Pictures from August

Just a collection of random photos from August...enjoy!

The temperature inside my house hovered at around 90 degrees for
the month of August.  Even the candles in my house started melting.

GAD Committee Campout

Reservoir near Voskopoje. Not a bad view to wake up to if you ask me. 

Trying honey raki in Korce.

THOR!!

This month Albania has suffered from the worst wildfires in modern memory.  This photo was taken of the fire along the hillside opposite of Gramsh.  

Brownies and Cootie Catchers

This summer I've been holding an English Summer Course every Wednesday for middle school and high school students.  There have been three girls who have come to class every single week so to celebrate the end of the summer, I invited them over to my house to learn how to make Brownies and watch a movie.  Even though the main purpose of our meeting was fun, I still wanted to make it educational.  Luckily, recipes are a perfect way to practice commands.  So as each girl took turns following the steps I read aloud, the others wrote down my directions thereby making their own copy of the recipe to take home.

I'm a big believer in the idea that when learning a language it is just as important to learn about the culture as it is to learn grammar.  My whole summer course has been focused around this idea, with each lesson using themes like the 4th of July and American pop music to learn different language concepts.  So adding a lesson on American food seemed like a natural choice, especially since Albanians are always curious about what we eat in America.  And lets be honest...who doesn't love an excuse to eat Brownies for lunch!

My little bakers.

Most important step...licking the bowl!

Once the brownies were in the oven, we all sat down and watched Thor together.  Sorry to report Dad but I don't think the story translates into Shqip very well.  One of the girls saw the Cootie Catcher I made last week when the power was out and they were hooked instantly.  (By the way explaining the concept of Cooties is surprisingly difficult.  It also makes you realize how weird we were as kids.)  By the end of the day, I had a new friendship bracelet, 4 Cootie Catchers, and some new wall decorations.

Cootie Catchers!

Our finished product.

Some samplings of the art they made me to add to my
wall decorations.

I'm not quite sure if this is quite what the Peace Corps had in mind when they thought of PCVs sharing American culture but I couldn't imagine a better way to spend a hot summer day.  Plus I'm secretly hoping for the day that I'll pass kids playing on the street and overhear them yelling, "Ew, you have cooties!"

Wedding Season

August in Albania is reserved for weddings, and Gramsh has not disappointed so far.  I'm going to save a more detailed explanation of Albanian wedding traditions until I myself experience one in full but for now I'll provide a small glimpse into wedding season.

During PST I was lucky enough to experience many an Albanian wedding as my host family lived directly above their Lokal.  I learned quickly that Albanian weddings include a lot of circle dancing, a lot of clarinet, tons of meat, some fireworks and the occasional celebratory gun shot.

Here in Gramsh I've gotten to witness the pre-wedding festivities as well.  It is tradition for the families of those getting married to throw parties in the street on the days leading up to the wedding in order for the family and neighborhood to celebrate.  Depending on the family and their wealth, these can range from one night to up to 3 or 4 nights in a row.

This past week, a boy on the first floor of my apartment got married and the celebration was like nothing I've ever seen before.  The entire apartment entrance was decorated in streamers and balloons starting on Sunday.  On Monday and Tuesday night, from around 9 PM - 3 AM there was circle dancing and music on the street.  Wednesday night the celebration was taken to a Lokal but there was one last dance on the street when they returned home from the party.  Thursday was wedding day, so the neighborhood got going early with the music starting at 9 AM when the groom left to go pick up his bride.  They then drove around Gramsh in a caravan of cars honking their horns, until they returned to the apartment and the groom's family had one last dance around the couple.  From there their caravan departed again and the party continued throughout the night at the Lokal.

I myself only joined the party on Tuesday night, when my friend Anna and I decided to dance (yes I circle danced and no I did not make a fool of myself, at least not too much) but it was great just to be able to sit on my balcony and watch the party from above.  The video above is from Monday night.  So urime to the happy couple.  Thanks for letting me experience my first full wedding celebration!

