Shkurt-Mars, part 1.

Me, Bob, Bebe, Teuta, Alex, Teuta's nephew, Teuta's cousin, and Cimi at dinner.

Bob and I in Kruja market.

Bob, Mom, and Sander in my office.

Ow man, am I behind on this blog. Good thing only my family, if anyone, reads this thing! So I had to break out my barely legible notes on my calendar to even remember what to write on this entry. So after IST, which was sometime in January, I came back to Rubik super motivated to do some work. IST was a huge stimulus and a good break from life in Rubik. The first thing I did on the Monday morning following the conference while I had my morning makiato at Mariani’s café was make a list of things I was going to do that week, or more realistically, that month! Out of 26 professional/personal objectives I completed only 16. Not bad considering how work goes here in Albania. Out of the 26 goals I had for the month the top few were: Finish the Foreign language lab; fill out applications for the Mayor and Nik for Budva, Montenegro environmental conference; plan/clean house for Mom’s trip; and meet with the Mayor and Nik about future projects. Results???? First of all the project we have been working on, I guess the more accurate phrase would be, the project we have been waiting on for the past 9 months is the foreign language lab. Chuck and I wrote the abstract and the budget for this project back in May and it was approved by the French Embassy in August. Since then nothing has been done! Today is May 17, 2010 and we finally bought the computers this morning. Just to be mindful of anyone who is actually reading this, the next paragraph is out of chronological order. I will get back to the exciting months between February and April in a bit but I am so happy we finally finished this project I need to write about it. I am trying to keep all of this blog in order, you know for my memoirs, totally kidding.

Okay so in the past 4 months I have been tersely and periodically meeting with the Mayor and my counterpart Sander. Mark, who is our Mayor, was out of town for the entire month of March. When he returned I presented him with the offers that Sander and I had gotten from pretty much every computer store in the capital city. He then replied, “It looks like we are ready.” No shit, we have been ready for the past 6 months. So he asks me, “When would you like to go to Tirana to buy the computers?” I reply, “Tomorrow.” In true Albanian nonchalant style he says to me, “Si te dukesh,” or “How you like.” I tell him, “Okay so we will go tomorrow, what time?” Again he repeats, “Si te dukesh.” I reply, “10 am.” Guess what he tells me, “Si te dukesh.” This phrase along with a few others drives me insane. You can ask my brother, sister, mother, and father what my response was during my first 21 years when I was asked what I wanted to eat or to do…”Si te dukesh” or more accurately, “I don’t care, you decide!” When I answered this way it was to avoid the ensuing argument that would come from deciding where to eat or go in a family of four, the dreaded even number with no tie breaker. My tactic as a minor was just to put up with whatever the rest decided and make the best of their decision. This is not the proper tactic of a government official! I did not catch on to this fact quickly. It took me four separate occasions and four months to realize that my mayor needed a bit of a push to get this project completed. After the fourth failed attempt to buy the computers, meaning the fourth time Mark said we were going to Tirana, me showing up to work early, and none of the members of the project commission (we have to have 5 members of the staff/community and myself agree on the computers and the day we buy them for the purchase to be legal, or so I have come to understand) showing up…I got a little pissed. I started off by talking to my counterpart, who has a small stake in the project, it is a terrible thing and shameful (I use the word shameful because this is the multi-tool word that Albanians use for shame, embarrassment, stain, shyness, and about 15 other meanings) to the municipality that we have been awarded money but have not finished the project yet. He took the high road of course and started teaching me words to describe the Mayor, who is not at work this particular day but a fairly good friend of mine. A few weeks later we had a meeting in Rreshen about a project on behalf of the Swiss development agency. The project is a funding opportunity for the region of Lezhe and Shkoder which incorporates our Bashkia. This meeting was to explain the process of evaluation of every municipality in the region and Sander (my official counterpart) chose this time to quiz me on the words I had learned about Mark. At a coffee with the Swiss official, his co-workers, and all the mayors in my region (minus Mark and the mayor of Rreshen), Sander asked me what he said about mark, in shqip “What did we say about mark, what was the word.” I responded by throwing my hands up and saying, “I have no words for Mark.” Sander just laughed but I knew he was going to do something dumb. The next week at work I come into the office to work on a grant with the NGO director Nik, who is also my good friend. When I come in to the office the whole floor erupts in yelling. Mark comes into my office and starts yelling at Sander who responds with curse words and a bunch of phrases that would not translate to English for example, “you have gone for hair!”, an insult that means you have become a Neanderthal or an idiot. Mark then leaves the office in a huff. Sander and Mark then begin to yell at each other through the wall we share at the municipal building. Sander then goes to the Mayor’s office and starts yelling, which I can hear through the wall we share. Sander returns to our office and the Mayor follows shortly thereafter. This process repeats for about 30 minutes until Mark comes back to my office, strangely calm, and says he is ready to talk about some business I have with him, this work is unrelated. I will talk about the business we had later but the week after this little melt down between friends was a holiday that only Rubik and another small community celebrate. So, as you may guess on your own we didn’t go to purchase the computers that week either. We did however buy them today, May 17th, it was funny, a task that only required one three hour trip to Tirana with myself and the Director of Finances for the municipality actually took one year to come to fruition and a two car caravan of 8 people…the “foreign language lab commission.” I guess this is how things are done here, I am just happy the first project I have been a part of is finally in the closing stages!!! I will add however that the trip to purchase the computers was done in true Albanian fashion. I was woken up at about 8:30 in a daze this morning by a call from my counterpart. Sander says in Shqip, “Good morning Bretli. Where are you?” I tell him as I always do when he wakes me up in the morning for some inane reason, “I am in bed what do you want?” This is a lot less rude in Albanian by the way. He tells me to hurry to work because we are going to buy the computers this morning, of course he takes a few seconds to tease me about his suspicion that I am still in bed because of a girl. Dirty old men in this city, but they are great. This is when I rush to work excited, optimistic, and groggy. I get to work expecting that they are waiting for me from Sander’s tone, but instead sit in a car for twenty min with the rest of the “Commission” talking about…well basically nothing. There was a small fire in town that day, no one was hurt and little property was damaged, but this little morsel of gossip was stretched much too long. Alright, enough of the computers!!! Back to February thru Today.

