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