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.

Berat

BERAT
Over Easter weekend I traveled with another trainee to Berat, a small “city” (so defined by Albanian standards; loosely translated: a medium-sized town in the US). Berat is about two and a half hours south of Elbasan by furgon. All trainees traveled out of the Elbasan area to spend the Easter weekend with current volunteers in order to better understand how PC service plays out in reality. The Easter weekend visit was both a welcome break from tightly-scheduled training and a highly-anticipated opportunity to see a PCV in his/her natural habitat. Hari and I visited the current TEFL volunteer posted to Berat. The current volunteer is about to COS (Close of Service), but she opened her apartment to us anyway. Am I ever grateful! She has a way-above-PC-standard apartment (hot showers every day, enclosed shower stall, European toilet, a TV, a food processor!) in a beautiful town.
Berat is a south-central UNESCO world heritage site seated at the base of soaring blue mountains. Houses surviving from past centuries cling to the slopes of two steep hills, barely saved by packed dirt and genius with stone, brick, and mortar from sliding into the river below. The houses, partially built into the earth, compensate for lack of light on one face by filling the opposite with shumë (many) windows. Thus Berat is known as the City of a Thousand Windows, all rippling glass and white-washed walls quietly contemplating their neighbors on the opposite bank.
The new city of Berat is in a state of infrastructural transition, a ubiquitous sight in Albania. Half-finished construction dots the streets—half-finished either because money ran out, funds conveniently disappeared into someone else’s pocket, or who knows what. Doleful and slathered in graffiti, communist apartments crumble next to their rehabilitated and boldly painted neighbors. People call to one another through the rabbit’s warren of streets, alleys, and high walls. Laundry strung over balconies snaps and shivers in the breeze. A colorful bazaar lines a winding thoroughfare, offering teapots, knobs, plastic “Pumas”, gutted car parts, skeins of wool, bolts of cheaply printed cloth, and dyed songbirds. Roma women sift through the trash, and most streets smell of urine.
Pothole after pothole introduces a new gait to every pedestrian’s gait. Crossing the street between vehicles driven occasionally erratically and then occasionally lyrically by persons with both automotive and artistic licenses requires an entirely different set of foot-eye coordination. Mercedes hum past wizened grandmas swathed in faded black and calico who bounce rhythmically on the backs of gomarr (donkeys). Most of these gjyshas (grandmas) are younger than they look; hypertension, daily headaches, and a steady diet of saturated fats widen their waists and crimp their loving hands.
Wheezing horses pulling two-wheel carts, topped by casually standing drivers with reins and whip in hand. These serene commanders of swaying chariots lean back into nothingness, confident that the tendons in their knees and ankles, the tautness of the reins twined between their knuckles, and the spread of their feet on the rocking boards below will keep them aloft. Like early morning commuters in the Parisian and DC metros, these men rock and roll with the undulations of the transit beneath their boots. There ought to be an international competition…
Young couples and old friends slowly parade, or xhiro, arm-in-arm through artfully littered parks and down gracious boulevards hung with curtains of unfurling grape leaves. Mosques and Orthodox churches call to the few doctrinally-faithful, a fancy hotel hosts a wedding of glittering and heavily made-up guests, the bride poses for three wedding albums-worth of photos on a bridge, the stadium roars and swells with the heroics of local footballers, and yellow dust, always dust, swirls, chokes, cloaks, and settles. Until the next group of children run screaming by.
Above the town on a ridge (more than a hill by CT standards, not quite a mountain by anyone else’s standards) is a castle dating from the 4th century A.D., last modified in the 15th century by Ottoman invaders. People still live within the castle walls in houses without bathrooms and other utilities, per UNESCO standards. But this is Albania, sooo if rules can be gently nudged or easily forgotten, ah, s’ka problem (it’s no problem). A neat shrug of the shoulders and quick mire takes care of that.
There are Ottoman arches, a tower with a precarious perch from which to survey potential invaders, and a stalwart red-and-white stone Greek Orthodox church on the ridge, grandly calling out to the long-gone faithful who used to populate the valley below. You can see for many kilometers and always there is the sensation of being able to gently, even casually, slip onto an airstream and simply glide out and over the shimmering heat, the lazy river, the echoing call to prayer, and all the lives meandering below.
Two other trainees visited Berat’s health volunteer, so we six spent the weekend together. Hari and I wanted to observe the TEFL volunteer teach in a classroom setting, but did not get the chance due to the holiday weekend. In the end, the primary focus of our weekend was pancakes, site-seeing, homemade tortillas, site-seeing, cinnamon rolls, and did I mention site-seeing? I also was able to tap into the health volunteer’s internet connection in order to send out some emails and update virus protection, yay!

To Xhiro Or Not To Xhiro, that is never a question….

I can’t remember if I spoke about the Shqiptar national pastime known as the xhiro in my last post. To xhiro is to promenade; it is to entertain and to be entertained. Everyone promenades, especially when the weather is gracious enough to yield a balmy evening. Here, the xhiro can be performed by sedate married couples, by female friends of all ages, by young men with their arms slung over shoulders, and by old men sporting densely woolen vests, meticulously mended blazers, and caps, one arm folded behind the back and the other linked with the companion. Couples xhiro only if they are married or publicly engaged. Friends of the same sex can link arms familiarly and affectionately, leaning on one another and speaking intimately as they progress slowly in tandem. Such public displays of affection are perfectly acceptable between friends, especially as homosexuality is widely denied in Albania. Not being heterosexual is still largely incomprehensible. So, affection for one’s friends is freely given and received. The xhiro is an opportunity to visit old friends, to be admired in all one’s finery, to admire others, to greet acquaintances, to contribute to the circulation of local news, and to take the evening air. The custom is a remnant of Communism, when other options for entertainment were virtually suppressed. The xhiro became a natural outlet for a people burdened by incredible hardship; it offers relaxation, escape, and opportunity for simple pleasures.

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.

MAJOR UPDATES!!!

Much has happened since I last posted on this blog, and I apologize for the absence. Life of late has been dictated by a packed language and technical training schedule. For a while there was not much time to do anything but study dreaded grammatical cases; over-plan for lessons that end up either ruining or completely making my day; wile away a few hours in the evening constructing blanket-and-chair forts with Erjon and Mande; and long for more sleeping and fewer waking hours. Noun declension and a roomful of forty silent students haunted my dreams. I just finished practicum this past week, thank THE LORD. Perfect timing; I turned 23 on Friday.

Between the last time I posted and TANI (the now), I have…
1.Traveled to Berat, a small city in the south, to visit a currently serving TEFL volunteer two years into her assignment.
2.Participated in the third day of an intense Albanian wedding.
3.Muddled through practicum.
4.Traveled to Cerme and Lushnjje with Dafina and Tila to visit two other sisters in the Cullhaj family.
5.Gone on day trip with my fellow Lazarej trainees to Peqin.
6.Gone a long hike, waaay up in the mountains, with my Lazarej folk (again).
7.AAAAANNND, I found out my site assignment!!!

This coming weekend, ALL of the trainees are going on a hike and are going to camp on top of a "mountain" in Belesh, another training site. Should be awesome, especially because Albania can only become more beautiful the higher you climb... :)