Howah, what happened between the months of February and May 17? Seasons changed, my Mom and Uncle came to visit, funding was approved, I probably had a little bit of fun, and almost certainly I did some sort of work! Well, first off my wonderful Mother and Uncle Bob came to visit me in March. The weather had been utterly retched for the two months before they arrived. It was raining everyday and we hadn’t seen a dry day for more than a fortnight. It was wonderful. I think I have mentioned this before but I will repeat myself, I am weary of the sun. Spending my first 22 years in the Sonora Desert where the sun shines something ridiculous, I have grown to have an aversion to perpetual light. Not to say I loathe the sun or anything, the sun brings life and all that crap. I would just like to spend a few years in a place where it rains as much as the sun is out in Tucson! Anyhow, the day my mom and uncle arrived they ruined our streak of awesome (or miserable depending on whom you ask) weather. They flew in on the first sunny day we had experienced in weeks. My mayor was out of town for the month visiting his family in America, I wrote about his family status in preceding entries. Before he left he did insist on having my family picked up by the municipal driver, who drives the Mayor’s car. Martin, the driver and a pretty nice dude, and I picked my mom and uncle up at Mother Teresa International Airport in Rinas, which is 30 minutes outside of Tirana. It was really great to see both of them and we started the 1 and a half hour drive to Rubik for the first stop on their Albanian tour!!!

Mom and Bob Come to Visit!!!

We started off the trip in Rubik with a tour of my abode. Of course they were impressed with my doorman, the high tech lift, my spacious bathroom, and the all appliance included flat. Just kidding of course, my place is a borderline dump depending on who you ask, I think it is cozy. My friend Peter, who is finishing his Peace Corps service in June, came by to return the backpack that he had borrowed from me so naturally we had a café. My family had been in country for about two hours and already were experiencing Albanian culture. They were picked up in a municipal car and were now engaging in the highest of Albanian social interaction…the café (we had a raki with it of course). After Peter headed back to Lezhe, we started down the main street (one of three streets in Rubik) and were shortly invited to another café. We ran into my friend Artan who is a police officer for the region of Lezhe (I guess this is equivalent to a county sheriff). We sat with Artan for about an hour and to my own amazement I was able to translate the conversation reasonably well. After café with Artan we went to my favorite restaurant in Rubik, okay one of only two actual restaurants in Rubik. They were both feeling tired from the flight so we headed back to my palati (apartment which actually translates to palace). My mom and I went out alone around 8 pm to find some dinner because Bob was still tired. We, well I, decided to go to the place that serves rotisserie chicken and my mom just loved it. The chicken of course was fresh never frozen village chicken. Just a side note, that place has since stopped selling chicken because the owner is a poor business man, and a bit of a douche! The next morning was a riot and a true representation of the hospitality Albania is…or should be…famous for.

