Walking by Faith...: aLbAnIa AnD cOrFu

Not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, I had to leave the country with the rest of my class for a Visa exit. Since I attend the Greek Bible Institute and we are in an Orthodox country, our school is kind of not recognized by the government so I am not really able to get a Student visa...Because of that, we have to leave the country every 90 days, which is what we did! There were about 12 of us that went with a couple of our teachers. We had a 7 hour drive to Igoumenitsa, which is where we were going to catch a ferry to Corfu, a beautiful island off of mainland Greece. After a beautiful and very long drive, we found out that we would have to stay at a motel for the night because the weather was too bad for the ferries to leave. So we decided to get some dinner and get a good night sleep. When we woke up in the morning, we found out that we were not going to be able to get to Corfu because the weather was going to be bad over the next few days and we would get stuck on the island...Not a bad idea if you ask me...Getting stuck on an island?!? But my teachers did not think that was such a great idea so they decided to change up the plans. Instead of going to Corfu and then Albania, we were just going to drive to another closer city in Albania, get our passports stamped, and then drive all the way back to Athens. To say the least it was an adventure, we got lost like 10 times, when we finally got to the Albanian border, only a couple of us were able to make it all the way, including me. So we stopped at this lonely looking gas station to go to the bathroom where there was no toilet paper...Thank God, we were carrying some napkins...After we went to the bathroom, we decided to buy some coffee from the guy who owned the gas station since we just used his bathroom and were like the only people around for a few miles. The owner was so sweet and he got really excited when I said hello to him in Albanian but then neither of us knew any more of the others language so we just smiled! :)
We left Albania after a little bit trying not to look suspicious since we had only been there for a little bit but we got out fine and got our passports stamped. On our way back to Athens, we stopped in Ioannina, which is another popular city in Greece, and went to some caves and ate lunch. After that, we drove the long drive back to Athens, listening to the Gaither Vocal Band and trying to keep my 78 year old teacher who was driving awake....It was one adventure!