Floods and Kadare

Fall, most of winter, and spring = (amongst other things) rain and mud. Up in the mountains, most of it washes down into the valleys, and we are thankfully also blanketed with snow. The rains can, however, wreak havoc in low-lying country.

At the beginning of December, Albania struggled with flooding. The northern shoreline and most of the northern provinces were inaccessible. Volunteers were evacuated from Shkodër and Lezhë while others were instructed to remain within their sites, not to risk the roads. NATO even contributed to the relief efforts. Around 12,000 people were relocated by December 5th. Water flooded the streets of the northern cities and villages, forcing residents to pole their way in skiffs and other makeshift flotation devices. Mud in houses, property destroyed, school interrupted, homeless and cold and wet and adrift.  Check this BBC clip for footage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11923596.

Briefly ignoring the nightmarish implications of a city unexpectedly submerged, Shkodër was once a Venetian city state, so perhaps streets becoming canals makes some modicum of sense. Shkodrans pay tribute to Italian culture with a brilliant bicycle culture and frequent mixing of Shqip with belissimas. I had my hair cut by a Shkodran stylist with extremely flexible wrists who trained in Italy. Venice contracts out production of hand-crafted plaster Carnival masks to a Shkodran workshop. At the sobering end of things, Italy has also lost a considerable number of troops on Albanian soil. Albania – Shkodrans, certainly – owns some measure of Italian culture.

Ismail Kadare wrote a book called The General of the Dead Army (Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur) about an Italian general in the post-war period who goes on an unsettling quest to reclaim the bodies of Italian soldiers interred in Albanian soil. The opening chapters have a passage about flying over the forbidding peaks of northern Albania that aptly illustrates the aura of mystery shrouding both communist and post-communist Albania and her closed, mountainous terrain. I recommend reading that and Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (Prilli i thyer), which won the Man Booker Prize in 2005.

Scorpion



Severed by kindling.



PS: Today I ate...

...calf's intestine.  With wild oregano and rice.

(Self-)Editor's Note

Comment on the family entry:  I misrepresented Albanian patterns of migration by implying that Albanians find it difficult to thrive far from home for extended periods of time.  In fact, many Albanians living abroad often don’t have the opportunity to return for years and those I know have dealt with it in the manner of all somewhat reluctant and yet dignified émigrés – the resolutely stiff upper lip version of “just fine”.  It simply seems to me that these same Albanians I know place a higher premium on visiting whenever they have the money, whether that means booking a series of painfully expensive transatlantic tickets or driving all the way from the UK during school breaks.  I know Americans who can’t seem to find the time to visit children or parents living two or three hours away by car (which is more like six to eight hours in Albania, by the way).  Priorities are different.  And my Albanian family and friends leading expatriate existences always seem to have a very deep longing for Shqiperi.  There’s no other place, no other home.

Things I Can't Yet Do - or Haven't Yet Tried

Ride a donkey.
Read an Albanian language book cover to cover.
Cut tomatoes and onions in my hand... with a sharp-edged knife.
Successfully facilitate a session on domestic violence with a group of women.
Make a true byrek.
Paraglide in Konitsa - our Greek border neighbor.
Bake Tepelene-style sourdough bread.
Hike from Corovode to Permet.
Swallow dhale.
Persuade my umbrella to retain its concave shape despite contrary weather.
Begin to think about moving the remaining four meters of wood still outside.
Meet the learning needs of all my students on a daily basis.
Guesstimate yeast to flour ratios.
Repair neighbors' broken antennas.
Keep certain houseplants alive.
Get through a day without once mangling the Albanian language cases.
Stop swearing at my fire.
Cook Albanian-style beans - fasule!
Maintain sanity in the midst of a seventh grade party. 
Appropriately plan for the aforementioned party.
Keep chalk dust off my pants and mud off my shoes - like my incredibly skilled colleagues.
Speak GREEK.

Things I Can Do

Pump out lesson plans in 15 minutes.
Kill scorpions.
Make friends.  Earn student trust.
Move three cubic meters of wood up four flights and stack it in one day.
Fix my plumbing.
Tell giant seniors what's what without breaking a sweat.
Make yogurt - yep.
Politely put away ceremonial shots of raki (Albanian national moonshine) in the company of tipsy old men.
Start and maintain a fire in a woodstove without a flue.
Pacify irate landlords.
Frighten wild dogs.
Make fig preserves.
Lean into prevailing mountain winds without falling over.
Teach hideous amounts of grammar.
Identify the forest mushrooms you can eat and the dandelion greens that are good for stewing, frying, and raw consumption.
Sponge bathe for six consecutive weeks.
Boil a decent Turkish coffee.
Catch runaway sheep and chicks.
Write a grant.
Cook on a bumble - every day.
Strain sweet wine.
Conduct a parent-teacher conference in a room full of people who don't speak my native language.
Look good in four day-old hair.
Hitch hike.
Pickle peppers.
Cut onions and tomatoes in my hand with a butter knife - look Ma, no board!
Speak ALBANIAN.

Familja!

Over Thanksgiving, volunteers either descended upon embassy families and their tables of bounty in Tirana or huddled in small groups over stoves in larger sites. Okay, I exaggerate. I belong to the latter group and met with friends in Pogradec, a lovely European town on Lake Ohrid (divided between Albania and Macedonia). We cooked a feast of entirely unnecessary proportions, attempted to dry a wishbone for snapping, passed various pumpkin-esque desserts, and had a damn good time together. The weekend wrapped up in my apartment with a few cross-culture coffee dates, Albanian lasagna, and A Charlie Brown Christmas on loop. I am unsure as to whether one could possibly ask for more… Perhaps three sisters, parents, and an increasing brood of grandchildren?



The Pog Thanksgiving Crew :)

 
This is born of a sentimental, Vince Guaraldi Trio-induced mood, but Thanksgiving makes me reflect on how I’ve ironically come to live alone, far from those I love, in a country that celebrates family above all else. My family is exceptionally close by American standards; a great deal of our happiness is tied up in one another. All of my time away from home has been an exercise in easing that dependency and ensuring that I can pursue a life wherever and however I see fit without constantly aching for what I “left behind”.

My two-year commitment to a country with which I have no blood ties approaches the incomprehensible for most of the Albanians in my world. I am constantly asked if I am not yearning for home, for my family. Aren’t I merzit (depressed, melancholy)? I live in a very small mountain town and am the first Peace Corps volunteer to serve here. It follows that mothers here try to compensate for the lack of family in my apartment by urging me into theirs for coffee and preserves with a heaping dose of borderline overwhelming concern and affection. I am surrounded by good intentions and disbelief. Why would someone want to leave their loved ones? Isn’t it akin to desertion? What kind of a life is one without your parents in the next bedroom, a cousin to pluck your eyebrows and trade blouses, an adolescent brother to sell liter bottles of foaming milk, your sisters’ children crawling through walnut shells under your kitchen table, and all of your bills, shoes, toys, and blankets snarled in one tired, happy tangle of love? My money is your money, my problems are your problems, my triumphs are your triumphs, our children are our children. Frankly, a lot of that sounds good to me.

Albanians will lie for family, fight for family, sacrifice for family, die for family. Just reference the Law of Kanun, still operating, though with significantly diminished strength (chalk it up to the EU application process and a decrease in political, geographic, social, and cultural isolation), in northern Albania. We just had a blood feud killing in downtown Shkodër, easily the most cosmopolitan city up north. A German Lutheran missionary who spent four years living in Albania carefully explained to me that Albanian culture is built on loyalty before shame and to expect to find forbidding mouths and crossed arms if ever I offended an Albanian clan. They’ve got each other’s backs.