We woke up and headed down to Pashk’s market because it was raining a little bit and I had recently lost my umbrellas, the only day it rained the entire trip. We crossed the street and bumped into about 5 employees/friends of the Bashkia. I presented my Mom and Uncle to all of them and the 4 women all had kisses on each cheek for my mom. Then in the middle of all this European greetings, which is slightly overwhelming at first, this older woman who is a bit of a nutcase ran up to us. This woman is extremely sweet and always makes an effort to say hello to me and thank me for what I do. This day was no difference and in the middle of presenting her to my mom (keep in mind there are now 6 Albanians standing around my Mom and Uncle on the street doing the standard 3-5 greetings) she runs into the middle of the street and out from under a moving vehicle runs a huge rat, looked more like a small cat! The slightly crazed woman winds up and with an umpf kicks this cat sized rat across the road in the air. The rat smacks against a wall about two feet above the ground and lands in a drainage ditch. Like nothing at all happened she returns to finish kissing my Mom on the cheeks. I think I can speak for my guests when I say this was a bit of a culture shock. First morning in a town and you are accosted by a handful of extremely nice although direct people can be a little awe-inspiring. The fun didn’t end there. We went to my usual morning location, Mariani’s café where my Mom and Uncle were treated to a café by a friend of mine. If anyone is counting that is 3 cafes in less than 24 hours which were gifts from a population that is slightly indigent. After the regulatory morning café, we headed to buy some byrek from my favorite byrek lady in Albania and then headed for the municipality. There are two types of byrek (pronounced boo-rek, if you say b-rek it means ladies underwear) that are sold in Rubik, onion or gjiz (pronounced jeez or jiz…kinda funny right, Bob thought so). I don’t like gjiz, not because of its name but because it is a real funky cheese. When we arrived at the municipality we snuck straight to my office and sat with Sander. He did the usual greetings, “Thank you for coming to my office, how is your health, how do you like Albanian, how do you like Rubik, are the people nice” and then continued to talk about the work I have done, how I am a member of his family and told stories of his sons sticking up for me when Sander was teasing me for my language ability. Sander has two sons, one is 8 and the other is 11. Both understand English and the 11 year old, Fabien, speaks excellent English and German. Sander’s wife is the counterpart of the TEFL volunteer in Rubik and the English teacher at the 9-year school. I am translating all these stories and phrases and I think my mom is impressed, what she doesn’t know is that these are stories that Sander always tells so I have had practice translating them in my head over and over. After about ten minutes of talking with Sander, his wife arrives at the office. Apparently, due to the distinguished guests who had come to visit the Bashkia, Bardha was called away from her classroom in order to properly translate for the vise-mayor. Sander then escorts my guests and I into the Mayor’s office where Pjeter (the vise-mayor) and about 20 staff members have congregated. Pjeter had called a staff meeting and a translator so he could properly introduce my family, commend my work, and thank my Mom and Uncle for visiting their city. After the 15 minute meeting we, of course, headed to the café that is in the bottom floor of the Municipality. Sander, Pjeter, Bob, and myself all had a café and a raki (9am) and my mom had a tea. They talked more about stories we have had together and then they asked where my guests were staying. I told Pjeter and Sander that they were sleeping at my apartment. This was not taken lightly. They began to say what a bad person I was for not telling the municipality to put them in the only hotel in Rubik and then began to insist that they stay in the hotel on the Bashkia’s dime. Keep in mind the municipality does not have the money to put them up in a hotel, so most likely they would just tell the hotel to host them. After about ten minutes of giving me shit and me denying the offer they decided to just invite us to dinner at their respective houses instead. That night we would eat at Pjeter’s and Saturday we would eat at Sander’s. We spent the rest of the day in Rubik checking out the various spots I loiter and the Rubik Church. It takes about 15 minutes to walk from each edge of town so we drank a lot of cafés and met with some of my old man friends.

