Relocation

Hello all,

I hope that everyone had an enjoyable holiday season and that 2010 is off to a great start. I spent Christmas in Lezha with another volunteer and for New Year's I was in Durres. On the 2nd, I went to the wedding of the sister of one of my friends from Lezha. Also on the 2nd, we had heavy rain and flooding in Lezha. Well the rain continued and now I am in Tirana.

On the 3rd, I received a call from the country director asking me what the conditions were like in Lezha. I told him there was some flooding but nothing to severe. On the 6th, I received a call from our safety and security director asking again how the situation was. At this point, Lezha was not really affected by the continuous rains. I told her we were all safe and sound - no worries. Well, yesterday I received another call from her again saying that PC decided to relocate us to Tirana. She told me to pack up a weeks worth of stuff and be ready to come into to Tirana.

My sitemates and I were picked up about 2pm by one of the PC drivers and we came into Tirana. We are all staying with different American families. Today we had a meeting about the situation in Shkoder and Lezha and they have decided to keep us in Tirana until at least Tuesday when the reasses the situation. Again, let me tell you all I am fine and wasn't in any immediate danger in Lezha.

I'll post again when I learn more but hopefully my next post will be when I'm back in Lezha!
Leslie

A Note on Culture

Today, there have been exactly 3 very interesting things that have happened to me that are great examples of the culture here in Albania. The first thing that I want to mention is the man I say peeing on the high school wall this morning. I had just left my house and was about 100 feet away from this old guy when he unzipped his pants and let it go. Public urination - not cool. Public urination on a high school wall with students all around in front of a window at 10am - hilarious (and at the same time gross)!! When I saw that on my way to work, I knew that it would be a good day.

The second thing I would like to tell everyone about is my trip to the bank. When I was in Bosnia, the ATM took my card and did not give it back. I am still waiting on my replacement so I had to actually go inside. Well I open the door and its packed with people. There usually are people but not more than like 10. I walked to the man at the end of what I considered to be a "line" and asked if he was waiting (the 2 tellers were just standing there). He told me that there was "s'ka leke". Translation, no money. I stood there for a second and then I turned around and walked out of the bank. As I was walking back to work I burst out laughing. It was an absolutely ridiculous concept to me that a bank had no money. Only in Albania. Luckily, when I went back just over an hour later there was money again. Now I know why so many Albanians don't trust their money in the banks.

Tonight, Peter and I came into Tirana to go see The Nutcracker at the Opera House. For $5 we both got tickets. It was fairly good. I haven't seen the ballet in probably 4 or 5 years so my memory from former performances is a little rusty but I enjoyed myself. At intermission I went down and found the musicians. I now have a number of a man who may be able to get me a cello!! Whoo hoo!!! Listening to the orchestra play tonight really has made me want to play again. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to play every once in awhile when I come into Tirana.

So it has been a culture filled day. Every day in Albania is always different and for the most part entertaining. It's days like today when I think "How will I ever readjust to living in America??" I think when I get back I'm gonna be one of those people that even my own family is embarrassed of and they keep me locked up in my room. It's going to take a long time for me to break some of the habits I've picked up here. Here's a list of some of my favorites:
-waving my pointer finger to say "no"
-shaking my head from left to right to say "yes"
-pushing my way to front to be served first
-raising my hand up in the air and clicking while calling out "boy!" to get the waiter's attention
-arriving when I feel like it even if we scheduled a time to meet
-assuming that when I'm with a man he will pay for everything
-inviting people for a "coffee" when I mean any type of beverage
-stopping to say hi to everyone I know and ask them the same question 5 times in a row
-negotiating the price for clothes

Well that's enough about Albanian culture for one day. Christmas is one week away and then New Year's!! If I don't get the chance to post again before then Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's!!

Here's a fun picture depicting culture in Albania. It's the Lezha pigs!!!

With December has come Winter...

My apologies first off for again slacking on updating this thing. I thought about sitting down several times to write some stuff down but just didn't know what to write. So here come a long list of what's been happening in the 'bania.

The end of October: Halloween was fun. I don't think it was as fun as last year but there were some creative costumes. Joe, Bethany, Kacey and I went as a group. Kacey was 1st base, I was 2nd base, Joe was 3rd and Bethany was a home run! We all made shirts with nicknames on the back and our team name was the "Puntang Klan". A fun spin off of the WuTang Clan and the Albanian word "pune". Anyways, we spray painted handprints on my shirt and my shorts. Joe drew lip marks all over his pants and we kissed Kacey all over. Bethany pulled off the home run quite well I think. Let's see, there was also Willy Wonka with a Chocolate bar, Dumb and Dumber, a panda bear, brown bear and Koala bear, the Albanian flag, and several interesting takes on a turkish toilet. Always funny to see what we can come up with on a PC budget.

