June in Fushe-Arrez

The last three weeks have been great! School finished for the summer two weeks ago at the beginning of June. At the end of that week the bashkia (town hall) held a community picnic up in the mountains. It was a two Kilometer hike up the mountain to the site. Kumar and I were having a rough time towards the top (mostly me). I kept slipping on loose gravel and I was wearing trail running shoes with good grip, while most of the Albanians were wearing flip-flops or dress shoes and having no problems climbing up. I felt like a failure. Oh well, I finally made it to the top and there was flat area with two make shift goals for soccer games and there were speakers hooked up and music was playing. I met up with a couple of my students and talked and then we started circle dancing. A while later, after many people left to go back home a soccer game started. I managed to get myself on the bashkia team (even though I don’t work there). I was the only girl playing and then about 20 minutes later they allowed an Albanian girl onto the opposing team. It was great! I was so happy to see that another girl was allowed to play in what is usually a men only game. We played two games and my team won one and lost one. The next day though was fantastic! Everyone was congratulating me on play soccer and were so happy that I played. I gained a lot of respect from the community for playing that game it was unbelievable. I found out later that I also was on the local tv channel in a clip they were doing about the community picnic. It was pretty exciting!

Since then, I have been helping out at a children’s camp. It is financed by the church and run by two of the teachers at the 9-vjecare (1st -9th grade school). It is a great camp! They meet at the school at 8 am and then go to a place by the river. All of the kids eat their breakfast and then we split up according to grade level and the kids read to each other for about 40 minutes. We then have a game time. There are some organized games and some pick-up games of volleyball or soccer. Then the kids go swimming in the river. It is really something special. I have heard of very few summer camps. So far, Kumar and I have helped teach the kids the importance of throwing their trash away in a trash can and not just on the ground. This was a big accomplishment and at least at camp they still follow our advice and throw away their trash properly. The teachers who run the camp are fantastic and could not be doing a better job. They really have a good plan and have managed to secure toys and come up with different activities for the kids to do throughout the morning. It is great!

First Week in Fushe-Arrez

My apartment in Fushe-Arrez is beautiful. It looks like one that is in the United States. It is very cold in the apartment, but that’s normal in Albania due to the fact it is built with wet cement (cement not dried in a kiln, but in the sun. It sucks out all the heat from a room). I even have a western toilet!! Which to some people might not mean a lot, but Turkish toilets are a pain and are the norm in northern Albania. I feel really lucky. I have an enclosed balcony, a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. I do not have a washing machine, which will make washing clothes a very cold endeavor in winter.

My first week, I observed classes, which were mostly just tests because of it being the end of the year. On Tuesday of that week, I visited some volunteers in Kukes. It is a town about two hours away from FA. It is huge compared to FA and has several large super markets. It has a large outdoor market as well. It was nice to visit some Group 12 volunteers (they have been here for a year) and see what it was like after year.

It was there in Kukes, where I also picked up Abby, my new little kitten. She is adorable. She is a mostly white calico with orange and black spots. She is very cuddly and loves to play. I love having her around. It helps when some of the loneliness creeps in. She just makes me laugh and helps give me something to love.

Last Days of PST in Pajove

It has been a while since I wrote last. I have been very busy since my site visit. I am now actually living at site as sworn-in volunteer for the Peace Corps.

Since my last entry I took the language exam where I received the mark of intermediate-low. I was hoping for at least one step above that, but at least I passed. The day before that exam, we finished our community project by giving our last English lesson to the school in our village (we had been giving lessons for a couple of weeks, as the only language at the school was French) and then we played a game of volleyball and did some Yoga with the kids. It was so much fun. As I am awful at volleyball, my team tried to keep the ball away from me or in the breaks they would try and give me quick lessons. I tended to be the biggest liability on the team.

The last week, I helped put together a thank you party for all of the host families in Pajove and the near-by town of Bishqem. It went very well. We talked, ate, and did some circle dancing (because in Albania it is not a party if there is no circle dancing).

Then the next day, we got sworn-in as Peace Corps volunteers. The US Ambassador, John Withers, did the swearing-in. The mayor of Elbasan was also in attendance. It was even reported on the national tv news. No one saw me, I was too far back in the crowed. It was a great event!

The next morning I left early in the morning to go to Tirana and then on to Fushe-Arrez. I had a ton of luggage and had a taxi drop me off at the “bus stop” for Fushe-Arrez. However, the bus was supposed to leave an hour from then according to one driver and not at all according to another driver. I had no idea where I was in the city and it was a nerve-racking couple of minutes trying to figure out what was going on. Eventually the bus came and everything worked out, but when you have that much luggage it is not always fun to not knowing what is going on.

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.

