The Inexplicable...

I know we just published a Happy Easter blog on May 29th, but as you may have noticed we have not written in quite a while. And while we did start the April blog, we just never finished it. We spent Easter in Korca, the Paris of Albania, and had a wonderful time hiking, eating, and people-watching. The Greek Orthodox church in Albania celebrates Easter like no other. Just a little before midnight, hundreds of people gathered outside of the cathedral with candles. Mass was celebrated in front of the cathedral, and afterwards people passed their candle light to each other until the streets were filled with candlelight. It was really impressive and beautiful. Then the fireworks started…Insanity. Little kids setting off professional fireworks into the air with people all around them. Some of the fireworks set off 7 or 8 at a time, and the kids didn’t keep count so it was interesting watching them trying to figure out if it was safe to throw it down, or if they should wait just a little longer. After the New Year, there were a ton of burn casualties so I imagine it was no different after Easter. After the fireworks, you ask? Well, dancing at the discos to the wee hours of the morning is the Easter tradition in Albania. No dancing for us, we were exhausted from our hike to the cross at the top of the mountain where we ran into the horse that so gracefully grazed upon the side of the mountain.



I will let Ben catch you up until the present and then I will end with a few things I have observed here which are just a little difficult to put into words- The Inexplicable as I have called it.

5/15/10

It’s a rainy Saturday morning, Lauren is at the university giving a test and I am at home watching the tourists cursing their bad luck as they get off the ferry and onto the tour buses in the downpour. But that is how it goes here in Albania, you might spend a lot of time in the rain and lot time cursing and a lot of time feeling like you are giving out tests that no wants or will even show up to take. In just 13 days it will be one year since we were sworn in as volunteers and 15 months since we arrived in Albania, meaning on 12 more months left. Due to the cycles of the volunteers, as we reach the halfway mark, another group is just starting and another group is packing up to leave. Talking to both groups gives you time to reflect about how you viewed things when you first got here and how you will see them when you go. The fist one is easy, we can just go back and read our blog the second one is much more complicated. Albanians to their credit and to their great discredit live in the moment, day to day. They don’t spend much time worrying about the future, partly because so many are concerned with their immediate needs and partly because they are so used to the government taking care of everything for them. As some of you will remember we had elections back in June and to date they still have not formed a government. In the capital there are protests and hunger strikes and lots of angry words, while the rest of the country waits to get salaries and pensions paid, roads paved, schools built, hospitals updated, etc. So with all this going on in the background, what we do or how we will leave things here in 12 months seems insignificant. So we keep plugging away trying to do our tiny part towards helping those we work with to become part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Lauren has been much more successful at this than I, on top of her main teaching duties she has also helped plan an “English Day” at the University, attended by the Mayor of Sarande and by the majority of the student body. For about month she worked with students to memorize poems, songs and even excerpts from Shakespeare to be presented to the faculty and students of the university, to highlight the English Department and show the importance of learning English. It was very interesting to watch from the crowd, as all courtesy that we would practice in such situations in America are completely ignored. Not only do people not turn off their cell phones they actually answer them, even the teachers. They have no concept of not speaking while others are giving their presentations. I was only about halfway back in the crowd and I could not hear the majority of the presenters over the talking of the crowd. The director of the University was very pleased with the event and publicly thanked Lauren as did the Mayor.

The next week the director even took both of us out to a great seafood lunch, complete with fresh fish, stuffed mussels, home made bread, cheese, olives, salad and good red wine. It was nice to have a glass of good red wine, and mussels without the side of …you remember the last time!

Lauren has also put together a teacher training curriculum for the English high school and middle school teachers of Saranda and the surrounding villages. With the help 3 other volunteers who teach in other southern areas of Albania she has been able to do two of the three scheduled trainings. At the first training 15 of the 20 teachers came, this was an excellent turnout.

They seemed to enjoy getting new ideas and techniques that they could use in their classrooms and their feedback was all very positive. So it was quite the surprise when only 4 of them show up for the second training.