Ballin' in Burrel

I spent this past week visiting my friend and fellow PCV Lenae up in Burrel.  Burrel is a small town up in the middle of the north of Albania about a 7 hour trip from Gramsh but it was worth every minute on the furgon to see all the amazing things the volunteers up there have going on.

The main reason I went up to Burrel (other than the promise of chicken fajitas) was to volunteer at Lenae's basketball camp.  She had planned a week long basketball camp for girls with supplies and balls donated from her friends and family back home and one very generous college basketball team.  So off course when I got her email asking for volunteers to come up and help my immediate response was yes.

Now I guess this is the moment I should be honest and say that while I love watching basketball and talking about basketball, my basketball skills probably peaked when I was in the 6th grade.  But my dad had been reading me bed time stories about basketball since I was a little kid and all those years of being a Kings fan couldn't go to waste.  This was my opportunity!

I'm sure you're expecting me to sit here and tell you about how I schooled everyone on the court and am now entertaining various NBA contracts, but instead you're just going to have to settle for my account of a good ole fashioned week at basketball camp.

We had on average 40 girls every day, split into 4 teams based on age.  We focused on a new skill everyday: dribbling on Monday, shooting on Tuesday, passing on Wednesday, defense on Thursday and fun on Friday.  I was in charge of the morning warm up and stretching.  Despite my lack of neon spandex, I still tried to channel Richard Simmons to the best of my ability.  After a warm up and ball handling drills, we split into stations and each team rotated to a different volunteer.  Then we would play basketball games like Queen of the Court or Knockout and the older girls would move on to games of 5 on 5.

I know it all sounds very simple but I have to say I've never been more impressed by my fellow volunteers.  First of all, the organization and planning that it took to pull of this camp was amazing.  Second, the patience and forethought it took to think of ways to explain basketball to girls who had never seen a game cannot be overstated.  And last but not least, the Shqip skills and energy from everyone involved was mind-blowing.

It is no simple task to hold a camp in a foreign language and as much credit as the volunteers deserve, the girls who participated deserve even more.  Thank you for sitting there while we tried to figure out how to say things in Shqip.  Thank you for trusting us enough to dribble around the court blind folded within 30 minutes of meeting us.  And most of all, thank you for not laughing too hard at my lack of flexibility during warm ups.

Just to prove that yes they really did dribble blindfolded.  And no I
did not let them crash into anything.  PS-Thank you Lindita and Zana
for teaching me directions during PST.

Team meeting with Lela and Kuqe.  I guess I finally see
why everyone here thinks I'm Shqiptare.

Lenae showing off her sitting down dance skillz.

Me and some of the younger girls after the last day.

Me and Tu pac, Lil Wayne and Kayce.

Team Lela and Kuqe.  Miss these girls!

And since you made it all the way to the end, I'll share a story with you.  When we were deciding the colors for the different teams, it seemed simple just to choose the colors we already had yarn for.  But what we didn't think about is that in Shqip, purple is lela.  Now it seems like a simple enough word but here is a fun fact for you, Shqip has two different l's.  There is the single 'l' and the double 'll'.  These two letters are the bain of every PCV in Albania's existence.  Now they claim that there is a large difference and from time to time, I can hear it but never in my life have I been successfully able to distinguish between the two when speaking.  So while I was really excited to be team leader for Ekipi Lela, it wasn't until the first day when I was trying to call my team over that I realized what I had gotten myself into.  So while they were learning how to dribble and pass, I was learning how to say lela.  After the first day, I understood that I was saying it wrong.  After the second day, I could say the first l correctly.  After the third day I could say it but only if I said it really quietly (not too helpful on a basketball court).  But by the final day, I am proud to say that I mastered how to say lela.  It was such a running joke among the girls on my team that on the last day when we sat down as a group to go over what we all had learned during the camp, one of the girls immediately jumped in and answered, Jen learned to say Lela!  I think lela might just be my new favorite Shqip word.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  It was brought to my attention today by one of the girls from the camp that Lela is in fact spelled Lejla.  I thought about correcting it in this post but instead here is a more accurate view of my life here in Albania.  Just when I think I've got it all right, something new comes along.

