Ejona Korcari, Week 5, Tirana Albania

I have been in Albania for 5 weeks already. Work is going great. Everyone is so happy to have us here. The two other girls and I call ourselves "Vajzat" which means "the Girls". Our "boss" and the Harvard students call us "the Michigan Team" #GoBlue. This week we have done some short translations and have helped out our Harvard co-worker to do some research. We have helped her to do some statistical and logistics research over airports in the Balkan region. We researched airports in the Balkan and gathered the data. This way we will be able to compare those places with the Albanian airport. We needed to compare the number of people that enter and leave the countries, number of flights, number of flight companies operating in each etc. We want to see where Albania falls, because a lot of people believe that flying in Albania is very expensive, so we want to know the reasons why and how this influences the tourism. 

As you already have noticed, I write a lot of times in plural. I say "we" in a lot of cases. This is because Kledia, Enxhi and I, all three of us Albanian born, are doing this internship together. We work as a team. Basically we do everything together. We share the work equally and in most of the times we work all three of us on the same task. We have found out that this way works best and we are having a great time working together.

Lately we have tried to focus on social media. The promotions Director want us to find new ways to reach to more people and especially the Albanian diaspora and attract them to come visit Albania. It would be great if some of them would even intern here like we are. It is kinda sad that no Albanian students from USA came interning in Albania before. At the same time I really want UM to start partnering with Albanian university to create a study abroad program or partner with Albanian Institutions just to send students interning here. It would be a great experience for both pairs. Albania has so much to offer. 

At the same time we met someone new. Mr. Auron Tare, who is always hunting for interns and partnerships with universities everywhere outside of Albania. He is the Director of National Coastal Agency (part of the Ministry of Tourism). He wanted to see us and show us some of his really cool ideas. For now he wants us to work with him on translating their new app they just launched about the coast. This app shows the best beaches, descriptions and the location of them. At the same time you can notify this agency if you see something wrong in the coast/beach like for example trash, no public beaches etc. I am very excited to work with him. 

This weekend we went to this town called Himare. It is in the south of Albania and it has the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. The view was like a wallpaper. We got a hotel room facing the sea. We could hear the waves and smell the sea every morning. It was that close! It was breathtaking and I have no words to describe it!

Right outside of our room

The view from our balcony

The beach called Marac

The beach right in the city