Getting to know our new home

This is a view of part of the city of Tirana from the Sky Tower. This tower has a small restaurant on top that spins so you can see the whole city at one time. On Tuesday we decided to walk with the girls to this tower for them to get a bird's eye view of the place they will call home. The drinks were steep ($2.50) but the experience was worth it. The walk (in 104 degree weather!) took us over an hour. We did stop and visit an ice cream store :), peek in at a sad looking amusement park, buy some fans for the girls to use, discover the Tirana Galleria (this building actually has 5 floors of some western stores like Benetton and Nike as well as other high end Albanian shopping - it was air conditioned), and practice crossing busy streets in traffic with 4 girls in tow. We took a taxi home. This in itself was quite an adventure. We have to call an Albanian friend who calls a taxi for us since we can't explain where our house is - there is no address. Our friend called the taxi for us and when the taxi pulled up we got in and started on the road. The driver asked us in Albanian where we were going. We said the name of the owner of the house, which usually works because everyone knows him, but our driver gave us a blank look. We had gotten in the wrong taxi. This man had no idea where we were going. Thankfully, I remembered the name of the nearest major street to our house and told him that. Once we got to the street, we were able to direct him to the house. We really need to learn Albanian quickly! Here we are in the Sky Tower. The girls are putting their new fans to good use. The girls were disappointed that the spinning tower wasn't more of an amusement ride. It went really slow and at one point the electricity went off and we stopped moving. The building has a generator, so it came back on in a few minutes, but we were thankful that we weren't on the elevator at that moment.
Akullore!! Ice cream!! This city if full of the yummy stuff. We stopped to refresh ourselves and cool off on our walk. We enjoyed banana, kiwi, strawberry and vanilla ice cream. Breanna had the first time opportunity to visit a traditional Albanian bathroom. We call them squatty potties. The hole in the floor is connected to plumbing, so it flushes, but she was not about to go. I had to hold her up over it. Oh, the fun we had! :)
On Thursday, we took a little jaunt about 45 minutes outside of Tirana with some Albanian friends, Genci and Arta, along with their kids, Emi and Joel. Genci took us up the beautiful mountain side to a wonderful hotel with a new pool. I was amazed that this pretty hotel could exist so far from the city. The pool was so cold! The water is from the mountain spring, but it felt wonderful! There was a neat playground next to the pool for the kids to play on. We enjoyed a very relaxing day with our friends away from the heat of the city.
Here is Kris with Genci and Arta. Arta will be our language teacher for 2 years. Genci is the associate pastor at our church. Their daughter Emi is Kaitlyn's new friend here. We are so thankful for their friendship. God has been faithful to provide us like minded friends here in Albania. We are looking forward to our relationship growing. They are helping us learn the cultural norms here so we can live here and understand the people's lives better. We are hoping to do more fun things with them in the future. All in all, this week has been a good opportunity to see more of Tirana and the surrounding areas. The girls are beginning to recognize landmarks and whenever we get close to our house, Breanna yells out, "We're home!"