That night we ate at Pjeter Malshi’s house, the vice-mayor. Pjeter is a large jovial man who looks like (and probably can) eat an entire cow. I have a bit of a difficult time understanding what Pjeter says because he speaks a dialect I am having trouble picking up. I had never been to Pjeter’s house before but when we arrived around 18:00 the night began like many other experiences I have had at Albanian homes. We were all served drinks and a candy as soon as we sat down. My mom drank wine while Bob and I had raki. Pjeter declared that we could not leave his home until the three of us finished the liter of raki!! We stayed at his house talking and eating and drinking for about four hours. My Uncle has an interesting sense of humor and is actually really funny. The problem comes when he tells jokes or a comment that would be hit or miss in America to Albanians. This happened several times that Bob would say something and my friends would say, “Ç’ thot” or “what did he say.” I would have no idea where to even start to translate some of these comments and would usually just make something up like, “he said you have a nice house” or “My Uncle would like another raki.” After a while I just told Bob, “No more jokes, you killing me.” One particularly awkward moment was when Bob asked what the word is for nephew. Okay, no problem, I can say this. So I ask Pjeter and he replies, “Nipi.” The way he said it sounded like nipple and Bob and I start giggling like 12 year old boys. Pjeter asks “what is funny.” I spent about 15 minutes trying to explain to him that the word sounds like something in English that is kind of comical. I was trying my best to do hand gestures and describe it (I don’t know what nipple is in shqip) without offending his wife. After some time I just gave up. Towards the end of the night I was so tired, and a little drunk, that I was giving up on translating. Pjeter would say something in Albanian and I would turn to my guests and say “Now I am not too sure what Pjeter said but just smile and laugh a little.” They would and this is how the last hour transpired. We were getting tired and were gearing up to leave when Pjeter’s wife disappeared out the front door and Pjeter left the room as well. Pjeter returned with a bottle of raki, (homemade of course) for my uncle (they tend to reuse bottles and Pjeter used a bottle from a knock-off Irish cream, it was called Lover’s Cream, needless to say this was a running joke the rest of the trip) and his wife returned with a bag full of fresh fruit. This is how hospitality should be. Someone comes to your house, nothing is expected from the guest except to eat, drink, and basically consume as much as possible. Awesome!! The next morning we headed for Kruje in the first experience of public transportation for my guests!!

We decided to take a bus that travels from Rreshen through Rubik and then to Tirana via Fushe Kruja. It was one of the nicer ones so my guests were gradually introduced to public transit in Albania. When we arrived in F. Kruje we flagged down a furgon (mini-bus) that was headed up the hill to Kruja. Kruja has a real nice ethnographic museum, a castle, and the museum for the national hero, Gjergji Kastroti Skanderbeu, or Skanderbeg in English. If you are interested in what we did here you can look it up on the internet. After we hung out all day in Kruja we headed back to F. Kruje to meet with my good friend and a truly amazing woman named Teuta. Teuta was the host mother for the previous volunteer in F.K. and is also a great help to the current volunteer Alex. She is a completely selfless woman who does not have very much money, works 6 days a week from 8am-8pm, and continues to give. She is a Muslim woman with an extremely nice husband, Çimi, and a daughter, Bebe. I didn’t have much of a choice to bring my family to Teuta’s house for dinner. When I first told her my Mom and Uncle was coming to Albania, the first thing she said in her broken English was, “You bring to my house.” I told her that I would if we had time and she replied how she normally does when we refuse her hospitable offers, “You bring to my home, I kill you Brett.” I really wanted my Mom and Uncle to meet Teuta and hear what she has to say about her country and her life. We all talked about social issues in Albania and I think my Mom and Uncle just sat and listened most of the meal, about 3 hours. Teuta talked about the flak her and Çimi received when they hosted the previous volunteer. People would call Teuta a slut for having café with the volunteer whom she refers to as “Brother Bill” and would ask Çimi why he lets his wife sit with this foreigner. Çimi is a great Albanian man and could not give a crap what people say, a rare quality in Albania. She also told my guests about when she took in 18 Kosovar refugees for two weeks during the war. Teuta lives in a small two bedroom flat and took in 18 REFUGEES THAT SHE HAD NEVER MET FOR TWO WEEKS. She fed and housed these strangers for no reason other that they needed help. We had a great time, took many pictures, and ate a lot of food. Teuta speaks decent English so it was a relatively low energy dinner for me. We then spent the night at Alex’s house and returned to Rubik the next morning. This was a more Albanian trip than the trip to F. Kruje. We had missed the autobus that leaves Tirana in the morning so instead we just stood on the side of the national highway and waited for a furgon to a transfer city called Laç. Laç is a very dirty, ugly city and from there we got another furgon to Rubik via Rreshen. This was a typical ride, lots of people slammed in a small vehicle all staring at the strange looking foreign people. The driver also had a dead chicken next to his seat, the day was Sunday and many people go to market, or Bazar. We got back to Rubik and relaxed for a few hours at my house and then left for Sander’s house for yet another dinner!