Eldest sons working abroad commit a significant portion of their income to their parents’ well-being. Youngest sons remain at home with their brides to manage their parents’ households. It's worth pointing out that a lot of Americans walk away from their parents, emotionally and financially, once the last of their student loans are paid off. In Albania, children stick around. No one goes to a nursing home.  My counterpart covers her brother's university expenses, handles all the paper work, tests her mother's blood sugar, and never blinks twice over it.

Americans drift away and start their own little pods in isolation.  We rely on email, BBM,  digital snapshots, and hurried phone calls to check-up on the progeny's progress.  Albanian sisters-in-law cook together and share child-rearing responsibilities.  Fathers rule, though many wives will remind their children that gruaja është qafa e familjës – the woman/wife is the neck of the family. That is to say, she subtly controls the patriarch.  Everyone drinks a coffee together, watches soap operas together, debates politics together.  The Albanian family is complexly woven, totally interdependent—quite difficult to mess with.  A formidable model of extended family life.  Like spider plants!

And the downsides?  From my decidedly e huaj (foreign) perspective, few Albanians I know have struck out from home (most likely for economic reasons) without constantly warring against the strong impulse to return to their families—and often do. I also know that some of my Albanian peers resent the inescapable sense of duty binding them to the fate of the entire family and a persistent lack of privacy.  Unmarried Albanians my age and well into their late twenties who still live with their parents tend to fall below American cultural standards of maturity, which is sometimes difficult for me to wrap my head around and accept.  I do respect my Peace Corps peers for harnessing their adulthood and venturing into the great unknown, to test themselves and see what there’s to see. And I always say that if I try all there is to try, fail miserably or triumph greatly, and, once I have built true self-reliance, still can’t find a better place than home, at least there will be no question in my mind as to where I belong.

So, this Thanksgiving, I say thank you for a family I will always miss terribly, no matter how many months I can spend away from them all without feeling inclined to bury my face in a pillow and cry like a self-pitying, econ-bombing college freshman. I also say thank you for a family that knows how to let me go and puts a foot in strategic areas when I balk. Thank you for the Hoyas who will connect from four (or was it five?) different time zones when we all really ought to be sleeping/working.  Thank you for the Peace Corps folk who will always cook with me, willingly bemoan the occasional frustrations of service with me, travel with me, and invite me over to mess with their stoves. And thank you for all of the Albanian mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, and children who offer their unconditional love whenever I am feeling merzit.



My family in Pajove





My wonderful counterpart




My older sister, my nephew, and my niece (who turned one year old yesterday!)



Spiders be watchin' my back

I really wanted to put up a scorpion picture for you all, but I am reluctant to let one out of my sight while searching for my camera. They move so damn fast. THUS, here is a large-ish spider who took down a most annoying insect for me. She sucked the insides out and then left the hollowed exoskeleton on my sink.  Perhaps not the classiest of statements, but such is the nature of Albanian housekeeping + the insects that both support and thwart attempts to maintain a sparkling abode.

*Note: It took three wild attempts to kill my first scorpion with a shampoo bottle before I approached the situation rationally and severed, instead of squashing.  Remember, sever.  They've got exoskeletons, too.

Library donations are a-rolling in!



This donation is courtesy of the Scarsdale Woman's Club in New York.  They sent a truly thoughtful collection of books.  We communicated solely by handwritten letter!  Lost art forms, sigh.



Oh November! How Gray and Productive Art Thou!

November flew; days were long and weeks were short. The highlights of the month were project progress: The book club kicked off with a short memoir and is now moving on to The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.* I also brought the summer adult courses back to life, which has been an exercise in scheduling patience. I opened the courses to the town, so some wonderful newcomers are shyly trickling in… AND, the local clinic and I applied for a health volunteer!!! I am determined to bring a Group 14er to Leskovik. We just need to nail down housing, and hopefully all will go to plan. The staff even paid for a group photo shoot and commissioned a town map to submit with the application. That’s worth a volunteer.

Our eighth and twelfth graders met for the first time with students from the Metropolitan Learning Center (MLC) in Bloomfield, CT. With Visa’s unfailing support, I matched a selection of 8th and 12th graders with American peers from an international magnet school in the US. They’re engaged in a teleconference series designed to foster cultural exchange and joint learning.



Grade 8 participants with Visa in the director's office, day of!  From left to right: Suada, Mariglenc, Kristina N., Visa, Teodor, Eva, Kristina D., and Denisa


Our first sessions were a standard “get-to-know-you” via Skype. There was so much anticipation, and many after-school prep sessions were invested into the first round of meetings. I don’t recall ever before looking beseechingly into the eyes of a 14 year-old and urgently demanding, “So, what would you say if an American were to ask you about circle dancing?” Visa and I also had a great deal of fun in these prep sessions, as we don’t usually dare sit on desks and facilitate hour-long open discussion and brainstorming sessions with our students. Chaos would ensue, we would all have a good time, and classroom auditors would give us a poor evaluation.

Our school director (picture a subdued man who listens, nods, and then gets things done) gave over his office, the school projector, and a personal webcam for our meetings. The 8th graders were, in one inadequate word, WOW. Visa and I are infinitely proud of their efforts. They prepared Albanian traditional songs and dance to share with MLC students; filled notebooks with questions and vocabulary; put together an introduction; and memorized student names. The session went an extra 45 minutes (despite two power outages on our end).  The 12th graders put forth a seriously brave effort despite a seemingly unrelenting wave of embarrassment.  Seventeen is a difficult age, I have heard.

Highlights ranged from our students describing their daily routines in fifteen minute blocks (they had that vocabulary down and were determined to utilize all they knew) to debating the rival merits of R&B and hip-hop. Our students were completely impressed with the American classrooms and school uniforms while the Americans were (and I say rightly so!) impressed with the Albanian students’ level of English. The Americans courteously learned a few Albanian pleasantries and gave them a shot, which our director loved. And of course both sessions concluded with the students pledging to connect via the golden parent of contemporary social networking… yes, you guessed it, Facebook! A 2010 friendship is not a friendship until it is consummated on Facebook.

Successive sessions will treat common topics of cultural and social studies. I pledge to post on each.

*I’ve been reading ahead and may I just mention that the total lack of well-reviewed, positive literature on the adult market is mildly depressing? It all seems to serve to remind us that we are grievously wasting our relationships and ambitions. Just saying.

The News from Lake Wobegon, Albania

October 2010

Narrator: A long time ago, in a far away place called Philadelphia, 50 strangers converged to embark upon a fantastic journey. Most arrived via airplane [NATHAN: airplane noise], some drove [N: car horn], maybe someone took the train [N: train noise], I suspect somebody honed their hitchhiking skills [N: noise of car passing without stopping] [“Hey buddy! Can I get a ride?!”], aaannnnd Libby walked.
They came from all over the United States. Some were from Texas [Howdy]. Some from California [Gnarly]. Some from Florida [Y’all know if it’s going to be cold there?]. And too many were from Chicago [OBAMA! YES WE CAN!].

Anyway, they flew to Albania [N: airplane noise] which was a LOOONG, and frankly discombobulating, transcontinental flight [N: extended airplane noise]. They deplaned and boarded a waiting bus on the sizzling tarmac …whichhhhhh drove all of ten feet. Beyond the lines of passport control they met this shady lady [“I’ll buy your passport for 50 lek”] who shooed them into the sunlight. Ahhh, they had arrived in Albania!