Which all the volunteers still did with the same vigor as if all 20 had showed up but it was a big disappointment to all of us (I was the photographer/PowerPoint operator). Lauren put a lot of work and spent her own money making copies for handouts and providing refreshments for a training that everyone told her they really needed. This is the main problem for both of us here, people just don’t seem to care and even if they do care enough to show up, often it’s just to tell you that they already know what you are trying to explain, even when they don’t. So there is one final training next week, so hopefully more people will come, but since silly Lauren designed each training to build off the prior it will be very difficult if people who missed the last one or two come to the third. Yet in an odd twist, I believe that many people will come to the last one. Why, you ask? Well, in Albania there are few things that are more cherished that getting a certificate. It does not matter who gives it, what it is was for, or even what it looks like, they will do anything to get a certificate. In fact I would bet none of the teachers would have come if Lauren had not offered a certificate of completion. We shall see.



We both continue to go the Catholic School to teach English twice a week. We also both have gotten into trouble with the nuns for being too loud, we let the kids play games and sometimes they get a little too excited and a nun will come, pop her head in, and give them a good scolding. It’s nice because they all settle right down. Below, are some of the girls in my English class with the posters they won after making an anti-smoking poster. Thank you Heather! You can imagine the noise they made fighting over these teeny bopper posters.

We also went out to the village of Berdenesh, where the nuns have a little building where they do activities with the kids on Saturdays. The same kids that are in Lauren’s beginner’s class all live in this village. So we helped color and make posters for Opening Day, which marks the beginning of the summer tourist season here. We also went to down to the "rock" beach with them where they found us a sea urchin, killed it, cleaned it, and presented it to us. I think it is the equivalent of a grown up offering the sheep's cheek.

Opening Day was May 8th and the boardwalk was lined with school children showing off their art work, gym classes playing volleyball, basketball and soccer, NGO’s giving out information and the nuns with our kids giving out Mother Theresa (she was Albanian) medals and showcasing all their hard work. Two of the girls were dressed in what Mother Theresa would have worn when she was a girl, they had a timeline of her life, famous quotes, they even built a model of an Albanian Church that was built in her honor.

After our xhiro of Opening Day we headed to our favorite chicken place. Can’t beat a whole roasted chicken, French fries, salad, and yogurt sauce for 7 bucks!

Last weekend we headed to Ksamil the beach town 20 minutes away, walked along the beach with it’s clear blue-green water, checked out the graduating seniors living it up even though it was too cold to be in the water, and had a fish lunch.

Wednesday we had dinner with two British women, and an American girl who are all living here in Saranda. We had dumplings made of polenta and chicken, and it was a welcome treat after eating various types of rice and pasta almost everyday. Last night, we had a beer with a German lady who has been writing a guide book about Albania. People are starting to discover it, and I am sure it will be drastically different in ten years. Today, the newbies are moving into their sites, so we will have one more volunteer here in Saranda, and two others in the neighboring villages. Today, one year prior, we were doing the same thing!

Now the things, I will never ever truly understand…

• Watering the streets- It’s that time again. Well, that’s not a true statement. I guess it’s that time all year round. According to the Northern volunteers, people water the snow-covered streets which makes walking lots of fun after it freezes. Maybe since it is warmer, I am out and about more, and the streets are getting a lot of love. Guess that explains the water shortages…

• Hajde gotca (hi-duh goats-sa) to the front!-2 weeks ago I was asked to present a session to the new TEFL trainees, and I had to take a 6 hour bus ride to Elbasan. I went alone, and Ben wished the bus driver a safe trip (Very Typically Albanian) so the bus driver decided he needed to look after me. Once the front seat opened, he yelled from the front of the bus while he was driving that I needed to come up front behind him. When the elderly man tried to go for it, he yelled no plaku! (no old man) it is for the girl. Ahh the coveted front seats.

• Throwing trash out the window. Also on my lovely bus trip, I watched the driver, and the passengers eat chips, drink sodas, and then chuck their trash right out the good ole window. Must be nice not to have any conscious or accountability at all.

