greece, Italy, Turkey, Macedonia, Croatia etc.

But even with all this, I feel a little bit guilty about leaving right now. I know that if I were here for the next two weeks, I would have things to do, which has not always been the case over the past year (especially over the past two months when the office was basically closed). It's just too bad that I couldn't take this trip last August when I really didn't have anything to do yet . . . Oh well, anyway, I'm taking the trip and I'm going to have a great time and it will all be here when I get back . . .

First stop- Portillo in Macedonia! Can't wait to see you Jen!