Exhausted but settled in

After 30 hours of travel, door to door, we're finally in Erseke, Albania, and settling into our new home. I won't bore you with all the details of the trip, but a few things that will stick with me:

* The tortuous lack of leg room on United -- Seriously, people, I am not a tall person and I could barely cross my legs. In the middle of the night, when desperation to find a comfortable sleeping position gripped me, I tried to lower the tray table and rest my head. But I couldn't even get my head to the table without bumping the top of the seat in front of me! Needless to say, not much sleep was accomplished, although Noel, who was sprawled over me, rested quite well, thank you very much.

* Arriving in Tirana, which was experiencing Sacramento-like heat, and having to kill three hours at an Albanian restaurant with our two taxi drivers who spoke zero English -- Natalie Reyes (friend from church also spending a month in Erseke) had her flight from Milan delayed three hours. So we gained our first experience of trying to communicate using few words as we sat in a restaurant waiting. This led to some funny misunderstandings when we tried to get our point accross in English with hand motions thrown in. For example, Jeff tried to tell the waiter that we really liked the fresh feta cheese on our greek salads, and the waiter nodded earnestly and then rushed to bring us the entire plate of feta cheese he thought we had ordered.

* The curvy, 5-hour drive from Tirana to Erseke -- Albania is entirely covered by mountains -- gorgeous, green and gray mountains dotted by little villages and some lovely bigger cities. But mountains in a country with limited road-construction dollars means stomach-turning, two lane roads that wind up, down and through the countryside. We all took Dramamine and faired better than expected, but I had the bag ready just in case.

We were so relieved to finally arrive at our home for the next 6 weeks. It is the upper flat of a two-story home, and it's really spacious, clean and comfortable. Our friends Mark and Ruth Stoscher made sure everything was stocked with towels, sheets, food -- even a brand new mattress. I'll attach some photos, so you can get an idea. We slept like rocks and woke in the morning to the sounds of Erseke -- sheep and goat bells, roosters, and a bit of road construction down the lane. It's really blissfully quiet here. We're trying very hard to enter that slower mode and become comfortable with not having anyplace to be. Harder than you would think!

Some quick prayer requests, if you're willing: Jeff came down with some sort of chest cold or respiratory ailment. He's really under the weather. So please pray for good health. And keep me in prayer as I make arrangements to (possibly) tag along with some World Vision people on a reporting assignment. The area I would be going is very remote, so this would involve being away from Erseke for five days. I'm excited but pretty nervous, so please pray for a calm spirit and for all the details to get worked out. It's an exciting opportunity...more on that later.

For now, know that we don't have internet access at the moment. I'm currently sitting in the home of another American missionary, mooching her connection. So we won't be checking e-mail or blogging as often as we'd like, at least for the moment.