Nje pushim të gjatë

Things not to do on a camping trip

Well that was a long break now wasn’t it? You can blame part of my absence on Albanian’s natural tendency to eat technology as though it was a bowl of Chexmix at a frat party, but the rest of the blame is squarely on my shoulders. Sorry about that. I won’t promise that something like this won’t happen again but I’ll harder to keep my breaks a bit shorter from now on.

So what the hell has been going on with me since we talked last? I don’t have working internet at the moment so I can’t check where I left off before so I’ll start way back in August because that’s bound to be near where I started getting lazy. August started off with me going to Pogradec and then heading off with of group of volunteers and high school aged Albanians to go camping as an Outdoor Ambassadors activity. I was pretty excited about going on this trip because I have dreams of opening my own branch of OA in Erseke (I’m thinking in the spring sometime).

I had never been to Pogradec before but I’d been through it many times because the road to Erseke runs through it. It’s a really well put together city on the edge of lake Ohrid (the deepest in the Balkans they say). It has a great lake front area where you can take a relaxing stroll, grab a coffee, watch local artists work on their latest endeavors, or rent a paddle boat and go out on the lake. As you can imagine it is pretty popular during the summer.  There are some really nice restaurants in that area of town as well. I kind of fell in love with that place as soon as I got there. I think it’s got to do with me growing up by the Savannah River and the Atlantic Ocean; I’ve caught myself missing the smell of saltwater in the air and the sound of sound of waves moving.

Anyway that night was really fun and everything went pretty well until the next morning. 

I met a girl in Matt and Brad’s OA group who had been accept to a university in Oregon and was going to be leaving for America in the next month or so. We got along really well while we were waiting for the bus, and once it arrived and our group began piling in, we decided to sit next to each other and continue or discussion. 

Everything was going well until my brain and my stomach decided that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to my surroundings. I causally looked up and peered out the window only to have nausea grab me as though it was the monster in the garbage compacter in the Death Star.  It didn’t matter that we were only 10 minutes away from our destination nor did I have enough warning to grab a plastic bag. So I puked all over myself. It was one of the most thoroughly disgusting situations I ever been in. I was pretty frakking embarrassed but everyone was cool about it. I was really glad I had packed extra clothes and I ended up stripping right there on the side of the road. Luckily there was a river close by that I could wash my stuff in.

The rest of the camping trip was fun but super exhausting. I managed to puke all over my snacks and bottles of water so I ended up writing them off as a lost cause when I got back on the bus after my initial clean up. So after becoming massively dehydrated from ralphing on the bus I ended up walking about two or three miles until we found our camp sight. After resting for a bit and leaching water and snacks off of people I helped gather firewood. At dinner, I wrapped my stuff up with too much foil so much of my food wasn’t really edible. Also, I was a dumbass who thought that he wouldn’t need a sleeping bag because of course it doesn’t get cold in August. So guess who didn’t get more than one hour of uninterrupted sleep because he was freezing his ass off?  This guy. The final blow to my ego came when I boarded the bus the next morning. It still reeked from the previous day’s events.

Overall my trip to Pogradec was a lot of fun but I’d never been so exhausted before. As soon as I got to Erseka I fell on my couch bed and slept for 10 hours or so.