November: Obviously, my birthday kicked off the month to a great start. My English girls totally suprised me. One of them texted me saying she needed to meet with me to talk about an assignment. Well when I opened the door later that day, all my girls walked in with cake, cookies and soda! It was awesome. For dinner, Bethany, Peter and Nikolla took me out to dinner at Ylli's. We had the place to ourselves and after we stuffed ourselves silly we danced the night away. It was a great 23rd :)

Thanksgiving was also very memorable. I was invited to eat at the Ambassador's house. Well I was not let down!! There was a huge turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberries, stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoe casserole, rolls, wine, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, brownies and lemon bars. I ate a little bit of everything and enjoyed every single bite! I don't think I've eaten like that in over a year and a half!! The conversation was pretty entertaining as well. At one point, the Ambassador and I were talking about the Roma and Gypsies in Albania and he invited me to work on a project for the Roma communities in Albania with him and the Ambassador of Switzerland. Whoo hoo!! After dinner, I spent the night at the Elridges. I was able to talk to my parents and Becca!! What a nice end to Thanksgiving.

The next Friday, I left Tirana at 6am with 2 buses of Albanians to go to Bosnia for the weekend. Oh it was an experience all right. The travel agent was a disaster but Ardi was there and tried to hold it together. Bosnia was very beautiful and I hope I can go back maybe and spend some more time there. There are still all the remnants from the war but then its developed so much sometimes you forget that there was a war.

English lessons are still keeping me very busy. I'm still teaching my counterpart and my high school girls but now I am also teaching the inspectors at the port of Shengjin. Yeah, that's interesting. There's only about 8 but they are all older so its going to be a lot harder for them to learn. 2 of them are pretty good though and they are learning. I teach there 2 times a week for an hour. In January I will be teaching the police here in Lezha as well. I'm a community development volunteer, not a teacher!! Oh well, I enjoy the lessons for the most part and teaching the inspectors will help decrease the amount of human trafficing that goes on in Albania.

I'm still torn as to what to do after I finish my service here in June. I'm meeting with Hill and Jan on Wednesday to discuss a 3rd year extension. Whether I will do it here in Albania or somewhere else I have yet to decide. My parents I think will disown me if I do another full 2 year service. I'm kinda thinking that I want to at least do the 3rd year. The economy in America right now doesn't look to appealing. Well I have to figure it out by January so I'll let you all know when I figure it out myself. Just over a week until Christmas! I can't believe how fast my close of service conference is coming up. Feels like I just got here yesterday......

An Overdue Update

I'm falling behind on updating this thing again! I don't even know really where to start. Let me just talk about some of the hi-lites I guess.....

The biggest excitement here was that my mom came to Albania and we spent 4 days in the north, jumped over to Italy for 4 days and hung out with my aunt Shelley, and then skipped back over to Albania to spend 4 days in the south. It was a great time. I was really happy she got to see where I'm living, the people I see everyday, and got to experience true Albanian hospitality. It was super nice to spend two weeks with her and see my aunt and of course get to Italy finally!!! We were in Bari, Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Livorno. I have lots of awesome pictures and if I remember I will try to post a few.

Other things, I went to the kindergartens here in Lezha and delivered a bag to each one with school supplies that I received from America. I found out that all the things we had set aside for them back in June had accidentally been given away to children at the cultural center. Oh well. They still got a few things so they can't complain.

I'm teaching English full swing. I give Yllka an English lesson for an hour Monday through Friday. She's learning quick and I have no doubt that she will be able to speak English half as well as I speak Albanian by the time I leave. I also began an advanced English course for 10 girls in the 4th year of high school here. They all want to pick English as their major at University next year so I'm going to try to help them as much as possible. We are going to create a newsletter and have a mini book club along with other fun activities. I wrote to an organization today asking them if they could send me books for the girls and they said yes! I'm totally excited. The books should get here in about 2 months. They will be thrilled.

I'm starting to think more and more about what I want to do when I finish here. I found out that Yllka is getting married on June 27th next year and I can't miss that so now I feel that I won't leave until the end of June or early July next year. Then I have no idea what to do. Should I travel around?? Get a job? Go for my Masters?? Do another Peace Corps service?? So much to think about.... luckily I have time. Halloween is in 10 days and my birthday is in 12!!! Whoot whoot!! It's gonna be an awesome 2 weeks :)

Something to Lift Your Spirits

This morning I met with Yllka and she had a very sad story to tell me. She had met with a woman and her two children earlier and heard that the husband had become very abusive. He has become an alcoholic and abuses the entire family. She made a decision that morning that she needed to leave the house. Yllka, being a social worker told them to meet her later and she would take them to someone who could help. She asked me if I could help. I thought of what I could possibly do and then I remembered I still had some things that had been sent to me from America. I told Yllka I would meet her later and she left.

I quickly grabbed some crayons, markers, pens and a toy for each kid and put it all together in a nice little bag. When I met up with Yllka again she was with the woman and her children. After introductions, I handed over the bags and the mother started to cry. She told me thank you and so did the children. The way those kids faces lit up, I knew I had made their day. Such a small gesture yet it helped a lot.

So now it is only noon yet I have made my small impact on Lezha for the day. It's days like this that I love my job :)

Summer is Almost Gone....

