Other Happenings over the last two weeks

A few days ago, I witnessed an oil fire where they tried to smother it, but just caught the blanket on fire. They then dragged the pot and blanket outside and sprayed it with water, as their last hope. I huge fireball erupted, but then the fire quickly went out after that. It was really something to watch. It made me thankful that in the US we have fire extinguishers. It would have ended the fire so easily.

Last Sunday, a few volunteers and I left town for the day and ventured out to Peqin, a small town about 5 minutes west of Pajove (by furgon). It was a beautiful day. We met up with the owner of the restaurant, Argon, we go to everyday in Pajove and had a coffee with him. He then drove us out to the bazaar and we looked around and hiked up by the river. After a while Argon left and we walked back to town and stopped to look at a small old castle left over from the Ottomans. We joined in a pick up game of soccer with a couple of the local boys. It was a lot of fun. The boys were hilarious. They would call each other by the names of the soccer players of the jerseys’ they were wearing. Some of them would pose for Diana and her camera and other would run like crazy to get away from us taking their pictures. They were not afraid to take my water and then finish it in about 10 second either. I didn’t mind, but it was just surprising when they said “uje” (water) and I tentatively gave them my water and it was then passed around and finished. Overall, the day was extremely relaxing and a much-needed break from our usual routines.

Practicum

Sorry for being so long in updating my blog. It has been a very busy couple of weeks. This week and last week we had our practicum, where we would teach a few classes in the surrounding schools. It was a lot of planning and stress. On top of teaching in the morning we still had a good three to four hours of language lessons in the afternoon.

As far as the practicum goes, I think I did pretty well. After my first lesson to a 9^th grade class, I thought I did a horrible job. The lesson seemed so boring, but apparently I was able to get students to raise their hands and participate who had never participated in class before. That was REALLY exciting to hear. It definitely made me feel that I must have done something right in order to make students feel comfortable enough to raise their hands. The thing that I think worked was that I gave positive feedback and I didn’t humiliate students when they got the answer wrong, which is extremely uncommon in the Albanian classroom. It really is amazing what positive feedback and taking notice of all students can do. In another class, there was a boy who had no book and was just sitting there not doing the exercise when everyone else was working. I went to him and gave him my book and began to work through the exercise with him. I found out that he knew very little English, so I started by just translating the sentences. When I left his side he continued to copy the sentences from the book. Then when it was time for me to take my book back so we could go over the exercise as a class, he turned around and worked with the book of the girls behind him. It was really exciting to see that I helped him at least feel like he was worth something and he could do something. It is these types of moments that help me remember why I am here. There were plenty of awkward moments when I would ask a question and no one would raise their hands or I would realize that the class was no where near the level that the book was. So, I rarely got through my whole lesson plan because I would have to explain concepts and words more than I thought I would. Surprisingly, my best class, as a whole, was a bunch of fifth graders in a small village school. I brought in a dialogue about cleaning the classroom (which the students do in the village schools) and the fifth graders read it and then translated the whole dialogue into Albanian. It was incredible. I had translated it myself and I expected that I would do it, but after I did the first line, they started doing it all by themselves.

I had some fast planning sessions as well. For my lesson last Thursday, I was co-teaching with another volunteer and we had a lesson planned and then we got to school and the teacher said we couldn’t do that lesson. We had a five minutes planning session and I believe we delivered a good lesson. We did fool some of the other volunteers, who were observing us, into believing we had planned the lesson the night before. On Monday, I didn’t receive the book until 40 minutes before class started. When, I went to plan the lesson. I opened the book and saw that there was no structure to what I was to teach. I was supposed to do exercises in the book for practice and then realized that none of the exercises were related to the previous exercise. I ended up going through word choice and changing from the active voice to the passive voice, which, I might add, they had never covered before. I got through only two of the eight exercises I was supposed to get through. But, I refused to move on when the students were completely lost. I think it worked and the students seemed to appreciate it.

Friday, April 16: Site Assignment Announcement

It was a long day today. We waited for 4pm for the Training manager to give us our sites. We had technical training all day and by four all we wanted was to hear where we were going. Being toward the beginning of the alphabet, I didn’t have to wait long to hear my site. I will be living in Fushe-Arrez. It is in Northern Albanian near Puke (the capital of the district. Pronounced: pook). I will be the only Peace Corps volunteer at my sight. There are three volunteers in Puke, which is only 20 minutes away. As for the weather, it will be very cold during the winter and have a milder summer. It is high in mountains.

The school that I will be teaching at looks like it is an amazing place. They have a school newspaper, concerts, a debate club and more. Fifty percent of those who graduate move on to university. It is the director’s goal to increase that percentage. Other than that I don’t know much about the site at the moment and will return in a later posting with more details.