I am gonna go ahead and post this because who knows when I will finish the rest of this story. The remainder will be coming shortly. Today is Friday June 18, 2010 and I am heading on vacation for two weeks. I am going to be traveling to Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary. It will probably take me like 6 months to catch up on this blog but I will try. Peace.

Christmas and IST...

Donkey cart!

Trip to Kukes during the big snow, a truck fell off the edge and the backhoe just made a new road, although it took one hour for the Albanian men to decide what to do through arguing, and another hour to navigate the backhoe, ow Albania!

UNDP (United Nations Development Project) presentation for re-development of Rubik's industrial zone. We had a Czech consultant come to the Bashkia and help us brainstorm on how to develop the project.

First of all I wrote this in the middle of February but I plan to cover the last two months! My life here is, well, honestly pretty laid back. My day basically starts when I decide to get my butt out of bed. During the summer I was at work earlier but that is only because it was easier to get up, now it is so damn cold I need to pep myself up every morning to face my freezing apartment. Literally, tomatoes froze in my kitchen the other night! After I get up I usually have a bowl of cereal (I eat a German cereal called “shocko flakes,” which are like chocolate corn flakes and the only cereal they sell in Rubik), get dressed and then head down to café Mёriani (who is the rather fat, jovial, crossed eyed man who owns the café, and a really great guy). Almost every morning I have a makiato (a shot of espresso with a tablespoon of steamed milk) and sit either alone reading or with an Albanian, who is almost guaranteed to be an old man. I usually arrive to the Bashkia, unless I have a meeting, any time between 9am and 10:30am. The Bashkia opens at 8am and closes at 3:30pm every weekday but it is really hard to actually get any work done while I am there. There is no information office or person to tell the residents of the municipality where to find people or information so often people just barge into our office looking for someone. Also, the staff members of the municipality are constantly asking me to help them with some problem with their computers or on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about this and I work at the Bashkia to help the staff learn about changes in technology, but if I have something I need to write, research, or just complete I don’t want to be interrupted every twenty minutes. On occasion, usually about two days a week, few staff members of the municipality are even in their offices so I can actually get work done while in the building. Usually my day starts with routine, but no day since I have been working at the municipality has gone the way I planned it. Some days I go in with a plan but end up in a meeting, helping on a project, working on a computer problem, or drinking raki with staff members. Someone had asked me what I do on a day to day basis; this is really the best I could come up with.

