My Site Assignment!!!!!!!!! (Big News)

I recently found out where I am going to be posted for the next two years!!! I am going to be in Leskovik, in the south of Albania practically on the border with Greece (nine kilometers from the official line). I am the first Peace Corps volunteer to be posted to Leskovik, so I am “opening the site”, and I will be going by myself.
I am going to work at a school serving grades one through 12 – pretty unusual. The high school and the middle school are merging and all 300 students will be in one building. I hope that better conveys exactly how small the town is. My counterpart, aka the Albanian teacher with whom I will share English instruction and hopefully team-teach, recently graduated from the university in nearby Gjirokaster. She took a few classes with Peace Corps volunteers at the university, so I hope that it won’t be too difficult to introduce the concept of team-teaching to our partnership. Plus, the school director is supposed to be really eager to receive a volunteer. The town applied several times before for a volunteer. ALSO, the school is transitioning from French language instruction to English within its foreign language program.
The nearest PC volunteer will be in Erseka, which is a larger town and is north of me by about 45 minutes. The road to Erseka through the mountains is rough, so I hear that it will frequently be decommissioned by mud and rock slides. Thus, in order to see other Americans, I will more likely be traveling to… to the east! Permet, another larger town, is about an hour and fifteen minutes away on a better road. Two volunteers will be in Permet, one guy from Group 12 and one girl from Group 13 (the latter is my “class” of volunteers). The volunteer in Erseka, a girl, is also a Group Twelver. She and the male volunteer in Permet are TEFLers, so, as each has been in Albania for a year, they will hopefully represent great resources. Also, the current TEFLers in Albania have banded together across the yawning distance represented by poor infrastructure (not actual geographic distance) to form a supportive network where they will each mentor one new TEFL volunteers.
Leskovik is a fshat (village) by definition, with a population of roughly 3,500 people. The whole of komuna Pajove is 1,500ish people, so I will be going to be a bigger town. Hopefully there will be internet… Fingers crossed, please.
I found out that my host grandfather was posted in Leskovik back when he was a military officer! The borders were firmly closed during Communism, so Leskovik was sort of like a lonely outpost in the mountains, guarding the sacred Albanian national spirit from the menacing threat represented by foreign governments and military powers. My grandfather was in Leskovik for seven years before he left the military to marry my grandmother.
Leskovik is situated below three famous peaks, all of which my babsadijo (less formal version of gyshi, which is grandfather) named for me… but of course now I can’t remember. And I can’t look up information on Leskovik independently – nothing is available in print or online, all of my information has been by word-of-mouth.
My grandfather also told me that the Leskovik is famous for its grapes and, consequently, wine and raki (the national moonshine). Leskovik is situated high in the mountains, so I will (dramatic voice here) be able to escape the suffocating heat that imposes a veil of apathy and fatigue on the rest of Albania during the summer. The winter is supposed to be quite cold and snowy, so I really really hope that my housing situation includes a wood stove. Snowy winters in Albania are also supposed to be gorgeous. The mountains and hills here are very defined with little more than sharp scrub, so you can see for miles. It's breathaking.
On the downside of a snowy winter... The cold can be bitter. Apartment buildings, houses, and businesses are built out of concrete. When the concrete warms up, it can be a heat trap. In the winter, it is conduit for the type of cold that settles in your bones. Cold doesn’t normally bother me, but I am starting to wrap my head around the concept of never being able to “go inside” and escape the cold. Aiee, it will be difficult in the beginning.
I am very very lucky to have enjoyed gorgeous weather so far; typically there is a lot of rain in the spring, and from the bit that’s fallen so far, I understand why rainy winters in central Albania are described as depressing by natives. Roads aren’t paved and central Albania is dusty, so mud sloshes everywhere. BUT, the rain smells wonderful and watching a storm sweep up the valley is incredible. It reminds me of driving through a storm on the highway in Montana. We watched a series of storms race up the valley floor last week. Blue and green lightning (not just your blinding white variety) snakes through the sky, and you can see the rain falling in sheets kilometers away and measure its progress towards you. The wind blows over everything standing outside and sometimes we have hail!! Stunning power. The balconies on each floor are several meters deep, but rain still rushes dramatically up to the threshold of each floor’s entryway and beats on the windows.
In Summary:
- Opening a site means that no one has set a precedent for Peace Corps work and American culture, so I will be the first one to try and make an impact in the community.
- Smaller towns can be more insular and protective. Everyone and his mother will know me, introduce themselves to me, try to feed me and try to make me feel as at home as absolutely possible. Albanians couldn't be more gracious. They will practically bend over backwards to make you comfortable and to ascertain your happiness level.
- It will be easier to save money!!! And I will have more time to invest in projects and to expand beyond the basics of classroom teaching into the rest of the community.
- Resources will be scarce, so I will need to get creative.