A whirlwind of cautionary tales and British Berkfeld filters followed, and then, before they knew it they were whisked off to their host families. Here…here they understood nothing [“Mirupafshim.” “Mire-ju-pap-fa-shim.”]. They struggled saying the simplest of sentences and relied upon funny gestures to illustrate highly important points [“Dje (pointing behind) Unë shkoj në shkollë”]. Their families thought they were very curious creatures [“It’s 6pm, when do we eat?”], these uncultured Americans. But, of course in the beginning the Americans thought the same of their hosts [“They made me dress up like a traditional Albanian bride and took pictures of me!”].

Now, many of these people were city-slickers who were now ruralizing on farms…..ya, that was interesting. They were used to electronic alarm clocks [N: beep beep beep] and blindly slapping at the snooze. It was different here though, some had lovely host mothers [“Mirëmëngjes!!!”], some had enthusiastic roosters [N: rooster noise], some cows [N: cow noise], and some were lucky enough to have a donkey rouse them from their pleasant dreams [N: donkey noise]. You really can’t slap a donkey into a snooze.

Speaking of the, uh, fauna, a favorite, and admittedly strange, activity a lot of these visitors enjoyed was hiking. While trekking the wilds of Albania, they saw all types of animals: cats [N: cat meow], dogs [N: dog], sheep [N: sheep], goats [N: goat], female turkeys [N: f turkey], male turkeys [N: male turkey], and sometimes the rare upset male turkey [N: u m t]. Oh my. A regular National Geographic documentary, one might say.

But, slowly, grammar was labored over, cultural coffees became gossip coffees, raki was thrown back, stories were traded, cows were milked, circle dances were mastered, the death wagons known as furgons were braved, and gradually these foreign folk fell in love with the mountains, plains, and people of Albania with the spirit of eagles.

PST was a lot of fun [wink] but these people were destined to become PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS! They had to graduate eventually. They descended upon Skampi Theatre. Everyone cheered [applause and cheers], they made the news and then ensued the tearful goodbyes [goodbyes and maybe crying]. All 50 emerged bonafied Volunteers, ready to brave the unknown corners of this massive country! Why, life could only get better.

So they traveled to their respective sites and everything was perfect! Water worked [N: noise of no water], they had power 24/7 [N: noise of power going out and then a generator starting], chickens were respectful in the morning hours [N: noise of cats and dogs fighting]. Counterparts and assignments were exactly as expected and more. All was peaceful [“MATILDA!”] [“MAMI!”] [“O MA!”] .

And now, here we are today, united again. We have all experienced variable ups and downs, but we have made it this far and can go further. [Begin “Star Spangled Banner” on kazoo] The Peace Corps just celebrated its 50th anniversary and we are compelled to revisit John F. Kennedy’s vision and hope. We are here to serve [“Ask not what your country can do for you…ask what you can do for your country.”]. We are dreamers and do-ers [“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”]. [“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”]. Let’s remember why this organization exists and why we are here [“We must seek, above all, a world of peace; a world in which people dwell together in mutual respect and work together in mutual regard.”].

Peace Corps Albania,

…where vajzat are strong,

…çunat are good-looking,

and the staff is above average.

Halloween: The Good, the Bad, the Terrifying

The last weekend in October, Peace Corps hosted a Language Refresher conference for Group 13. We all returned to our old stomping grounds, Elbasan and her villages, for a weekend of grammar, japrak (stuffed grape leaves), and talent shows. Yes, we revisited (in a hotel disco) that ever-popular third grade form of exalting our respective skills. Bring on the disco ball, stand-up, and impromptu jam sessions. Because (we like to think) we are grown-ups, humiliation was absent; appreciation was great. One of my friends came up with the idea of putting together a Peace Corps Albania version of the News from Lake Wobegon. Four of us teachers valiantly performed with tinkling piano music, red-cheeked sound effects, and a Star Spangled Banner-playing kazoo. The script is posted in the next blog entry for your reading pleasure. I also spent a night with my host family – all members of which, I am pleased to report, are hale, hearty, and whole. I left home with oranges and three kinds of jam.

After the conference we all retired in typically haphazard fashion to a southern city called Berat. There the two extremely accommodating volunteers in-residence hosted us, plus Group 12, for a Halloween celebration of excess and ironic costumes. Some were constructed on the bus. There was an Albanian bunker, the “before” and “after” of Albanian marriage, Skanderbeg, and a cupcake. It was, in summary, an excellent time.

Immediately following that weekend, I threw a Halloween party for 40 over-charged seventh grade students. My counterpart and I decided that Halloween, festa e frikshme, merited an after-school party for the combined seventh grade classes. We scheduled the event about a month beforehand. Plenty of time to whip our students into a frenzy of costume brainstorming and apple-bobbing anticipation. We planned careful explanations of costumes and trick-or-treating, completely forgetting Carnivale. Our students knew exactly what was what and put tremendous effort into their chosen alternative identities.  We clearly are blessed with some under-the-radar artists in the seventh grade.  One student come as "a town crazy", totally in character and totally brilliant. It wasn’t p.c., but it was marvelous. 

All we really had to discuss in prep sessions were jack-o’-lanterns… with considerable historical background to make some sense out of a puzzling and otherwise seemingly foolish tradition. I’d never really meditated before on exactly why I liked carving faces into orange squashes and then sticking lights into their guts – or why I had been taught to do so. It took a classroom full of Albanian adolescents with bewildered faces to impress this failing upon me.

Through a series of slightly unfortunate circumstances, I ended up hosting the party on my own.  I had a group of determined girls help me set up the teachers' room for the event, but still would NOT recommend this particular undertaking to anyone. I did, however, learn roughly 54 life lessons in the span of 2.5 hours, no one drowned in the apple-bobbing bucket, and my students hugely enjoyed themselves. Relative gains! That's how we measure success in the Peace Corps.

Teaching the Teacher

Funny lesson anecdote: Visa and I have split the 10th grade, which is in its first year of English language studies, into two groups to motivate the students and build up classroom control. I have a group of about 20 students who are beyond restless, but are a lot of fun to teach and always game for interactive learning. Example: Today we did a warm-up with imperatives. The students took turns being the teacher and ordered the rest of the class to open windows (allowing blasts of freezing mountain air into the room), trade seats at top speed, crawl awkwardly under desks, etc.

Last week we were working with “I like to” followed by an infinitive. One of the students offered Unë pëlqej të kalëroj (“I like to horseback ride”). I couldn’t work this out in my befuddled brain, failing to deduce the root word kalë, which translates to “horse”, in the verb kalëroj, which translates to “horseback ride”. So he patiently began to break it down for me, miming with his hands and explaining (in Albanian) “Okay, so I have a horse; I climb on the horse, I sit on the horse” and then he bounced in his seat, elbows flapping energetically. He was so serious, *so* earnest, I just turned red and started laughing. I could not keep my composure for about five minutes, which the class thought was hilarious. I tried to continue with “I like to draw comics” and fell apart all over again. The kids loved it.

If I were to stay in Albania...

I would become a terrifyingly brilliant entrepeneur and cultivate a business empire in one or all of the following:

*durable nailpolish
*insulation and central heating systems
*women's fashion magazines, as in Vogue, Elle, etc.
*bullet trains

The First Weeks of the 2010-2011 School Year

Note: Click on images to enlarge!

