Avash Avash

Moving in with our host families!

So there is a group of five of us volunteers here in Schushicë and we left Elbasan in two different furgons (mini-buses.) Schushicë is a small village 7km southeast of Elbasan with a population of roughly 1500 and is mostly a farming community. Everyone here has a farm. But the farms are much smaller than what we think of farms in the US. Most of them are between 1-5 acres. The furgons followed each other as we dropped everyone off one by one to our families. We’ve only been told many times how extremely awkward the first day is because of the complete impasse that is the language barrier. So we kind of knew what to expect but were all still very nervous for it to actually happen. Thank god we have phones and texting among all of us volunteers.

MY first day experience(you know.. because "everyones experience is different..":

I walked in to be greeted by my host father, mother, grandmother, a couple brothers, and several random people of whom I’m not completely sure to this date were. I can only assume they were cousins. They have a lot of cousins (Kusheri-learned that word fast) here. My brothers said they don’t even know how many they have… over 20. The first thing we did was all gather in my room and sit around each other with much confusion of what to do next. My host brother Fatmir speaks the best English, he is 16 and goes to school in Elbason. His English isn’t great, but without him it would be a LOT harder. So they asked how old I was, where I was from, if I have kids, if I’m married, and why I’m not married (actually it is very common here to ask very personal questions like these when you first meet people, men and women alike.) They haven’t engaged me in political or religious conversations yet as I hear some other volunteers experiencing but I am definitely ok with that. Most of the time was spent looking through my language materials I have received thus far and reciting common easy to say phrases and questions. My dictionary was in my hand the whole entire time but without knowing proper tenses and poor literal translations on behalf of the dictionary maker this was quite difficult.

Finally, after about an hour or two of dealing with the awkward language threshold, they had me come into what I now know as the main hang out room. It’s basically a small shed (cement shed) beside the house where they have the oven and stove and thus keep somewhat warm in. It’s also where they have the television (nothing crazy… it’s like a 20 inch CRT from the ‘90s) and people here are obsessed with all sitting around the television and watching the most random channels. From what I know so far there is a traditional Albanian music video channel (which at all times of the day sound like the same song on repeat with a plethora of clarinets and repeated choruses), Albanian news channels, an Italian football league channel, an American music video channel (like the kind of hip hop songs that you would hear turning on the radio in America right now), etc. And yes, they sit around, father, mother, brothers, cousins, and grandmother alike watching this American hip hop channel. It is very bizarre. The Big Brother Albania finale was on the other night and from what I understand ALL of our houses were watching it religiously.

FOOD:

So the first thing they did while we were in the “hang out shed” was feed me some food. The olives, peppers (tasted like banana peppers), bread, and eggs were shumë mire (very good – pronounced shoo-meer.) My host dad is a farmer and the fruits and vegetables are all grown on his farm. I also learned some things I do not like so much, mostly stemming from my dislike of cottage cheese and non-sweet yogurt. They have many sour milk based preparations including something called kos which is similar to cottage cheese but more liquid and gel-like and something called dhal which to me just tastes like milk which is a couple of weeks expired (BUT other volunteers insist they like these so it may just be me.) Other meals I have had include a beef broth soup with pilaf which was delicious (you just have to beware of bone chips inside - every spoonful you need to swish around your mouth before you swallow, but it really isn’t a problem at all), spaghetti for breakfast, and my favorite so far – byrëk (sortttt of pronounced boorek but their y is the sound of the number 2 in French, English doesn’t have a sound for it.) Byrëk is hard to explain and in no way am I going to be giving it justice in trying to but it’s like a panini with flaked crust instead of bread. They also have panini-like sandwiches at the local restaurant and a fast food place with hot dogs and hamburgers (haven’t been there yet though.) And when I say the restaurant- yes there is 1 “restaurant” in this village and it’s basically like an Albanian “Panera Bread” (well… not quite haha) but whose sandwiches only cost 60 lekë (about 60 cents.) Espresso coffees at the local café are about 40 cents. Seriously y’all should live over here during these troubling economic times…

Day-to-day life:

Well my room is freezing at night/morning, but I’ve already mentioned that. We’ve done a lot of walking around, the five of us, throughout the whole village. We’ve been to all of each other’s houses and today we hiked up this cliff overseeing the village and sat down and talked for a while. However not exciting it sounds it was actually pretty awesome. I love the other volunteers that I’m placed here with.  We went to the school for language classes for the first time today. The school is in the town center and is about a 12 minute walk from my house which is not too bad at all. The kids are especially interested in us and love to follow us around everywhere we go. It’s kind of weird but we have gotten used to it. We are often approached by strangers who attempt to speak with us but seriously it is impossible to have any kind of real conversation with how little language we know at this point. The town center has this internet café with computers but more interestingly has large plasma TV’s with Playstation 3s. My host brother and I played a couple games of FIFA… he is a huge Inter fan (a club in the Italian league) and plays soccer for his school in Elbasan.

Like before… there is always much more to say but I think this is it for now. We’re going back to Elbasan tomorrow and will all be together as a big group so we’re looking forward to that. GOODNIGHT ALL