Ok so it's been awhile since I've posted on here but I've been busy! Where to start. I had a Warden's Conference in Tirana (boring), several meetings for a volunteerism project for youth in northern Albania, my mid service conference in Korca (half-way done!!), beer fest in Korca (at the same time as the mid service conference....coincidence, I think not!), a tubing experience in northeast Albania and to top it all off, house hounting. For more details, continue reading....

So the two Peace Corps events were the Warden training and the Mid Service Conference. The Warden training was to go over what we do in case of an emergency. I had to go to it last year so it was a bore for me to go again this year. There's only 12 of us lucky enough to get to participate in the warden training and let me tell you, we love it! Ok so on to the more exciting of the two, the Mid Service conference (MSC). The best part about this conference was that it marked the beginning of our last year here in Albania. We had sessions on some serious stuff (admin, health, safety etc...) but also on some more fun topics such as "why do we work here?", "photo shop", "working overseas after PC", "sector success stories" and "plans for the 2nd year". It was a great chance to catch up with everyone and see what they are all up to.

My favorite part of the MSC was that Beer Fest happened to be at the same time. Conference during the day, beer fest at night. It was perfect! For those of you who have not had Korca e zeze, you should try it! I was impressed by how large the beer fest was. There were tons of people, tons of beer boths and tons of qofte booths. Yum :) If it hadn't been for beer fest I don't think half of my group would have showed up.

On to the tubing experience. Becca and Dylan, the volunteers in Peshkopi, decided one day that it should be possible to tube from Peshkopi to Kukes. Looking at the map it looks very possible. I was convinced and decided to join them on the adventure. The first day was awesome. We floated down the river all day, stopping once for lunch, and once after our bag with stuff went under. It was peaceful, relaxing and a ton of fun! We pulled over to the side at about 7 and made camp for the night. We found out we had not made it nearly as far as we thought. We kept a positive attitude until it was time to sleep. None of us had a good night. We couldn't get comfortable or warm. We tried to keep the fire going all night but it didn't work so well. At one point we got up and found a big stack of hay, grabbed some and brought it over to the fire to try to make a "bed". That still didn't work too well. By the time the sun was up, we had been up for hours, were tired, cranky and hungry. After sitting there talking about it we decided to try to hitch hike the rest of the way to Kukes. We walked and walked and walked. We stopped several times at people's houses to fill our water bottles but had no luck finding food. We just ate the berries on the side of the road. Finally about 4:30 pm (after walking since 8:30) we saw a car. It picked us up and started driving us to Kukes. 10 minutes later they blew a tire, but they stopped, fixed it right away and we were back on the road. After finally arriving in Kukes we ended up eating 2 dinners, crashing at Jennifer and James' and then heading out early the next morning to get back to site. That was my tubing experience.

The last thing to mention is that after my months of house hunting, I have finally found a new apartment!! I know, I'm totally excited! It's in a brand new building and has lots of great new furniture in it. I'm moving on September 1st. The location is so much better, it's behind the high school and not on top of the hill. So excited to only have to walk up 3 flights of stairs instead of the 127 that I have now!

Well that's it for now. Should have more to post soon and with pictures! Keep your eyes open for new posts and until then, enjoy the last few days of summer!

The Summer Camp Experience

I've made it back from camp and I'm alive!!! No that wasn't a main concern for me but I feel as though it is an accomplishment. The camp went really well and I'm really happy that we had the chance to do it. We left Monday morning about an hour late but only 5 kids got sick on the bus. The road was fine until we left Elbasan to head up the mountain to Gjinar. That's where the kids got sick. All in all we made it there safe and sound without any problems. The camp site was a lot better than I expected. There were 3 lodges. One was large with 4 bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining hall, some bathrooms with showers, 2 meeting rooms a small chapel and a larger open space that we could all gather. Than the 2 other lodges were cabins that could sleep about 20 each with a bathroom. There was also a volleyball/basketball court and some open spaces for games.

Throughout the week we played all sorts of games. Most of them were group games but a few were individual. Some were games like capture the flag, darts, bowling and soccer but all with modifications for the group. Some of them were really funny to watch :) We went on a hike/picnic on Thursday which was great. We played a game on the hike up and then we found a nice place next to a mountain spring to have lunch. Luckily it didn't rain on us. On Wednesday, Hill, the Albania Peace Corps Director, came down to see how the camp was. He was impressed with the camp grounds, the diversity of the kids and the volunteers at the camp. This made me very happy. On Friday, we gave out a whole bunch of presents that the Red Cross had given us for the kids. It went well but I realized how greedy Albanian children can be ("I don't like this color.", "This is too big", "Can I get what she got?"). I wanted to be like, just take what I give you and be happy!!

On a sad note, this camp exposed me (again) to the bad manners of Albanians. For example, they don't say please and thank you. They talk over each other. They shout at the teacher when they raise their hand to be picked. They are terrible eaters (they don't eat the crust of bread). They don't respect their elders. The boys pick on the girls and this is acceptable.

Overall I was extremely happy with how everything went. When I got home I only needed about 3 days to recover. Thinking and speaking purely in Albanian for a week was exhausting!! Anyways, I have some great pictures and it was a great experience for myself and the kids. Now it's time for the summer to continue!!

Hope everyone is doing well. Miss you all!
Leslie