• My friend from the beach who sends her regards- Last summer when Ben was recovering from his ankle incident, I went to the beach a few times, and made a friend. In fact, she was so enthralled with me, she made me promise to meet her each day for a whole week while she was here visiting from Greece. She is originally Albanian, but has emigrated to Greece, and has been there for several years. One day, she brought a friend who happens to live on our same street. So now, a year later, every time I see my Beach buddy’s friend, I get regards from my Albanian beach friend who is in Greece.

• Throwing things at the foreigners- For some reason, bad Albanian kids, are taught to throw rocks, or whatever they can get hold of whenever they see a foreigner or someone they don’t like. So Ben was hit when we were doing the xhiro mid-day. However, the culprit was only about 2 feet and at most age 5. Yet, his mom who was nearby said nothing to him. A few days later, some teenagers threw some rocks when we were walking with 2 other volunteers. They hit one of us in the arm, and then just laughed. Maybe there is a secret game like “darts for hitting foreigners” that we don’t know about yet.

• Not wanting to say hi to the American or the foreigner when with friends-another equally annoying habit of young children and even grown adults is not wanting to recognize you when they are with other Albanians. When you see kids or adults you know on their own, they will stop, greet you, and be normal. When they are with other people, suddenly they do not know you, and there is no eye contact to be had. They walk by as if you do not exist. It’s a really nice feeling…Ben’s friend Madeline recently compared post communist cultures to onions. There are so many layers that you have to peel through to truly understand them. It is such a perfect metaphor for what we have experienced here.

• The attention you get when you wear a dress/skirt vs pants- Normally, I wear what is comfortable but still professional when I go to work. But, I did wear a dress for both of the teacher trainings since the weather was warming up, and I new the older teachers would take me more seriously in a dress/skirt than they would in pants. I have never seen such a reaction from students, colleagues, and staff at the university. It was weird. Suddenly, everything was SHUME BUKUR even from the men. Guess I hadn’t been making any impressions wearing pants. But my favorite comment on one of those days was…Lauren, is that skirt typical from Philadelphia? I was watching a documentary on a prison in Philadelphia last evening…

• The evil eye-Our landlady said she was going to get us some garlic because things always seemed to break when other volunteers were visiting. Obviously, she said, they were jealous of our placement, and we needed to ward off their evil eye by hanging some garlic.

• Playing bingo with my students-I taught my kids how to play bingo, and they really liked it. However, when some kids started to win, they told me I had framed the game because they weren’t all winning. They were so unconvinced that they decided we needed to play another game. So we played another game, when played correctly, only has one winner. Yet, I watched in complete shock how they all whispered the answers to each other so no one could be eliminated, and all continue to play the game. They even whispered the answers to kids they don’t like.

• Teacher Training-My boss, who lives 8 hours away, told me that he thought there was going to be a teacher training at the university by some textbook publishers. He was surprised when I told him I had heard nothing about it. Then the girl who lives in the neighboring village told me she had heard a similar thing the next week. Again, I had heard nothing. So, I asked the secretary if there was going to be a training, and she told me that she had heard nothing about it, but that that didn’t mean there wasn’t one taking place. So Sunday evening, I randomly call a teacher about something unrelated, and she says we’ll talk about it tomorrow at the training at the university. So I show up, and surprise, in attendance are 5 teachers that had missed my training the week before. No apologies, or excuses, they just simply wanted to know where their packet (that I had spent hours and my own money on) was since they hadn’t received it at the prior training that they didn’t show up for. Do I sound bitter about this? Well, I guess it doesn’t help that the presenter who was a Greek emigrant to the UK, decided her presentation about critical thinking should include ANTI-American sentiments. When asking what the school’s role in critical thinking should be…her response was that she couldn’t believe no one in the audience could think of the answer “when a 9 year old boy, American boy, emphasis on American boy, could sum it up perfectly.” Then in her closing, she showed the VA Tech massacre as an example of what goes wrong when we don’t use critical thinking.

• Crepes, anyone?- We were happy to find out a crepe shop we discovered last summer, that closed after the summer, has reopened. Where, you wonder? Well, right below us on the one and same street that already has three other crepe shops in a 2 block radius. You can also get “hod dogs” there too. No, Albanians do not like crepes that much.