A Fun and Sad weekend

This past weekend was a mix of enjoyment and sadness. I will begin with fun part, because I guess that is what came first, although only barely. I went Shkoder this weekend. It is a city on the coast in northern Albania. It is only a 2-3 hour furgon ride from Fushe-Arrez. I was visiting three of the volunteers there, Tiffany and Terry, and Jessie. We spent most of the day trying to stay cool. It was crazy hot there and we sought out the cafes that had air conditioning. In the evening we went to the Miss Earth Albania show. The winner would go to the international competition in Vietnam sometime later this year. The pageant was great, even if by the end it was a bit boring. There were 27 contestants, most of them in their teens or early twenties. It started with a bathing suit competition. It was pretty similar to the American beauty pageants at this point. Then they had the evening gown competition and that was also very similar to the American version (except the dresses were a bit shorter). Then came the first surprise, they put back on the bathing suit tops, but with daisy-duke shorts and a sequined cowboy hat. After that they had a talent portion, in which only three contestants performed (no one is sure why). They all sang and only the last one was a pretty good singer. The second one sang, “We’re all in this Together” from High School Musical. It was fantastic. She might not of had the best voice, but she did have good stage presence. They finished the night with a wedding dress competition. It was incredible. It just completely solidified that this pageant was in Albania. Being asked about marriage is brought up just about every time I meet anybody here. And the wedding dress competition was a great end and just seemed so fitting for Albania.

The next day, Kumar bought a rabbit for a pet and we headed back to Fushe-Arrez. This is where the sad part of my story comes in. On Saturday only about an hour or two after arriving in Shkoder Kumar and I get a call from the PC office making sure that we are ok. They inform us that there was a massive bus accident in Gjegjan village (only about 15 km from FA). The bus was headed to FA from Durres. When we were Shkoder we didn’t know much, we did notice that it was on the front of every newspaper the next day. We saw the causality count and knew that it was bad, but I felt distance from it until we arrived in Fushe-Arrez on Sunday. It was very sad. Everyone was depressed. When we arrived the head of parliament was there visiting families. Prime Minister Sali Berisha had visited earlier in the day. And yesterday President Topi visited the families. Most of the causalities were from the village, but there was one family that was hit hard in Fushe-Arrez. One of the girls I know from camp and she is now in a coma. It is extremely sad. I ask for everyone’s prayers and thoughts. It is a very difficult time in our town and only time will heal. I did hear that as of today the girl showed some minor signs of improvement, but she is still in critical condition.

I am sorry to leave this entry on such a sad note, but that is where we are now. I am still doing camp and the kids are still loads fun. I went swimming today and played some cards with several of the kids. I taught some more English words to Teacher Bardhe. I hope everyone at home is doing well! I will write more soon.

Shijak and a long trip back to Fushe-Arrez

The morning after the Embassy party, I made my way to Shijak (a town between Tirana and the port city of Durres) to go to a game night at Libby’s house with some of the other Group 13 volunteers. Libby, Brad, Molly, and I spent the day relaxing, playing cards, and preparing some of the dishes for the potluck. Then around 6pm, the other volunteers arrived. We started to cook some more and by 9pm we had a feast. We had couscous with eggplant and cinnamon, a sushi salad, gazpacho, smoothies, brownies, ice cream, cake, potato salad, and bean dip. It was fantastic! A lot of this food we could not have made without some of the packages that that some of the volunteers received. It was so good! After dinner we played Cranium. When it came time to sleep we were all over. Some people slept on the patio, in the hallway, on couches, chairs, and in the middle of the living room floor. It was a crowded place, but it was so much fun!

The next day, Brad and I headed back to Fushe-Arrez. Brad is a volunteer in Pogredec, who was coming for a visit. We decided to go to Durres and catch a bus from Durres to Fushe-Arrez. I knew that there was a bus that went had the direct route, but I didn’t know when it left. So, we went to the bus station and asked around about the Fushe-Arrez bus. No one knew anything about it. (Just to let you know, I was right and there is a bus that does that route) After we didn’t get any positive responses, we got on a bus headed for Shkoder and the driver said he would drop us off where we could catch a bus headed for Fushe-Arrez. It ended up that the place that he would drop us off at was at a turn-off for another highway. We had to try and stop a bus headed in the direction of Fushe-Arrez. After about 45 minutes to an hour in the hot sun waiting for a bus to come that was headed in the right direction, we stopped a bus headed for Rreshen. I knew that I could get off at Rubik. From Rubik I we could catch one of the Tirana-FA buses and get home that way. We had a pleasant two-hour wait in Rubik with Leslie and then boarded the bus for FA. We finally arrived back home at 5pm. It was a long day. The rest of Brads visit we had coffee with the cleaning lady at my school and went on a short hike and just relaxed. It was a nice couple of days.

Tirana and the Embassy Fourth of July

Thursday, the 8th, Kumar and I headed for Tirana. We got on a Furgon that was supposed to leave at 9am. It did not depart Fushe-Arrez until 9:45, however and then it headed toward Puke and we did not leave there until 10:45 or 11am. At this point we would usually be about two-thirds of the way to Tirana and instead we were only 20 minutes away from home. It turned into a 5 hour-long trip! When we finally arrived in Tirana, we tried to find “Freddy’s Hostel.” We arrived at the hostel and they didn’t have our reservation. I didn’t think much of it, since I had to make the reservation on the phone and maybe there was a misunderstanding. We later found out that there are two Freddy’s Hostels on the same street. We went to the wrong one, but as we had already paid, we had to stay put. We then headed to the PC office in order to pick up our tickets for the US Embassy Fourth of July party on Friday. We stopped for lunch, where we had crepes with pulled chicken, avocados, and Philadelphia Cream Cheese. They were fantastic! I didn’t realize how much I missed cream cheese. (I realize I talk about food a lot, but it really does make me happy when I can eat something else than pilaf or makaron (pasta). We met up with Alicia (the volunteer in Krume) and we spent the rest of the night with her. We went bowling and then we went to a bar and had some good dark German beer.