First Day of School - leaning out the teachers' room window, watching students and parents gathering




Bearing Flowers - First graders bring flowers, real and artificial, to their teachers on the first day of school





Class 7A

 


Class 7B




Class 8 - can you vibe the personality? :)




The Seniors!!! (Maturant)




School director, Veli Xhelili, and brave student delivering first day speeches on the front steps before assembled townsfolk




Patient Listeners - members of Class 7




Molly and Visa




Visa and Najada "Ada" Pasho, math and information technology teacher




The faculty - 24 teachers and two administrators, plus three village teachers, serving 370 students in grades 1 - 12




Nikolla "Niko" Josifi, school music and art teacher




Shelegur's First Day of School - our village students following their first English lesson of the year.  From left to right: Enea, eight years old; Kleo, nine years old; Aldo, eight years old; Flori, four years old; and Armando, ten years old




Visa and some of the most well-behaved students you will ever find; in the Shelegur schoolhouse




First Graders




Retired Teacher Speechifying - Polikran, former school director and teacher of Russian and Albanian literature.  Under Hoxha, he spent more than fifteen years in prison and performed hard labor for expressing pro-American views.  He now has a son in the 10th grade.  He told me all of this one day while I was stacking wood for winter.




Filing In




Visa and Diana Mici, physical education and health/survival skills teacher




Stavrulla "Vulli", math teacher




The Schoolhouse in Shelegur - Enea racing to catch up for a berry-picking excursion




The End :)



Try explaining...

what you mean by:

- static cling
- lonesome (and how that differs both from "lonely" and "alone")
- reticent

...to a non-native English speaker.

Hurrah for baking!

I noted this in an email to a friend and have brought it up with some sisters…
Hurrah for baking!!! Baking assuages the soul wounded by cooking failures. Whenever I bomb yet another experiment in a pot, I resort to the simple science of flour and baking soda/powder to boost my self-esteem. HOWEVER, it must be admitted that I recently attempted two batches of brownies that failed to properly set and had to be eaten out of the pan like cake. Due to having followed Prairie’s especially tailored brownie recipe, the mess tasted like heaven. But it remains that I cannot yet coax a brownie from a pan.

Fall is here, and my students will not get off their cell phones

I am sitting on my couch, trying to remember how to knit—I had one brief lesson with Miss Katie K, a most patient fellow volunteer—and am thinking it might just be better if this scarf knitted itself. It's cold! Let's say my fingers have been too numb to type as I am struggling with my wood stove situation... and thus this blog post is so late? Or how about I haven't an adequate excuse and what I am posting here is in fact an adapted email?

This is my favorite season, and Leskovik shows it off to particular advantage. The clear days are crisp with a high wind. I can wear sweaters and want to go for walks with a canteen, rucksack, and Heidi as a cheerful, rosy-cheeked companion. I can forgive the indecisive rain and blankets of soupy fog. Even those days evoke the Sleepy Hollow legend and Hudson River mystique.

Fall + the advent of the school year = a starry-eyed official start to service. Four weeks of school with seniors and sophomores equate a bit of a crushing blow (only a bit because it's like a crushing blow in slow motion - little bit more crushing every week). Four weeks of school with seventh and eighth graders and village school students equate relief, enjoyment, and renewed interest in teaching. After years of helpless laughter at my mother’s dinner table, I finally have my own wild student antics—wily ruses to lead lessons astray and hopeless, yet earnest, blunders—to cackle (and I do mean cackle) over with Visa while planning in the evening.

We have a Halloween party coming up on November 1st and another party after the 30th of November (we're thinking perhaps right before Christmas) for the 7th or 8th grade class that wins a magic bean competition. The two seventh grade classes and eighth grade class are pitted against one another in a competition where they win/lose points based on behavior and performance. Each class has a jar filled with pinto beans, from which the students can lose or earn back beans. Whichever class reaches November 30th with the most beans still in the jar wins the competition and a class party, catered by yours truly. I promised “American food”, which drew a universal chorus of “oooo!”, so that ought to be interesting. I unintentionally set the bar rather high for myself, being a merely passable cook. AND, most of my students' mothers excel in the kitchen - few Albanian girls reach adulthood without a mastery of cooking that puts the average American twenty-something to shame. This setting of the bar unintentionally high is turning into a repeat offense in all aspects of service in Leskovik, but it does keep me busy and happy.

Cooking and party aside, the classes are engaged in fierce combat (no other word fully expresses the nature of this competition). When a student steps up to the plate to deliver a particularly earnest performance during a lesson and all of the kids rally to maintain some level of calm in the classroom, putting a lost bean back into the jar makes up for having to kick an intolerable, completely insolent sophomore and his I’ve-just-about-had-enough-of-your cell phone out of my earlier class.

All in all, things are good. I put a bean back into Class 7B's jar today, rewarding the students for NOT once uttering the word "beautiful" during the lesson. Albanians are addicted to the word beautiful (translates as "bukur"). The level of restraint displayed was remarkable.

I also drew a peacock and the Taj Mahal on the blackboard to illustrate something in a 7th grade discussion. Everyone hollered “xhami,” which translates to “mosque”. It follows that we had to have an impromptu discussion about different domes and what one might find under them. When I cruised by desks later in the lesson, most of the kids had copied the bird and palace, which made me laugh and appreciate the thorough note-taking of newly-minted teenagers. It feels like we've been teaching for six months instead of four weeks (as very aptly remarked by a fellow TEFLer).

My program manager, Agim, recently made a tour of Albania to check in with all of his TEFL volunteers. Being a thoughtful guy, he brought, for my fishing pleasure, a fly rod! The rod had been gifted to him by a previous volunteer. It’s a pint-sized two-piece Eagle Creek sweetheart rod, just right for swinging wildly about in these little creeks with brush and overhanging trees. It looks like I am going to have to wait until I go home to properly complete the outfit with tippet, leader, etc, so I don't know if any fishing will go down until next spring...

I took the rod by the town pharmacy to show to my naturalist friend, Sejdin (he also happens to be Visa’s fiancé’s older brother). He likes to fish and fries his own catch. Might I add that it is highly rare for an Albanian man to willingly enter the kitchen? Sejdin is fascinated by fly fishing. We have made some noncommittal plans to fish the Vjosa River at some point! The Vjosa is about two hours away by car, though it is visible from our mountain.

In other news, side projects are just starting to really take off and the school schedule has FINALLY been, well, finalized. I am working on completely overhauling our school’s library and on adding an English language literature section to the collection. My school director has granted permission to relocate the library and is donating an old desktop computer to our catalogue project. We're working on a grant application, which process has been mildly difficult as the school librarian's baby girl is ill. I salute this stalwart mother for battling through baby illness, work, and grant development.

My women’s book club is kicking off this week! Darien Book Aid (CT pride) sent novels and biographies for our club. I hope we will start with The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, which I have not read. Also, it looks like the Jani Vreto-MLC cultural exchange and joint-learning project is nearing the schedule-building stage, so I am quite excited. The seniors participating in the project are ambitious and dedicated students, so, “me kismet” (loosely translated as “with luck”), the exchange will be both productive and fun (what a piddly word).

