A Stressful Tuesday

The last two weeks have been extremely busy! I have traveling and many things have begun to happen in Fushe-Arrez as well. I will be covering it all in the next couple of posts. On Tuesday two weeks ago, I woke up and expected a pretty ordinary morning and then my TEFL boss, Agim, was going to visit in the afternoon. It turned out to be probably the most stressful morning since being in Albania. I go to the kid’s camp that I help out with and learn that Kumar is going to Puka, teacher Liza is working, and Bardhe is extremely sick. I allow Bardhe to go to the doctor, but that leaves me alone and in-charge of 25 kids ranging from 6 to 12 years of age. I was overwhelmed. We had two balls, one for the boys and one for the girls, and that was all I had to entertain them with. Bardhe said she should be back in about a half hour. The kids were great at the beginning. They played some games and there was no major incident. Then about an hour and half later, some of the boys decided that they wanted to go home, which was allowed, so I let them. I was not in charge of mostly girls and a few small boys. The girls then seemed to realize that it was just me and they decided to start testing me. They tried to swing from the branches of the willow tree when I had my back turned. They grabbed sticks to beat each other with in their game of tag. The stripped some of the small willow branches of leaves and tried to use the as whips. It was getting out of control. I was finally getting them under control, with the help of a few of the girls and one of the older boys who were there, when teacher Bradhe returned. Once she entered it all went back to normal, but it was definitely one of the more stressful mornings.

Then in the afternoon, Agim came and helped me decompress by giving me someone to talk to about by stressful morning and help me organize my thoughts about some secondary projects (projects other than teaching English, which is my primary project), which I have been considering. It was great to talk to him and learn that I am on the right track as volunteer. You get a lot of training during PST (Pre-Service Training), but once you are a volunteer you are kind of on your own and have to figure everything out for yourself. This leads to a lot of confusion and self-doubt about what you are achieving as a PCV. Agim helped me learn that I am doing just what I need to be doing at this point of service.