The weeks before Christmas were difficult. I was starting to get a little home sick and work was not what I expected it to be like when I first arrived to Albania in March, wow almost a year ago! I was kind of bummed that none of the projects I had been working on were moving ahead swiftly. At that time I was still waiting to hear back from the proposal I had written for BRASH (the environmental NGO in Rubik) and the other grants we wanted to apply for didn’t leave us enough time before they closed. This is only the second time in the last year that I have felt homesick, the other time I had a bit of a fever and my host family was not helping. They wanted me to get out of my warm bed and go into the other room where the wood stove is and where they all watch TV, while I just wanted to sleep in peace. They also fed me three greasy fried eggs with a mug of tea that had enough sugar in it to bake a cake! Needless to say, in the poor state of my stomach I think my host mom is the one who ended up suffering due to that meal choice, I won’t get into detail. Anyways, I was pretty homesick and I still wasn’t sure what my plans for Christmas and New Years were. It ended up that about two days before Christmas I went into to my Mayor’s office to wish him a happy Christmas and he invited me to spend Christmas Eve and day with him. On Christmas eve he called me around 4pm and told me he would pick me up at 6pm and that I should wear something nice because we were going to a house in Rasfik (a village in the Municipalities jurisdiction) and then to Mass. Mark is really hard to understand and even my program manager who is an Albania can’t understand his Shqip so the night started out a little weird. I honestly understood little about what he said on the phone except “brbrbrbrbrbr mass brbrbrbrbrbr nice clothes brbrbrbrbr Rasfik,” so I was relieved when I understood him and he picked me up. Mark’s daughter and wife live in Connecticut and Mark actually has a Green card. His daughter goes to college in America and he visits about once a year to keep his green card valid but doesn’t plan to move there until he is ready to retire. I thought this was strange at first, but I realized he is a mayor in Albania and an important figure in the Democratic Party. If he moved to America to be with his family he would have little choice for work and it definitely wouldn’t be as good of a job. Anyway, this is why we weren’t having dinner at his house. We went to a friend of his and ate a huge dinner, large plates of meat and locally grown and produced vegetables. I heard somewhere that it is tradition in this part of the world to have fish for Christmas Eve and that is just what we had. After about three hours of eating and drinking Raki we departed to head back to Rubik where Mass was being held at the 900 year old church that overlooks Rubik on a cliff. The community I live in is 98% Catholic and the only region in Albania that was never governed by Turkish law during the Ottoman Empire’s 500 some odd years that they occupied Albania. So, needless to say Christmas is a big deal in Rubik, second only to Dite e Shelbuemit (day of the ascension of Christ, 40 days after Easter, I think, not a theology scholar). Anyways, Mark and I are running a little late so he calls the nuns who live in our community and tells them to please wait until we arrive before they start the service. I thought this was just hilarious, because Mark and I were drinking Raki at his buddy’s house is reason for a religious event to be postponed twenty minutes, thankfully the nuns are some of the few people who don’t listen to Mark’s requests. When we arrive at the Church Mark, being the egomaniac he is, proceeds to pull all the way against the Church gate. I should be more specific, the Church sits atop a natural stone altar which acts as sort of a podium where the Church can view the entire city. The road that weaves its way up to the Church gate on this night is just bumper to bumper parked cars of people from around the area who actually made it to the service on time. Mark decided that since he was Mayor he would just navigate his way through all these cars until he was as close as mechanically possible to the church, I might had that he is also quite the portly man and loses his breath while eating too fast. When we finally park the car, we are now twenty minutes late, the service has already begun and there are people standing outside of the Church listening to the service from one speaker that is placed outside for this purpose. The Church itself was wall to wall people and most of them were standing due to the lack of seats. This does not stop Mark of course. He busts into the Church and with a wave of his finger has told two people to scoot over causing one older woman to stand in the aisle so Mark and I have a place to sit. I felt so bad but could not insist she remained seated due to the disturbance we had already caused. Just a side story, this has happened to me once before. The second month I lived in Rubik I went to Tirana for some R&R and grabbed a bus from Rubik that was just packed with people. The driver, who is from Rubik, noticed who I was and told a middle aged woman to give up her seat for me “out of respect for the American” he said. I adamantly refused the chair, the ride is two hours to Tirana and I am a young dude who would have no problem standing. She insisted and ended up grabbing the back of my arm and forcing me into the chair, she had obviously milked a few cows in her day because she almost broke my arm with her G.I. Joe Kung Fu grip. The women in this country are ridiculously strong! I of course was emasculated by this experience; firstly because growing up you are always told woman and elderly first and second because she literally tossed me into the seat and was about a foot shorter than me.