I miss you all,

Molly

Post-Communist Capitalism in Albania, as illustrated by Cinnamon-Flavored Gum

When I go to the supermarket in Leskovik and I pay for items, I sometimes receive both coin and gum as change. This occurs when, at the end of a transaction, I am due a fist-full of coins that should include five or one cent pieces—baby leke. Instead of baby leke, the cashier gives me one, two, or sometimes even three, pieces of chewing gum. I balked at first, confused by what appeared to be a pseudo trade system. Actually, I have no idea what that is – the unwanted tender for unwanted goods system? But now that I better understand the reasoning behind this perfunctory disregard for the least-used units in the Albanian monetary system, I am inclined to just laugh.

In Albania, most prices ignore the singles place value and scoot a zero into that spot. This is partially a side effect of the old leke versus new leke phenomenon, compensating for old leke mental calculation when confronted with the new leke exchange of coin and bill. It’s also a way to neatly ensure that 10 is a factor of all prices. It follows that one and five cent pieces are in circulation, but are rarely used. Since prices only stray into awkward territory, like, oh gosh, 487 or 53 leke, on those rare occasions when irritating shoppers purchase produce in non-kilo increments (a-HEM, if you live alone and are buying food for just one person!), no one wants to give or receive these pesky buggers. How to get rid of them once they’re in your pocket? Do you even want to get rid of them; do they really have value in Albania?

Elsewhere, the entire interaction might have potential to break down. Here, a simple solution is handily slapped onto the problem, and we all carry on with life. You get gum—even if you don’t want it—instead of money. It’s a duc tape sort of approach to post-Communist capitalism.

Case in point: Today, I was owed 182 leke at the supermarket after buying bleach, some sponges, toilet paper, three peaches, and one cucumber. Sofika, the gruff and probably chain-smoking cashier who introduces and re-introduces me to everyone, took my 500 leke note and gave me 180 leke and one or two pieces of Chiclet-style gum in return. I thanked her, hurled a couple of mirupafshims over my shoulder to the general audience, and fumbled the gum into the palm of my hand as I headed out the door. The gum then proceeded to sweat up against my plastic bag handles, smearing traces of red food coloring and cinnamon flavor on the inside of my knuckles. Awesome.

I attempted to pass off this sugary treasure, cozy in its little wedge of shiny foil hacked from a pack ensconced in the change drawer by the Sofika’s knee, to a convenient child or fly-ridden dumpster. Both work – I’m not a fan of super sugary gum. But I am a fan of Sofika, and I like this ritual. It makes for all kinds of excitement.

I always wonder how Sofika calculates the value of each piece of gum and what color my palm will be when I get home. To whom should I try to give the gum? Little kid, older kid, my neighbor’s son’s colleague’s kid? I would be a creeper in the United States; never accept candy from people on the street! And if I succeed in foisting the gum onto a kid, I am perpetuating poor dental health habits! Can I even justify throwing the gum away if I can’t find a handy child willing to rot holes into his/her teeth? Oh my, waste, waste! Additionally, chucking it into a dumpster just contributes to the national trash problem! Escalating guilt, guilt! Internal debate and berating ensue.

And finally, the ritual reminds me that we’re still in a post-Communist state of transition where private businesses inevitably engage in a little artistic manipulation of financial transactions. Ah, behold, macro-level problems playing out at the micro level! But hey, from the perspective of people just trying to function in a country where money and relative value are still a little fragile, if this practice makes for a more efficient transaction at the local supermarket store…who’s complaining? Really just PCVs protective of their teeth, I would think. It’s gum, after all! CINAMMON-flavored gum!

Note: This supermarket observation was written shortly after I moved to Leskovik. I have since learned that Sofika is a covert, as opposed to chain-smoking, cashier and that I can receive match boxes instead of gum if I smile winningly and ask about her migraines.

Baxho - the Dairy

About two months ago, when I was still the “new foreigner” in Leskovik, I went with a neighbor girl to the local dairy, or baxho, to buy cheese. The baxho occupies the bottom floor of a small destroyed factory. Leskovik has several miniature factories like this, some made of stone and others of cement with what used to be tall glass windows. They are remnants from Communism that now lie either in ruins (sometimes because of the 1997 pyramid scheme crisis) or have been partially rehabilitated for private use by whoever is interested and can stake a semi-solid claim on the property.

Quick digression to discuss this curious leftover from Communism - With the fall of Communism, property rights became a major problem. No one really owned any land for fifty-odd years, so, when democracy and capitalism took hold, old disputes revivified and people attempted to stake ownership to houses, gardens, and fields. Things got temporarily ugly and then terribly messy. Today, now that most Leskovikqarians have built new cement houses or moved into raw brick apartment buildings, stone houses are abandoned and the surrounding property is simply cultivated by whoever last occupied the space.

Case in point: the network of communal animal stalls and pens behind our apartment building, mentioned in the previous post. They’re made from repurposed materials—warped planks, corrugated tin, flour sacks, plastic sheeting, stones, barbed wire, etc. It’s like a tiny town without ownership. Everyone is tucked up against everyone else. It’s unclear where one man’s cluster of stalls end and others begin. Post the morning milking session and the arrival of the cowherd to collect the prize milkers and new calves for a day in the pasture, I skirt clouds of flies and hop around manure to get down to the main road.

This sort of impromptu, and yet highly productive, repurposing of available space is exemplified by the dairy operation. Factory space is less ambiguously awarded to entrepreneurs than grazing and garden plots. Half of the three-story factory’s bottom floor has been converted into a dairy, and, behind a heavy blue door, a vast cool chamber hums with activity. The rest of the building is still burned out. The windows lack panes, scorch marks smear their wretched palms across the walls, the floors are covered in shattered glass and tiles, and there is an eerie stillness.

It was my first visit to the dairy, so naturally most activity ceased so everyone could come ask about the American. Once they discovered I could speak Shqip, they also talked to the American. Where are you from? Why are you here? Wait, are you really going to stay here for two years alone?! But you are 23 years old and unmarried! Well, good for you, sweetheart. Really, that’s wonderful. But we will have to find you a nice Albanian boy.

After going through the usual round of questions and exclamations, I had opportunity to observe the assembly line they had developed, the vats of brine and sweating cheese, and picked out a kilo of feta to be weighed on a shuddering scale with brass weights. Only a kilo, but, just because this is Albania, and Albanians are the most hospitable people I have ever met, the entire staff offered to have the kilo delivered to my door by an eight year-old playing outside with a new kitten. I paid 300 leke (3 USD) for my prize and took it away in a blue plastic bag with advice to soak it in the salty yellow whey that you can buy by the giant one-liter Coke bottle.

The first time I bought cheese in Leskovik, no one mentioned to me that I ought to buy the whey. The cheese started to turn in one day. No preservatives, remember? Ah, well. Dairy products here both frighten and impress me.

One of my secret ambitions (perhaps not so secret now) is to learn how to make… my own yogurt. Oh lord.

Gatimi Shqiptar - Albanian Cooking

I thought that I was never going to find Albanian food with much flavor after my training period in central Albania. For a nation that has been shaped by centuries of conquest and intersection of European and Middle Eastern cultures, Albania has emerged with remarkably bland food. Spice is rarely used, and even then with much restraint. You have to travel to cities and comb through the occasional European mart or specialty shop to find elusive items like ginger and red pepper.

Albanian food is also very high in cholesterol and sugar. Oil, salt, red meat (with most of its fat intact), bread, and sugar are the most important elements in Shqiptar cooking. Everything is deep, and I mean DEEP, fried. Even rice and spaghetti are fried before they are boiled.

