Should've brought my fleece...

Ok SO I wasn’t sure at the beginning if I was going to keep a blog but several exciting things have happened that I feel like I want to remember and write about so I think I’m going to try it out. I’ll try to only write about interesting things and not bore anybody too much with a bunch of detailed specifics but this is my first time doing this so we’ll see what happens!

So let’s start with some random things first…

1 US dollar = 100 "new lekë." BUT when you communicate money to people you multiply whatever actual number you are talking about by 10 which is "old lekë." Sound confusing? Basically you ask someone how much a cup of coffee is and they will say 500 lekë (pronounced leck) but you actually only give them 50 lekë which is about 50 cents. Makes a little too much sense huh? So that is fun.

Everyone here, from all of the other trainees to the whole entire PC staff are great people. All of the trainees and I have so much in common but also come from a lot of different places in life and it’s just a really great group of people. I’m part of the younger group of people… the 22-23 year olds. Most of us are in our 20s and then there are some young 30s and a couple of older volunteers but it’s so easy to relate to and get along with everyone no matter what age or experience everyone has. AND there are actually 2 other Aggies with me.. one class of ‘10 and one class of ’08 who is actually also at my satellite site with me during PST.

Orientation/beginning of training:

Before departing for Albania we had a 2 day orientation in Washington DC. It was my first time in DC and we had a whole day to walk around the mall area and see the capital, Washington monument, Lincoln memorial and such. Being with everyone for the first couple of days in DC was a lot of fun and it has been so easy for a lot of us to already start becoming close friends with each other. Even at this point where we’ve known each other for a whole six days we are definitely closer than a normal six days would be for friendships.

“DON’T MAKE THE A-OK HAND SIGN” is something we all wrote in our language notebooks when learning that it means something along the lines of “go eff your mother” and is actually way worse than what flipping the bird is to Americans. If you wish to use this hand sign to insult someone, be careful, and NEVER use it in a joking sense, even with friends. Using the “A-OK” will immediately engage you in some sort of physical altercation. Albanians love their mothers. Another thing that is looked at as a huge sign of disrespect is the American nervous habit of slapping the bottom of one palm against the clenched fist of the other, alternating over and over. I don’t believe I ever do this but other people are freaking out and saying they do it all the time without thinking.

My PST(pre-service training) is in a village called Schushicë which is a few miles from the bigger city, Elbason, the HUB city that all volunteers from every satellite site get together twice a week at. Before moving to our satellite sites we spent three nights at a hotel in Elbason with very organized and structured days involving introductory courses in language, culture, technical, and safety training all centering around amazing buffet style breakfast, lunch, and dinners with several coffee breaks in between. The Univers Hotel’s food was absolutely incredible for anything I could have expected. It was basically an Eastern European Golden Corral three times a day. Did I mention we had wireless internet and a flat screen TV in the meal-lobby/bar area playing non-stop Top 40 American pop music? Life wasn’t too shabby at this point. We heard Black and Yellow at least twice a day and NO Justin Bieber!

First impressions of the country of Albania:

As soon as our plane landed and we hopped on the bus to drive to Elbason we were very interested in making some first impressions. During the drive our eyes were glued to the windows and there were many “oohs and ahhs” but definitely not in the traditional sense. It. Was. So. Weird. Honestly, if I were ever wanting to film some sort of combined zombie flick/post-apocalyptic movie this is the first place I would go.

All of the houses in this country are made of solid cement (insulation is non-existent but we’ll get to that later.) And most of the houses in this country are only halfway built (if that.) It takes years and years for these houses to be built because families only build them bit-by-bit as they have extra money and money coming in from emigrated sons working in different countries, mostly Italy, Greece, and America. There is trash EVERYwhere. No fraternity or sorority in the world could adopt these highways and make any sort of difference. If you have trash in this country what you do is just throw it on the side of the road to get rid of it. This is the mindset everyone has. There are literally acres of garbage laden earth on the sides of the roads of which if you walked across them you couldn’t get one step in that isn’t on some sort of plastic bag or bottle.

In the same quarter-mile of road you are driving along you will see incredibly beautiful and large estate style houses (often having a pastel and sometimes fluorescent color scheme), TONS of houses only partly built with no construction teams anywhere working on them, homeless people digging through dumpsters, wild and sometimes rabid dogs, trash everywhere, BUNKERS everywhere (Albania has more bunkers per km than any other country in the world), and a healthy mix of very well designed and beautiful looking stores and cafes literally right next door to what I could only say are worse-than-hole-in-the-wall retail stores and cafes. Yes, all within the same quarter mile of road. This country is very paradoxical.

Albania is also very beautiful. Every direction you look there are hills and mountains and the weather is very nice for the most part. Due to the non-insulated housing I almost feel that it’s colder inside the house than outside. During the day the temperature has been hovering around 65-70 but at night and in the early morning it is closer to 40-45. I can’t say that I’m getting used to going to bed with jeans, socks, long sleeve shirts, inside a sleeping bag with additional blankets over that.

I just moved in with my host family yesterday so I have much more to talk about but this is it for now. I have internet at my host family’s house so this communication thing won’t be quite as hard as I thought it might. Until then, Mirupafshim.