Written on 21 March 2010!!!

Hello all! I am writing from my homestay cousin's uncle's computer in Pajove, the village 30 minutes outside of Elbasan where I am located for my homestay and "real" training. Once/twice a week we will travel back into Elbasan to rendez-vous with all 50 members of Group 13 (that's our "class") for technical, health, safety, policy, security, culture, etc. training. There are seven other TEFL trainees living within two to five minutes walking distance of me in Pajove. These are the same trainees with whom I will take daily language classes in Lazarej. For our first day of classes (Monday, tomorrow), my host family will walk me to the school (shkolle) in Lazarej where we are permitted to use a classroom with our language instructor. Tuesdays and Fridays are also for technical training - i.e. getting ready to be a TEFL volunteer.

Okay, so some more about Pajove and my host family, b/c I bet that is what you are most curious about!

Pajove is a small commune of twelve villages... I live in Pajove proper and am going to school in Lazarej, 15 minutes away. The owners of the house where I live are Sadik Cullhaj (pronounced chool-hi) and his wife, Fatime. Sadik is in his 70s and Fatima is in her late 60s. The lady in charge of daily life in the house is Nete (pronounced Neh-tuh), who is married to Sadik's son, Meleq. He might be the oldest or the youngest son - it depends who takes on the primary familial responsibility. The two other sons work abroad; a lot of men from Albania ("Shqiperia" - pronounced Shipper-ee-ah) go to find work opportunities in Greece, Italy, Germany, or the UK. They have a LOT of responsibility, shouldering the family's financial responsibilities. Nete has two children. First there is Erian, or Eri ("air-ee"), who is three years old, totally precocious, and infinitely cheerful. There is also a three month-old baby girl named Elinda, who is appropriately plump, warm, and full of smiles. I told Nete about the link between my niece and nephew and her children, which she likes. I also shared all of my family pictures today and presented Fatime with Munson chocolates and the kids (femije) with Cadbury Easter eggs to the children - including Mande, who I will introduce next. Mande (his full name is Armando and his nickname is pronounced just like Monday, the day of the week) is six years-old and the son of Dafina, Sadik and Fatima's daughter. She and her husband are divorced. Mande is six and a half, Dafina is 27, and Nete is 28.

They all live in a four-story house, where the roof stretches over a tier of open verandas on each floor, so the staircase is open-air and each floor has a main door to access the hallway and the interior rooms off the verandas. My room and the bathroon are on the third floor. I am very lucky b/c the bathroom has a French-style toilet, bidet, and an enclosed shower - very, very rare in Albania. But comforts and assets vary across Pajove - for instance, the Cullhaj family's neighbors have tractors and more animals. My host family has a milk cow, a horse, a whole bunch of chickens, some apple trees, some orange trees, and grape vines. The well is in front of the house, where the little lawn is spic and span green. The back of the house is mud and churned earth for spring ritual of fertilization. The family room - where everyone spends all their time b/c that is where you will find the wooden stove (no central heat!) - is on the bottom floor, which is actually like a very, very warm, white-washed basement(like a French cave) with full windows. The floor isn't subterranean, the ambiance just makes it feel as if you are in a cozy cave. The whole house is made of thick, thick cement, and the bottom floor sinks into the earth like a bunker. The house is square and has a flat roof with water tanks on top. It is set off the main road with a long strip of fenced-in agricultural property behind the house. Pajove sits on a river in a valley and all of the houses off the main road have a narrow strip of farming land that stretches back, alongside their neighbors' land.

Up the long, gated driveway before my house is another house, built in the same fashion, but painted a lime green (an Allie color!). This is inhabited by Sadik and Fatime's eldest daughter, Nimete. Sadik and Fatime have seven children in total - four girls and three boys). Nimete lives there with her three children, Matilda (22, a university student majoring in German), Renato (17, still in gjimnaz), and Mage (pronounced Ma-ge), who is ten years-old and a student at the school where I will take Shqip classes. Matilda, Renato, and Nete all speak a little English (Anglisht). Renato and Matilda grew up in Germany near Frankfurt, where their father still works and lives. Nete learned English from her brother and sister-in-law who moved to England. Though they only visit for three months every summer, Nete is a swift and incredibly intelligent learner, so it follows that her command of English is extraordinary.

Everyone is incredibly incredibly warm and friendly. Dafina is a bit shy, but I am right there with her. I have to fake an outgoing personality in order to become an outgoing house guest. There is no other way to survive! You MUST play charades and smile. Nete is my defacto host mother, so Fatima, who wants me to always sit next to her so she can study my face, smile, and pat my shoulder/hug me, is my grandmother. Sadik likes all of the silly stories about my interactions with the babies, who do not speak a word of Anglisht and have a hard time understanding that I am not great w/Shqip, but still play and try to talk to me all the time anyway. Matilda has also adopted me, and is really friendly and outgoing. She is engaged, but ALL, and I mean all, of her friends are married and a good portion have babies of their own. Typically, girls get married right after high school and before university. Marriage, however, is not a bar to pursuing higher education.