But, the food is incredibly fresh because the vast majority of Albanians outside the big cities produce most of their own vegetables, cheeses, yogurts, preserves, condiments, wine, milk, dhale (half water, half yogurt, and sometimes a pinch of salt), etc. No added preservatives or hormones. Living in a community where processed food is essentially non-existent is something new for me. The lack of processing, the lack of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers go a long way for health… It is only after most food is cooked that it begins to lose its optimal nutritional value and that Albanians fall into two major health traps—acquired diabetes and hypertension.

In Leskovik I have found way more flavorful cooking than in central Albania, mostly the result of fresh garlic cloves, liberal use of black pepper, and a passion for wild oregano. Everything is a little pikante (spicy) here. My counterpart’s mother gifted me with several bunches of dried oregano from the mountain. She is a fabulous cook and makes a mean, mean stuffed eggplant dish. My stomach groans wistfully just thinking about it, sigh. And her pastiço, the Albanian version of macaroni and cheese (but heavier on milk and egg, light on the cheese), oh my. Serious soul food. Shpresa is always flying about her apartment, just two floors below mine, mopping the loosely-tiled floor and popping something in the oven.

Shpresa and Tomori (her husband, named for the highest peak in Albania) also love their byrek, maybe the quintessential Albanian specialty. Picture a savory, flaky, layered pie often stuffed with milk, wild greens, spinach, or sometimes meat, baked in a giant round pan and cut into wedges like pizza. The less oil involved, often the better the byrek. I also love byrek made with corn meal.

In Leskovik, everyone has a kopësht (garden) on the outskirts of town, wedged into empty lots between buildings, up at the base of the sharp mountain slope, or gracing the ruins of stone houses that were abandoned post-Communism for cement dwellings down in town. This mountain community is free of air pollution and all of our water is clean, straight from mountain springs (before the banking crisis in 1997, Leskovik was famed for its hot therapeutic springs). We drink water, opaque with oxygen, straight from the tap. The vineyards are lush, preparing for the September wine season. Cherry season just finished. I am overwhelmed with white cherry and apricot preserves, gifts from all of the lovely women in my building. It’s actually a bit dangerous – anytime I visit anyone’s house and am settled into a chair for the customary cup of Turkish coffee, a saucer of sugary preserves materializes at my side.

Shqiptar cooking, for all its liberal use of fat and sugar, is yum when prepared by the experts. And for those of us learning gatimi shqiptar, behold, freedom from recipes! Everything is to taste, everything is eyeballed, ho-hummed, an extra pinch of this maybe, and an extra dash of that. I have helped to make gjize, a white Albanian made of koss (yogurt) boiled down until lumps of squeaky cheese emerge from the yellow liquid and then can be strained through a series of cloths. Kind of like cottage cheese. I have also learned how to make the aforementioned stuffed eggplant dish, as well as stuffed peppers, and the Albanian macaroni and cheese. Next I hope to learn petka, an Albanian homemade macaroni liberally doused in butter and salt. It’s the perfect comfort food. We also have an Albanian version of a doughnut, called petulla.

I also participated in the preserve-making process during cherry season, mostly sitting on a three-legged stool next to a cow stall and manure pile pitting cherries into a bowl of water (and dead flies) between my knees. Behind our Communist-era apartment building is a maze of animal stalls made from a medley of salvaged materials; it’s a veritable shanty town of human ingenuity.

During the two weeks dedicated to preserves, the shanty town was humming and smoking with boiling vats of sugar, water, and pitted fruit on top of drunkenly leaning and blackened wood stoves. I sweated and pitted. The flies, which are ever present in a thick cloud, droned happily in pools of rapidly cooling sugar, and everyone had sticky feet for days. And all those gifted preserves I mentioned earlier? They arrived at my door in repurposed glass jars still too hot to touch.

Two literacy and empowerment projects - an open letter

Dear Friends,

My name is Molly Douglas, and I am a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English as a foreign language in Leskovik, Albania. Leskovik is a remote mountain town in the southeast, nine kilometers from the Greek border, with a population of roughly 1,800 people. With the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s and the advent of poorly-regulated capitalism, Leskovik finds itself in a state of socioeconomic transition and development. Many people have abandoned the town and moved to Greece and Albanian cities in search of work. Leskovik’s remaining citizens, however, remain fiercely proud of their rich cultural heritage and have high hopes for reviving their town.

I am writing to you with the hope that you might consider donating used or new books to Jani Vreto, the local grade school in Leskovik.

I am the first Peace Corps volunteer to serve in Leskovik and count myself very fortunate to be welcomed by a warm community with great ambitions for its students. I am employed in Leskovik as a high school and middle school English teacher and work with an Albanian counterpart, Ervisa Muca. Our school, Jani Vreto, serves grades 1 through 12 and has a student body of about 650 pupils. English language education is a relatively new addition to the school's curriculum. Most of our students are currently at beginner to low-intermediate levels. We hope to eventually graduate students who will go on to major in English studies in college.

The desire for English language education here is incredible – everyone wants to learn! To make the most of the community’s energy and enthusiasm, I also give free courses outside of school to motivated students and adult learners. In this spirit, I currently am working on two extracurricular projects that promote literacy, as well as English-language acquisition, within and beyond the classroom. I am seeking donations for these projects.

First, we are accumulating English-language literature for our struggling school library. We do not have any English-language literature in our collection. Mostly outdated, it is housed in a former storage room outfitted with collapsing book cases and repurposed laboratory cabinets. Roughly 50% of the student body regularly checks out books to read for school projects and, occasionally, for pleasure. This rate of borrowing is enormously encouraging, as interest in reading has declined greatly in most of Albania. Our goal is to provide our students with the opportunity to delve into the world of American and British literature and to incorporate English-language literature into our foreign language curriculum.

Using donated literature, we plan to introduce story-time circles to our youngest students. With our junior high school and high school students, we would like to introduce book report projects, reflective writing, and critical discussions. In this way, students can apply and improve their English language skills outside the realm of grammar-driven textbooks and can enrich their understanding of American and British culture through literature. We would love to see eventual vocabulary expansion and greater acquisition of expressions through an increased rate in book borrowing. We also seek to renew interest in reading for fun and to encourage more creative writing, inspired by the great fiction writers.

Our library is in great need, and would greatly appreciate donations, of the following items:
(a) large story books with illustrations for children in the primary grades;
(b) beginner-level chapter books for middle school and junior high school students (anywhere from the Henry and Mudge series to the Goosebump books);
(c) any literature for high school students with high interest and knowledge levels, but low grasps of the English language (Orca Books, a Canadian publishing house, is an excellent reference point http://us.orcabook.com/index.cfm?countryID=USA);
(d) reference materials, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses; and
(e) poetry collections of the Shel Silverstein type.
(f) Magazines, ranging from lifestyle and fashion to National Geographic, and comics would be wonderful assets to encourage otherwise discouraged or apathetic readers.
(g) Classics are also always welcome, even if they might be above level! We do have four or five students who have high-intermediate English skills and could attempt some more sophisticated literature.

To further develop local teachers’ capacity, I have also founded a women's book club with three teachers who all have an advanced command of the English language. Two learned English while working in Greece for several years. The third acquired her English through a joint university program with a Turkish institution. The three women understand spoken and written English fairly well and have a strong grasp of grammar, but very much need to expand their vocabulary and to practice speaking.

My fellow teachers have the potential to return to school to acquire Master's degrees in English language studies, greatly boosting their employability and earning potential. Public school teachers in Albania are paid a pittance. Most supplement their earnings with second or third jobs. Potentially working as a translator for an international NGO, a private business, or a municipal office would greatly improve their families' standard of living in a struggling economy.