Things about Albania

I have realized that I have left out some vital parts of Albanian life. First, I never described what a furgon is. It is a large van, similar to a 16 seater. The drivers go fast and pick up people on the side of the road. Sometimes you are accompanied by farm animals and sometimes you feel like you are in a clown car because they try to shove as many people as possible into the furgon. Overall it is a cheap way to travel, but not always the most comfortable.

Another part of Albanian life that everyone needs to know about if they ever plan on a visit, is that Big Brother Albania is the television show of the country. It’s in its third season and it has its own tv channel. The show is literally on 24/7. Sometimes you just watch everyone in the Big Brother house sleep or read. It is quite an experience. There are some entertaining challenges, such as getting all of the eels out of their swimming pool. On Saturday, it looks more like the American version and you get the highlights and you vote for the contestant that you want off the show. This season, however, has opened up a large controversial dialogue throughout the country. The first gay contestant appeared in this season. LGBT marches went through his hometown of Luzhnja. This topic is very taboo in Albanian society, despite having a law, which strongly protects gay rights. Most people do not talk about it and find it shameful if someone in their family is a part of the LGBT community. So the show is bringing up an issue, which will help the country move forward and on to its goal of joining the EU.

Another thing that you will see a lot of in Albania are loads of fake flowers. They are all over in every room of every house. You rarely see real flowers in vases in the house. You will see donkeys and horse carts right next to clean new Mercedes-Benzs. You will see animals being led to slaughter or in some cases tied up outside of butcher shops. You will see people in Dolce and Gabana, but it will be one of two outfits that they own. It really is a country of contradictions. It is a mix of modern and ancient.

Volunteer Visit to Rreshen

This weekend I visited another TEFL (Teaching English as a foreign language) volunteer in Rreshen. It is a village in the north of Albania. It took about six hours to get there with three different stops. I first had to take a furgon to Elbasan. I met up with some other trainees there and we took another furgon to Tirana. It took about an hour and half to get there, due to the steep mountains and the numerous switchbacks. It is not really a trip for someone with a weak stomach or faint of heart (depending on the furgon driver). In Tirana, we met up with one of the volunteers working Rreshen and took a bus the rest of the way to the city.

Rreshen is a beautiful city, which is situated in the middle of mountains. It is almost an entirely catholic town, which is unusual for Albania. As it was Easter weekend, EVERYTHING was closed both Sunday and Monday. They closed down the bashkia (city council), the schools, many of the bars/cafes, the dyqans (stores), and the museum. Here are some fun Easter traditions of Catholic Albanians. They do not have Easter egg hunts. They do dye eggs and then the little kids go door to door wishing everyone a “gezuar pahket” (happy Easter) and they receive eggs (a lot like trick-or-treating). The kids then play a game where one will hold the egg and another kid hits the first egg with their egg. The egg that breaks loses and the winner receives both eggs.

Although, I was not able to observe a class until Tuesday morning, I did learn about what it will be like to be a volunteer. It was a very good experience. It allowed me to see that it actually gets a bit easier in some ways once I am a full time volunteer. I will get my own place to live and I will be able to cook my own food, which is a very nice luxury. I love my host mom’s cooking, but it does tend to be the same things or very similar tastes. The first night in Rreshen we made calzones, then we had taco salad and cheesecake, and finally we had a lasagna type dish with garlic bread. It was delicious. The taco salad was made with ingredients shipped from the US, but a lot of the other food we managed with the ingredients in Albania. Tirana does have a couple specialty import stores where you can find little bits of home like peanut butter. However, those items are extremely expensive and you can only really afford them on special occasions.

Week Two

This past week flew by. On Monday, I returned home from school and saw Shege (my host mom) working in her garden. I had no idea what she was doing, but it looked like she could use a bit of help, so I offered and she happily accepted. After changing into some grungy clothes I returned downstairs to help. Shege hands me shovel saying “hajde” (come). I enter the garden and she picks of her shovel and starts to turn the earth. I the mimicked her and so started my work in the garden. The soil in Pajove is very dense and is almost clay so it is extremely heavy. Soon al of the neighbors realized that the American was doing manual labor and they came out to watch/laugh at me. The 18 year old who lives in the house behind us could barely control himself because he was laughing so hard. It was worth the pain and the feeling of being an animal at the zoo because Shege and I really connected through that and she really respected me for my work.

The next day, I witnessed my first slaughtering of a chicken. It was actually a much cleaner process than I imagined. Shege pinned down the chicken and beheaded it quite effortlessly. I then learned (by observation and some commentary, which I didn’t understand) how to de-feather it and then butcher it. My family uses ever part of the chicken except for the intestines. We then made a gjelle (soup) with the chicken. I added to the new things I have eaten since being to Albania during that meal. I ate a chicken heart, which was actually better than the liver in my opinion. Shege was nice enough to see that I did not want to eat the gallbladder after having watched her clean out the last meal that the chicken had eaten. At the end of the meal, Shege said that I am going to make the gjelle sometime for the family (I am not sure if that includes slaughtering the chicken, but I kind of have a feeling it does).