The next day Kumar and I got up and met with his landlord, who lives in Tirana. We had coffee and talked about different things. She is a teacher in Tirana. She got her degree for teaching in the 1990s, even though she should have received it much earlier in life. It was when we were talking about this and how I studied diplomacy and focused mostly on Europe that she told me this story about her family during communist times: One day when her father was receiving his food rations, he complained that the food was bad. This statement was enough to sentence him to seven years in prison. Afterwards, no one in his family, kids, nieces, or nephews, were allowed to go to university. I am telling you this because at the end of my conversation with her, she said that she wished someone would tell the story of Albania during communist times. It was a very difficult time and very few people have tried to tell what happened during that time.

When we left the coffee, Kumar and I went to the Albanian History Museum in Skanderbeg Square. It was a great museum. It showed the history of Albania from prehistoric times until the end of World War II. It did not cover the communist time at all (in fact there is no real museum in Albania that does show the history of Albania during communist times. One is being put together in Shkoder, but that is the only one that I have heard of.). It did a great job showing artifacts and telling the story of Albania. My favorite fact was that during WWII, Albania is one of the few and maybe only country, whose militia fought off the Italians and Germans by themselves with no help from the outside. Albania also saved thousands of Jews. They didn’t send any of their Jews to concentration camps and even allowed the Jews of the surrounding countries to enter Albania and even gave them citizenship and papers, so they wouldn’t be deported to camps.

Then at 6pm, we met up with other volunteers and headed to the Wilson School in Tirana for the Embassy party. We ate hot dogs, hamburgers, coleslaw, potato salad, baklava, apple pie, and brownies. They set off fireworks and we talked and caught up with volunteers who we hadn’t seen for a few months. It was a great night!

The Long Hike up the Mountain

Leslie, the TEFL volunteer from Rubik, came for a visit on Monday the 5th. We decided to go for a hike that day. We were going to hike up to the antennae at the top of the mountain facing the city of Fushe-Arrez. People had told that it was only an hour to hour and half hike. It was definitely a longer hike than that. We left at 11am, which was our first problem. It was getting to be the hottest part of the day. Then I didn’t bring enough water with me (not knowing that 1 ½ hours was going to change into 3-5 hours). Our last problem was that the trail ended about 10 minutes into the hike and we had to bushwhack our way to the top.

It was no easy going. The path was pretty steep and most of it was covered in a loose covering of rocks. This created a slippery surface. No one got hurt, but it made it slow going, and just postponed when I would get to eat lunch (as we were waiting to eat until we reached the top of the mountain). When we finally reached the top, it was beautiful and we had a great birds-eye view of Fushe-Arrez. We went down a different way and after about 20 minutes, we hitched a ride with trucker heading towards the copper factory. When we reached town we were exhausted. Kumar made dinner for us that night and we had a delicious curry chicken. It was a great end to a very tiring day!

Lezhe 4th of July Party!

The week of the Fourth was a busy week and full of delicious food! On the third of July, I woke up from the overnight camp and helped break down camp and then I went home and packed and left for Lezhe (a city on the coast of Albania). The volunteers, who are posted there, had decided to throw a Fourth of July party. We started the party by going to a Lokal (bar) and we had cheeseburgers, coleslaw, potato salad, watermelon, cake, and Jello. It was delicious! We stayed at the café until the end of the second World Cup game of the night. After finishing the camp we went out to Shengjen beach and that is where we slept the night. We were right there next to the waves and we climbed on old bunkers and played in the sand. By around 2am we went to sleep and then only about 2-3 hours later we woke up because that is apparently the time that Albanians start to come to the beach. I woke up to find many Albanian staring at the strange foreigners who are sleeping on the beach. I am not exaggerating about the staring that was going on. I believe there was some pointing too. Since we were awake we decided to leave and I was actually able to catch the 6:45am bus back to Fushe-Arrez. I definitely did not think that would happen.

Overnight Camp

On July 2nd, Kumar organized an overnight campout with the children from the day camp we had been helping with. We secured tents, drinks, blankets, and some snacks for the kids. This was the first time that anything like this has happened in Fushe-Arrez. It was difficult to get everything arranged and was nearly called off the day before, but we straightened everything out.

We woke up the morning of the camp to discover that a family of Roma had moved in right where we were going to camp. We decided to go through with it anyway and just moved our camp a little farther up river. At around 11am, Kumar, Dritan, and I went and got wood scraps from the local lumbar yard for the fire. Just after lunch, Richie and Michelle (two volunteers from Puke) arrived and helped us set up the tents and clear the area of rocks. A bit later, Judy (another volunteer from Puke) and Jessie (a volunteer from Shkoder) showed up and helped us get everything else together. The kids arrived around 6pm with the teachers. They were so excited! They had never been in tents before and couldn’t wait to get into one of the tents.

After splitting them up into groups, we let them go and get settled in. Sister Benedette (one of the nuns at the church in town) came and greeted the kids, as it is the church that funds the day camp. TV PUKE interviewed the Sister and Teacher Liza and then took some footage of the rest of the camp.

For the rest of the night, we played games, had a campfire, sang songs, and prayed that it wouldn’t rain. Most of the tents had rain covers, but a few did not. Additionally, all the adults had to sleep outside under the stars and it would not be fun if it started to rain. Luckily the rain did not come and everything worked out fantastically. It was extremely successful. The kids had a great time and we when we woke up we still had the 30 kids that had come the night before. No one wondered off or got hurt. It was a great experience.

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.