My first night (last night), I watched the movie "Matilda" (like the book by Roald Dahl) w/Matilda, Maggie, Eri, Renato, and Mande. The host families were told to let us sleep for as long as we wanted this morning, so I woke up at 7 and lay there until 8:15ish, but Erian came in at 7:30 to talk to me. Now I am understanding why we are encouraged to lock our doors!!! Plus, with little curious kids in the house, you never know what might disappear. I am not a big door-locker, so we will see what happens.

Last night I ate gjelle, which is a potato, onion and meat soup (additional vegetables optional) and buke (bread) with Coca-Cola! Dessert is a piece of fruit. I was encouraged to eat at the table with Sadik, Matilda, and Renato. Everyone else hung out w/us in the family room, watching TV. Food is prepared outside, I think, and then brought in. Sometimes we eat in shifts, depending on who has greater authority in the house and also depending on who wants to monitor the baby and little guys first. Women do all household chores, but the men are not ungrateful - it is simply gender roles. Families where both the men and women are employed are beginning to split the chores. Did I mention that the TV (a small flat screen above the refrigerator) is always on? Cartoons and music videos and Big Brother and subtitled/dubbed American movies! Renato and Matilda both shared their American music collections w/me. Everyone is married to their mobile phone, or celular (cell-you-LAR).

It's wild when you know everyone is talking about you, and you can only pick up a few words. But I don't mind at all, because the conversations in which I am featured (appear to be!) good natured or curiosity-driven. No one has been hostile or threatening. Everything out of the norm I do is silly and constitutes the opportunity to create and spread a new story. The volunteers in town are MAJOR news. Pajove is only 1408 people in all twelve villages!!! I challenge my friends and peers to build a private life here - it doesn't exist! I just worry about tiny faux-pas that perhaps the familje Cullhaj won't correct right away, and I will thus end up repeating. Albanians are very gracious and accommodating, so I don't want to trespass on their kindnesses. I also must be very very neat. Everything is sparkling clean and tiled in porcelain or marble. And we absolutely do not wear shoes in the house. Shoes are left outside on the stairs landings leading into the main doors of each house level.

This morning Nimete gave me a bunch of dark reddish purple wild iris! Very sweet of her. And then someone produced candy, so I hauled out my gifts, too. You are not supposed to whip out gifts right away, so we ease into the exchange. I am just taking as many cues as I can, including eating hard-boiled eggs at breakfast, which I am definitely having to get become accustomed to quietly. Salad is a huge staple here, as are pickled vegetables, so don't worry, Allie! Plus, I have a GIANT PC-issued water filter straight from the British military.

All of the kids came for this trip literally a minute up the road to the Matilda's uncle's video shop, so I am attracting a lot of attention. I get the impression that as a guest, I am getting this access for free!!! So we will see how things unfold after a few days and I am no longer new.

Spring is officially here! It is warm enough for just a shirt and everything is green, green. Our training program coordinators pronounced it Kesmet (Kismet), Albanian good luck.

Please Google Earth Pajove (it might be spelled Pajova and is outside Elbasan to the west on the main road), so you have an idea of where I live.

TEFL training is going to be hard-core. In our initial meeting with Agim and Ymer, we discovered that all 15 trainees (the other eight also live in Pajove, but they take separate language lessons) have a wide variety of talents and some have minimal English instruction experience. TEFL is the smallest job sector, so we can deduce that PC stretched wherever it could to find anyone remotely qualified for English instruction. In TEFL, we have two architects, a computer scientist, etc. We will observe classes, have a practicum, build a teacher portfolio of lessons etc, go over techniques, come up with secondary projects, like theater clubs and book clubs, etc. For all the TFA-ers out there, it is roughly comparable to your summer crash course prior to beginning work. In addition to team-teaching, we are expected to observe other teachers' lessons and to critique. We are the resident experts!!! We have, however, been cautioned that NO ONE team-teaches in Albania, so our counter-parts might be suspicious and unwilling at first, but they will hopefully adjust and respond to our flexibility, open-mindedness, professionalism, and attitudinal deference (all the appropriate buzz words). Agim, who long ago was a host brother and is the product of PC English education in high school and at university, is incredibly professional, but he also very friendly. Ymer is a university English lecturer, and a member of several regional boards of English ed and the co-author of a book. School starts in August and is going into vacation soon. Woo woo! I will have plenty of time to prep for next semester.

So, fingers crossed, b/c I know I will make or may have already made faux-pas and will get homesick/really sick, but it seems like life will be... GOOD. It is what we make of it! I want to do all that I can, whenever and wherever I can, so here I go.