Back to Christmas Eve, the service lasted a good hour and one half, that is of course after we decided to arrive. I had never in my life been to a mid-night mass for Christmas in any language. Also, this was only my 3 Church service that I had ever experienced so I had no idea what was going on. The service was really beautiful and there was lots of singing, candles, standing, sitting, kneeling, and then standing again. When the service ended Mark and I stood around for a little while saying Happy Christmas and New Year to people and then walked back to his awkwardly parked car. This was nuts, everyone else was leaving at the same time and Mark just decided to honk his way through the traffic until we were free. I could have walked home faster. I should also add that Rubik can be walked end to end in less than 15 minutes at a slow pace. Why so many people drove to this service is beyond me. Albanians were not permitted to own or operate private motor vehicles until the fall of communism in the early 90’s, so this may be a reason people drive pretty much everywhere. Mark then dropped me off at my apartment but I did not go home. I noticed that almost the entire community was out walking, blowing off fireworks, and drinking in the cafes and locales. I decided I would have a beer to celebrate my first Christmas away from Tucson so I went to one of my favorite places, sat outside alone, and ordered a beer. When the waiter brought it out he said that one of the guys inside had bought it for me. I looked in and not recognizing the person thanked him and wished him a happy Christmas, (Gezuar Krishtlindjet). I sat there enjoying my beer, watching and eavesdropping on conversations around me, and just thinking how crazy it was that I just experienced something that only a handful of other westerns had ever experienced. When I finished my beer I got up to leave but was invited by a group of young men to sit and have another with. It turned out that they were all the same age as me but none were employed or in school. There were about 8 of them and most had worked in Greece or Italy as immigrant laborers to make their money and now were wasting it on me. I had a great time talking to these guys but realized really quickly why I spend most of my time hanging out with men two to three times my own age, maturity. I am not the most mature person. I get a good laugh from bathroom humor and still occasionally watch a cartoon or two. A huge problem in Albania right now is the education and lifestyle of its youth. Many kids do not take school seriously and for good reason. Imagine busting your ass for years to go to a college. Now imagine that college degree was only good in Albania were the unemployment rate is pushing 35%, last time I heard. Now you have spent all this time and effort with what to show for it, maybe a job serving coffee or possibly doing labor in a neighboring country. This is not to say that there are not well educated and motivated people in Albania, it is just getting less and less common, and some blame it on the new government, democracy. I am not giving an opinion or anything; this is just an observation of the country. Anyways I ended up staying up late with these guys discussing various issues with two of them who were actually fairly bright and ended up getting to bed around 5am. This is insane by the way, 5am in Rubik! This is the latest I have ever stayed out here, in America it is a different story on a weekend night, but my usual Albanian bedtime is around 8:30!!!! Going to bed so late and well lubricated I ended up sleeping through my dinner plans with Mark. I woke up around 4:30 in the afternoon on Christmas Day and was supposed to meet Mark to travel to another friend’s house for dinner around 4pm. O’well, I decided I would rather just stay home anyways and ended up eating Hormel Chilly that my mom had sent me in the last package for Christmas Dinner, it was actually awesome.

Since this time of year is pretty popular in Albania, of course no one showed up at the Bashkia. I decided I would head south to Elbasan and celebrate Seth’s birthday with him. On that note I am going to skip the next two weeks! (don’t worry, nothing bad just nothing interesting either)

Towards the end of January my group had its IST. (I am in group 12, the 32 people who came to Albania on March 17, 2009 and IST is In Service Training) To be honest I was not excited for IST. The last conference we had was the language refresher and that turned out to be a complete waste of time. About 5 days before I was going to leave for Durres where the IST was going to be held I received a phone call from my program director, Diana who is a really intelligent and kind Albanian woman. She asked me if I had finished my presentation that I was going to give during IST. I asked her “What presentation?” Apparently I had gotten an email about two weeks before this conversation asking me to prepare a presentation on GIS and issues pertaining to cartography in Albania. James, who is our Volunteer Action Committee representative for my sector had said that I would do it but like my director had only contacted me by internet. The internet in Rubik has been down since the middle of December. No problem though, this is Albania and sometimes things happen and you just have to deal with it. So I prepared a presentation, although half assed and from information a learned and tried to remember for college classes. The presentation actually turned out really good and my colleagues seemed to get a lot out of it so I will give it again to the incoming group. The rest of the conference went really well and we all learned a lot and shared ideas and information. After the IST a group of us went to Fushe Kruje for Alex’s birthday. Her quasi host family was throwing her a party and since I am good friends with the woman who was throwing the party, Teuta, I was asked to help. This is fine cause I actually do enjoy cooking and I get a kick out of Teuta and her family (çimi, her husband, and Bebe her daughter). Men in Albania do not help in the kitchen so çimi was teasing me while I helped slice vegetable and cook the two women. He was actually pretty funny. He doesn’t speak English and speaks a dialect that I am starting to understand. He kept saying that he was American because we had convinced him to smoke outside and other things that wouldn’t make since if I wrote them here. The night was really fun and we ate a boat load of food and drank a freight load of wine. Ow, right…during IST I also learned that my proposal for an Environmental Awareness campaign in Rubik was denied. Kind of a bummer, but such is life, things are up and down, cyclical!! It is a bit difficult finding funds for such a small community but we are going to look other places and possible send the same proposal again in May. Well it is not the end of March so I have effectively been writing this one entry for two months. It is getting harder and harder to think of interesting things to write as my service progresses. Every day things seem less and less weird to me, that is not to say things are still not weird. Everyday has its surprises and is exciting in its own. Okay, I am going to post this as soon as I can.