Fushe-Arrez

We arrived in Fushe-Arrez around 5 pm. I had to drop my luggage off at Kumar’s apartment because my apartment was not ready. (We took half of all the things we brought to Albania to Fushe-Arrez, so in two weeks, we wouldn’t have to take it all.) After that Kumar’s counterpart, Dritan, took us around town and showed us the sights. My counterpart unfortunately got a flat tire by running over barbed wire and had to go and deal with that. Dritan showed us the different shops, the cathedral (as this is a predominantly Catholic city), the schools and the bashkia (city hall). Kumar and I then made dinner for ourselves.

The next day we met the mayor, who is the youngest mayor in Albania, but really has his act together. He introduced Kumar and I to the bashkia employees.

We then went to the gjimnaz (high school) and observed Valbona in her classes. The school is immaculate. It is four stories tall. The halls are painted with the bottom half green and the top half white. It is a beautiful Albanian school. The students are also awesome! They are very respectful and are incredibly smart. Most of them speak very good English. There is still the unfortunate class of village students who have never taken English, but are expected to be at the level of those who have been speaking it for seven years. However, that class was very attentive and tried to learn the language as fast as they could. For the rest of the week, I went and observed classes and even met one of Valbona’s classes at the private school. On Friday, we tried team teaching for the first time.

The rest of our time in Fushe-Arrez was spent meeting the local people. I met the head of police and the director of the health center. Both were very impressive.

Just as another side note about my community, it is the only city in Albania where the bashkia is the head of trash pick-up and I even saw a western style garbage truck. Also, I would say that 8 out of 10 people speak at least conversational English. Many of them have also said that it is not that hard of a language to learn (I am thinking it is because the grammar in Shqip is so difficult that it makes English grammar manageable).

As for first impressions, I love my town. It is very progressive and beautiful. The people are extremely nice. I will be living in the center of town, which is perfect. Everyone is very interested in way we are there and is appreciative of what we will be doing. It will still present many challenges, many of which I am worried about being able to overcome, but that is what I signed up for when entering the PC.