We are still wondering when the “toughest job you’ll ever love” part starts, but we know it is coming. We have been in Albania for over a week now and it has been great. Our family has welcomed us as one of their own. They love teaching us Shqip (Albanian) and go back and forth as to which one of us is doing better, Laruen is in the lead so far this week, (At least in the dad’s eyes). The weekends are nice because Griselda our sister is home and can translate for us but during the week we are on our own to figure out what people are saying. Our host father speaks Italian so he and Lauren figure out a lot of things with their Spanish, Albanian, Italian conversations. But this doesn’t always work out in the end and things get confused. But we have a lot of fun trying to figure it all out. Bani our host brother is highly amused by us even though we took over his bedroom and he now sleeps on the sofabed.
One such event was Lauren explaining that her brother works in a juvenile detention center. Unfortunately, for us, the verbs in Albanian to live and to work are very similar and by the end of the conversation the dad wanted to know what kind of drugs Lauren’s brother had done to end up in prison, while the mom wanted to know if Lauren’s parents were allowed to visit him. Thankfully, Griselda helped us clear that all up when she came home this weekend.
Our normal week consists of going to language class at the local high school with our teachers Irwin and Oriola, and the 5 other volunteers Sophie, Lindsay, Adam, Reino and Erwin four days a week, including Saturdays. The school is a 20 minute walk down the mountain…luckily we found a shortcut through Adam’s house. We have Sundays off and the other two days we travel by furgon (minbus) to Elbasan, the second biggest city, for sector specific training, health for me and TEFL for Lauren. The high school where we have language class is cold so we all wear winter coats, hats and gloves for the entire 5 hours that we are in the building. None of the buildings here have insulation, so if it is 50 degrees outside it is 50 inside, which when you are not moving around feels like 30. Our house is the same way, the only warm place is the kitchen, because it has a wood stove that they use for cooking. During class, we do get a break for coffee around mid morning which is a welcome relief from the sitting but not necessarily from the cold. Also, the cafés are really smoky, so along with your 50 cent café, macchiato, or tea you can inhale a pack of cigarettes for free.
Yesterday we finished school at 12 and headed across the train tracks, and cut through Adam’s house (another volunteer with an ENORMOUS Rottweiler and really nice family), and started our trek up the hill while admiring the snow capped mountains in the distance. As we stopped to say hi to the lope(cow), his owner came out to greet us and told us to follow him in to his house. Sabrio gave us a tour of all three floors of the house he was building complete with wood floors, beautiful cabinets, and several balconies to enjoy the beautiful views of Pajove. He also gave us each a lemon from his tree, and Ben some Raki (Albanian Vodka). He explained that he and his family lived in Germany for many years, and then his son Loni appeared and greeted us in German. Sabrio then walked us to his other house where we met the rest of his family, and had some juice and wine with them. They showed us all of their photo albums and we all tried our best to communicate with English, German and Shqip. I think Sabrio was most interested in finding out if his new house was nicer than the one we were living in ;) We said they were both bukur (beautiful)!
Afterwards, we had a nice lunch with our family, and then all of the volunteers stopped by to see our shetpi (house), and climb to the cell phone tower that is on the mountain behind our house. Bani followed us on his dirt bike, and soon thereafter left us in his dust. About 30 mins later, we met him at the top and took some great pictures of our village below. After we got back, we hung out with Lia, our grandfather’s sister, who lives next to the house and laughs at us a lot and we also hung our laundry to dry since it was finally somewhat warm! Today, Griselda left after a delicious lunch, and Islam and Sheqere went to visit his mother at the hospital. She has been there for a few days now, but they think she will return tomorrow. We are not quite sure what is wrong, but they explained to us that she is doing better. Now, back to the shqip! We have shume (a lot) to study and memorize. This week will be the same as the last, but on Sunday we get to go to visit some volunteers in their sites and see what life will really be like for the next 26 months.
Pafshim!