More nuanced English skills would also give these women more control over the trajectory of their lives and those of their children in a traditionally male-dominated society. Women are mostly tied to their homes and have very little freedom of choice in Albania. They are bound by highly defined gender roles, by the scrutiny of their neighbors, and by family obligation. My goal is to arm these three teachers with a high-demand skill set that would allow them to make their own decisions in a global economy.

I plan to facilitate weekly meetings with the book club members to discuss how emergent themes and plot issues relate to these women's lives and to engage in spirited and constructive debate. We will also address new expressions/vocabulary and complex grammar structures embedded in the text. I would greatly welcome, in multiple copies (five or more per set would be ideal), any (a) contemporary novels stylized for female readers in their late twenties through their mid-thirties and any (b) biographies of women leaders you might have to offer.

Please consider donating to Leskovik and Jani Vreto! Any contribution, big or small, is welcome! To reiterate, we are seeking fiction and non-fiction chapter books, large story books, magazines, comics, and reference materials for grades 1 through 12. We would also greatly appreciate novels and biographies, in sets of five copies or more, for a women’s book club.

The introduction of English-language reading materials to our school and community will have an enduring and meaningful impact on many lives. I cannot fully express what kind of hope you could inspire in this town by just demonstrating your interest, your concern, and your willingness to contribute to a small Albanian community. My students, their parents, the teachers, and I would all be very grateful.

I am very happy to answer via email any questions regarding our situation, project plans/goals, how to donate, and specific needs. I am also able to set up appointments on Skype, if you first contact me with an email. Additionally, I am always interested in referrals to other potential donors.

If you are already planning to donate, I would like to say thank you! You can mail your contribution directly to our local post office. For the best shipping security and rates, I would recommend purchasing flat rate boxes from the United States Postal Service. Stamping or writing “Used Books – No Value” on the exterior of the box will circumvent the possibility of duty fees. Please consider placing in your box a list of its contents so I can verify that the contribution arrives intact at our post office! I would also very much appreciate an email (write to m.b.a.douglas@gmail.com) advising me of a shipment so I may monitor its progress and plan for its arrival. Most boxes take two weeks to travel from the United States to Leskovik.

My mailing address is:
Molly Douglas
Bulevardi Fan S. Noli
Godina X
Leskovik, ALBANIA

Also, I would be more than happy to send an email confirming your donation’s arrival in Leskovik and to update you periodically with news and photos documenting our library’s evolution. Just include a request for information in your shipment notification email!

Thank you so much for your kind consideration! I deeply appreciate it.

Warmest regards,

Molly Douglas
Peace Corps TEFL Volunteer
Leskovik, Albania
m.b.a.douglas@gmail.com

Catching up on an Albanian summer...

Hello Family and Friends!

It’s been an unpardonably long time since I last posted. At first it was work, then lack of internet access, and then the move to my permanent site… the feeble excuses are endless. I am now resolved to maintain this blog regularly!

This post is intended to bring you all up to speed, a summary of sorts.

I am now situated at my permanent site, finished with training and an official Peace Corps TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteer. I am, on my own, “opening” a new site, a remote mountain town called Leskovik in southern Albania. Leskovik is a bare nine kilometers from the Greece; I can see Greek villages glittering across the valley when we have clear weather.

During Communism, Leskovik was a critical military outpost on the border with Greece. We still have the remnants of the military’s strategic offices, artillery storage vaults carved into the mountain face, bomb shelters, and single-man anti-aircraft bunkers scattered all over the surrounding terrain. Post-Communism, the town’s economy has faded.

The only work available is at the school, in the town hall, and at the local clinic, so the majority of Leskovik’s residents have moved to Greece or to major Albanian cities in search of greater opportunity. We’re mostly a town of older folk, children, and unemployed men who listlessly watch sports in the summer heat at coffee bars while their wives endlessly clean at home… all waiting anxiously for the evening’s social hour.

But please don’t misunderstand! Though Leskovik is considerably quieter and slower in the post-Communist era, it is still a lovely town with a warm, proud, social, and culturally-rich community. Everyone waits for the evening xhiro, when the day’s work is done, and we all spill out of our homes into the main street to promenade in our finest (and to enquire endlessly after one another’s health and family). And you cannot find this kind of landscape anywhere else. We are situated at 900 meters above sea level on a sort of gentle ridge linking two modest mountain peaks to one another. The edges of town just begin to slip into narrow valleys bordering us to the southeast and to the northwest. We are surrounded by soaring mountains, raw vegetation, and sweeping skies. It is, in a word, stunning.

I am working as an English language teacher with an Albanian counterpart, the lovely Miss Ervisa “Visa” Muca. We teach at Leskovik’s grades 1 through 12 school, Jani Vreto. Jani Vreto serves a total of 370 students, though I am sure the numbers will change once we finish registering students for the fall semester. Currently, we are on summer break, or pushim. I will keep you posted.

Together, Visa and I are responsible for English language education in grades 6 through 12. Each grade level has an average of 20 to 25 students, who learn together in one class, regardless of level. A few of the grades have two classes of perhaps 15 to 17 students each, but none of the grades exceed a total of 35 pupils. This past year, Visa also taught on Tuesdays at a village school. I joined her for the final lessons of the semester, in a one-room schoolhouse where we met with six students. I sincerely hope we will have the opportunity to continue teaching there this fall.

The students at the village school are enchanted by English… I love teaching students who are dazzled by the opportunity to learn and meet every new concept, every activity with genuine enthusiasm. When these students reach the 6th grade, they will travel into Leskovik every day to join the students from our town for lessons at Jani Vreto.

I arrived in Leskovik just two-ish weeks before school let out for the summer and had the opportunity to explore the school's inner-workings. I say two-ish, because the students and teachers both check-out physically and mentally loooong before the final day of the semester. This summer I gave free English courses to adults and to students. Now I am on vacation, from courses, for two weeks. It's been a busy summer, which has been best for me. Being bored and isolated in the house does nothing for me. And I am pretty damn well integrated now; I have a host of Albanian friends and sometimes hide in my apartment to seek alone time.

Pushim is an excellent time for catching up on blogs and photos. Look for more shortly.

Much love,

Molly

New Mailing Address!

Hey folks!

I am now established in Leskovik, a little more than one week in. It's been a roller coaster. I promise a blog post soon-ish, when things calm down and I can figure out internet access.

In the meantime, please know that I can't receive mail or packages through the Tirana post office box.

New mailing address is as follows...

Molly Douglas
Bulevardi Fan S. Noli
Godina X
Leskovik
Albania

General Sentiments

My host family is what saves me every day when I am frustrated, am tired, or wake up slightly homesick.
Babsadiu (Babai Sadik - aka Father Sadik) greets every morning when I leave, welcomes me home every night, walks beside me with his arms folded behind his back so that we can observe the progress of the grape vines together.
My gysha (grandmother - Fatime) has a headache every day, thanks to high blood pressure, but she always hugs me, strokes my back, frames my face with her hands, ask me how my day went, and tells me that I look prettier today than I did the day before.
Nete, who I will now call my host sister (she's more my peer than my mother) talks with me about her children; about international music (which she loves); about her frustrations, hopes, dreams; how much she loves to fold fresh laundry; how much she wants to visit other countries; how much she wishes good things for family, for her children, for their future; what we should make for dinner. Nete is wonderful. She keeps her pains to herself, she always accommodates others, she has a wicked sense of humor, is very patient with my language-learning pace, and is stellar at language-learning herself. She speaks Italian, a great deal of English, some German, some Greek, and she understands a few other Balkan languages.
Dafina is always a little tired, but she is playful and is always interested in discussing how evolving state policies play out at the local level. We've talked about health care, the school systems, and rights for divorced mothers. She is a major practical joker and loves her son infinitely. She badly wants to relocate from Albania to a country where single mothers have more opportunity.
The younger children... that's a whole additional blog post.
I still wake up every day unsure exactly where I am. Is this my bed? Then my ears work out the cotton wool and I hear the cow bellowing and the roosters yodeling up to the rising sun, and I know that I am in Albania.