Tirana Tour and Counterpart Conference

On Monday I got up early and headed for Tirana (the capital of Albania). Some current volunteers gave us, trainees, a tour of Tirana. We learned were the Peace Corps office was and the Embassy. Then we learned where the major furgon and bus stops were in the city. We found some of the international restaurant locations. I had enchiladas for lunch. It was probably the best part of the day. It might not have been up to my standards had I been in the US, but here they were delicious.

Tirana is a very busy and hectic city. There are cars everywhere. There are stoplights and cross signals, but you still need to look both ways because cars do not always stop at the lights. There are a lot of times you just have to chance it and run. It is a pretty easy to get around though. The streets are pretty big and are laid out in an understandable pattern. With that said, I am not sure if I could get back to the PC office without a bit of a reminder of where it is. After our tour of Tirana, we headed for Durres for our counterpart conference.

In Durres (a coastal city), we had our counterpart conference for a couple of days. This is where we meet our Albanian counterpart. The PC sets you up with a person from your host country in your sector. My counterpart is the high school English teacher in Fushe-Arrez. Her name is Valbona. She is already an amazing teacher. She puts a lot of time and effort into her work. She has many classes and then in the afternoon she also teaches at a private language school in town. At the private school she teaches people of all ages who want to learn English. At the conference we went through the process of what it means to be a counterpart and a volunteer. We also had time to get to know our counterpart. We stayed in Durres for only one night and on Tuesday afternoon I left with my counterpart and her husband for Fushe-Arrez. It was a four hour trip through some winding mountain roads.

Belesh Camping Trip

So this past week was my eighth week here in Albania. I only have a week and a half left of training. This up coming week is really busy. We have a big community day project in my village of Pajove on Wednesday and I have my language assessment on Thursday. That is when I find out how good (or bad) by Shqip really is. So it is really big week for me.

This past week was also extremely busy! On Saturday May 8th to Sunday May 9th, my group of volunteers went on a camping trip in the nearby town. We don’t have tents so we just slept out under the stars. To get to the site we had to hike up the huge mountain. My group decided to not take long and easy approach to getting up the mountain, but the more direct and straight up approach. It did only take us about 10 minutes to get to the top, but I was exhausted by the time we reached it. It was really steep.

Once we got up there, we explored the old communist underground bunkers, which were situated on the top. Here is a short history note for those of you who don’t know much about Albanian history: from the 1940s to the early 1990s, Albania was a communist country, however they were not allies with the other communist countries of the world. It was ruled by a man named Enver Hoxha, who ruled the country until the mid 1980s. He was extremely concerned about invasions, so he built almost 750,000 bunkers throughout Albania. Most of them still exist. It was a couple of those bunkers that we explored. It was pretty interesting. They were in fairly good shape for being as old as they are. They are made of concrete and metal rods.

Afterward, we played American football. Some people played guitar and most of us just talked and relaxed. It was a really fun and a nice break from the usual routine.

Week Six

This week was a pretty slow week. Tuesday was a great morning. I went with Klarida to open up the water in old Pajove. It is about a 10 minute walk up the mountain to the water tank. It was a beautiful morning and we saw snakes, turtles, and frogs. We picked and ate green plums (way before they are ripe). They were a bit sour, but really good. It was a great time with Klarida. I have always had trouble being around her just because neither of us are great conversationalist and the language barrier just makes it that much more difficult. It was nice to have a morning where their was none of that for once.

Later that night we went to Klarida’s parents house in Paperim (about a 10 minute drive from Pajove). Klarida took me with her to drop off some materials to the local seamstress for a dress she was having made. When we got to the house and they saw me, Klarida told them that I was an American who was living with her. It was like I was a celebrity. I have been stared at before, but this time, it was almost like I was an alien who was to be revered (if that makes any sense). It was an interesting experience. They were very nice, but I would bet my life that I was the first American that they had ever set eyes on. It was strange experience. So far I have met people that have at least seen an American before and I became use to that type of stare, but this was on a whole other level.

After Tuesday, my week went kind of on a down turn for a few days. I got a really bad cold, which can be difficult to get through when you are living in a country and still have minimal language abilities. The culture here is to help as much as possible and to not leave someone alone if they are sick. I have the complete opposite idea of what I want when I am sick. I prefer to be left alone. So, it is difficult to find a balance and not offending your family when they want to do more for you.

On Friday, I was learned that another volunteer’s site has been moved and he will now be my site-mate. His name is Kumar. I am really excited. It will be really nice to have another American that I can talk to in person.

And Saturday, we had language tutoring and then went bowling in Elbasan. It was fantastic. The bowling ally was on the outskirts of the city, but it was so much fun. I learned that I am just as a bad a bowler in Albania as in the US. I didn’t make it above 75 points in either of the two games we played. Needless to say, I came in last in both games.