Upcoming...
Eating walnuts on the kitchen floor
Making Turkish coffee
Albanian weddings
Sleep-walking cousins
and more!

Random News and Observations

My basic daily schedule is as follows...
Wake up at 6:00, look at my travel alarm clock, cannot believe it's 6:00, go back to sleep.
Get up at 6:30, make my bed (can you believe I make my bed? see, some habits do die, and not that hard).
Pray that my babsadijo has already turned on the water and brush my teeth and face with freezing water (this is where I officially wake up).
Step out onto the balcony, watch the sun start to burn the mist off the fields and the valley floor for five minutes before deciding whether I should wear jeans or a skirt... The raincoat always comes with me.
Head into the summer kitchen (note: a few weeks ago when it was cold in the morning and at night we ate in the bodrum, or basement, kitchen with the wood stove) and make bread with gjalp (butter) and homemade grape or fig jam.
Chat with everyone who is already awake, kiss the kids goodbye as they wake up to get ready for school, and walk with Megi to school.
We walk on the train tracks, past the dead goat (which is now more sun-bleached skeleton than carcass) and severed snakes. Usually there are donkeys braying next to the tracks, tied to ropes picket in the hills. We also bump into old women scything the grass for cow feed.
I try to discourage Megi from picking flowers on the way - this is rose season and they are EVERYWHERE - but I usually end up with an armful of pink, red, peach, and yellow roses, heavy and nodding with perfume. It's decadent.
All of the trainees rendez-vous at the tiny school in Lazarej for lessons at 8, at the same time that school starts for the middle school students. The teachers stand on the front steps of the two-story school and wait for the director to arrive and kids to line up in the dustbowl of a front yard (also where recess takes place) before unlocking the front doors.
Our teacher comes in from Elbasan via furgon and meets us upstairs in the classroom we are borrowing. Just to reinforce the image, the school in Lazarej is bare bones, old, and cheerful. The halls are lined with potted succulents and geraniums - most Albanians deocrate their houses and public buildings with potted plants - two faded and ancient regional maps, and the national hymn.
We have class until 10:30, and then we take a coffee break at the tiny store next to the school. Lazarej has maybe 300 people total living on its slopes, so the store/cafe is a big deal. We get Turkish coffee or tea and talk about whatever news we might have heard the night before at our respective houses, both international and hometown news. We are trying to keep abreast of int'l happenings, but it's been very difficult to even fully understand what's happening in Albania.
Right know, our main coffee topic is the Socialist protest in Tirana, the capital city, and a recent engagement and upcoming dasme (wedding) in town.
We go back to classes until 1:00 pm.
Usually, we walk back on the tracks or on the road (where cars and semis blaze by at 70 miles per hour) with our teacher. Back in Pajove, we head to lunch at the same restaurant as the day before, and the day before, and the day before that...
The resturant owner is now completely involved in our lives. As a matter of fact, all of our host families are pretty much related to one another. The real challenge is trying to figure out who is at the center of the six degrees of separation! I think my host family might be winning.
No menus here, the restauranteur recites whatever might be cooking for the day. Usually, I order a plate of spaghetti or a scoop of rice with bean sauce drizzled over the top and a small salad. We hang out, talk about the grammatical gymnastics mastered (hopefully) that day, and then depart for our respective houses. Sometimes we head to a nearby cafe, which is owned by the brother of the host father of one of my fellow trainees. We are always greeted with kisses by the proprietor's wife, Dashuri ("Love").
When I head home, all of the women in my family descend upon me with questions about my day and usually Mande and Eri coax me into playing soccer or chasing chickens or similar. Sometimes I work in the garden and the greenhouse (made of split saplings and recycled plastic sheets), which is now sweating and steaming like the deepest of Amazonian rainforests. Mmm, I may be prone to exagerrations. I also help sometimes to round up all of the chicks and baby turkeys (there were over 60 the last time I counted) so they can be fed crumbled bread mixed with water aaaand HARD-BOILED EGG! After all of the effort I went through when I was little to remove cracked eggs from the coop at home so the chickens wouldn't turn cannabalistic! Oh well, eggs do have a lot nutrients that support baby development.
I have Turkish coffe with all of the women, either on the second-floor balcony, sitting cross-legged on carpets, or outside on the grass, once again cross-legged on carpets. This is my favorite part of the day. We gossip, talk about my day, discuss the progress of the tomato plants, the injustice of the primary school teacher's grading standards, the engagement of someone's sister's brother-in-law's niece to someone else's relative, natural beauty regimens, etc. I love the women in my family. They are honest, uncritical, interested, caring, unreserved, respectful, and they want me to treat them like family, as they treat me.
I am learning to make Turkish coffee!!! It's a far cry from what I used to do at Starbucks... but I am getting there. I will describe that in another post, promise.
Then I try to study, emphasis on "try". It's difficult to study without completely isolating myself from the family. It can be just depressing to shut my bedroom door. I like to hide on the balcony on the backside of the house, over the cow and the chicken coop, looking out over the fields. It's usually effective, and I can catch the setting sun in the evenings before dinner.
In the afternoon I also might do laundry and then hang it on the line with Nete. I love hanging laundry and pulling the dried and crunchy clothes back off the line the next day (if it doesn't rain, in which case it may be a bit of a wait for fresh underwear).
Every three days, if there is hot water left in the solar tank on the roof, I also take a really quick shower. Otherwise, I have to pay a visit to the fuse box in the unfinished floor at the top of the house and use precious electricity to heat water. The few times I have covertly tried to take a cold shower or tried to walk on the floor tiles without socks, my host sisters have playfully scolded me for not protecting myself against illness.
I now help with dinner prep every night. I have learned to make pizza from scratch and make the salad every night. I also can dice any vegetable in the palm of my hand, with just one thumb, and with a serrated knife... all without cutting myself. This includes lettuce, which I roll into long tubes and cut into strips that can be swirled with a fork like spaghetti. Much easier to eat. Salad here is lettuce with green onion, soemtimes cucumber and tomato, sprinkled sea salt, homemade vinegar, and homemade olive oil.
We eat dinner all together at the table in the summer kitchen. I have finally broken free of host family pressure to drink soda every night and now drink cold water (which is, semi-ironically, stored in a giant Coke bottle).
After dinner, I stay with the family in the summer kitchen and watch cartoons/Balkan music videos/the news. Only the babsadijo typically watches the news, and he does this in the bodrum kitchen, so I also had to kind of introduce news into the summer kitchen routine. I was starving for some news for quite a while.
I usually end up building pillow forts with Eri and Mande before scooting into bed. Sometimes I read by flashlight, sometimes I study, sometimes I pass out and wake up the next morning with my homework under my head.