Pictures from July

Sometimes pictures say it better than any of my stories could.  Here is a collection of some that I took over the past month.  Enjoy!

This little guy hung out on my balcony for a few days.  

A collection from the absolutely AMAZING 3 care packages my FANTASTIC family
sent me.  Mom, Dad and Nick you are the best ever!

My middle school summer English class learning how to have a watermelon seed
spitting contest for the 4th of July.

July 10th was the anniversary of Gramsh's liberation from Nazi control.
There were banners and flags all around the main street.

To celebrate, there was a memorial service during the day and a concert on
the square at night.  Here are some men dressed in traditional costumes singing.

An interesting plant on a hike.

Its not everyday that you get to see donkeys and mules hanging out.
It is everyday that I hear them walking down the street outside my apartment.

The grapes that I got from the family I visited.  In the background
you can see my makeshift candle-holder aka wine bottle and book shelf.

A hike and hospitality.

In my short time here in Albania, I’ve learned why they say that the Peace Corps is a rollercoaster.  From one month, week, day, hour even minute to the other, my emotions and motivation can go from one extreme to the other.  So after a week that was full with English classes, meetings, xhiros, coffee dates and trips to the river, I got really really lazy.  I realized last night that the only significant thing that I had done since Saturday was to pay my electricity bill.  Side note: that is in fact not so insignificant in a country that doesn’t believe in lines and probably deserves its own blog post.

So I decided that I would go on a hike this morning.  The hot weather had been keeping me inside way too much over the past week and it was time to face it head on.  Luckily though, given that I had done nothing in 48 hours, my body needed zero sleep and woke up at the ungodly hour of 5 am.  This meant I could hike before it got too hot.  I set out to go across the Death Bridge to explore more of the village across the river.  I’ve been missing village life lately and I wanted to return to the familiar sights, sounds and well to be honest smells of a village. 

But above all, I wanted to be able to walk in solitude and really enjoy the nature around me without getting “That girl is crazy!” looks from other people or having to explain why an American was in their small town.  This of course was not in the cards.  I spent my walk from the main street in Gramsh to the other side of the river trying to escape two women who were walking in the same direction.  I would slow down and they would slow down.  I would speed up and they would catch up to me.  It appeared that the Albanian gods were going to make me be social whether I liked it or not.  So after doing this little dance across the bridge, the women finally turned to me and asked me all the typical Shqiptar questions. (Who are you?  Where are you from?  Where do you live?  You live alone?!?!  Aren’t you bored?  Why are you in Gramsh?  How much money to you make?  Why do you work for no money? Etc.)  They went into their house about 30 minutes into my walk and I thought that I was finally free to enjoy the peace and quiet around me.  So I decided to walk up the trail that I found during my first week at site.  It is a steep road straight up the hillside at the end of the village and at the top is a family compound. I hadn’t been back on this trail since despite the amazing view from the top because the last time I was up there was kind of  an ‘obobo’ moment. 

So I guess I owe you that story…

The last time I had been up there was in the afternoon after one of my first days of school.  I was exhausted but I wanted to explore the town and the areas around it and I wasn’t going to let the likely afternoon thunderstorm stop me.  So I hiked up the mountain and when I got to the top, I found the family compound.  Now here in Albania it isn’t weird to be following a path and suddenly walk into someone’s front yard.  But this family was all outside taking care of their animals and working in the fields.  A little girl came up to me and started asking me all of the typical Shqiptar questions (see above) and slowly I realized that the whole family was surrounding me.  Now lets take a second to recap here… there I was surrounded by a family of Albanians during my first week at site when I barely knew Gramsh, couldn’t really speak the language and even conjugating verbs was difficult for me when under pressure. I was probably the most uncomfortable I had been since coming to Albania.  Socializing in a foreign language is surprisingly stressful.  And to make matters worse, they invited me into their house.  All PCVs here in Albania are familiar with the invitation “Hajde, Hajde.  Pi kafe.  Hajde.”  It is completely normal here to invite people into your house even if you don’t know them and Albanians take great pride in the hospitality they show to newcomers.  But at this moment, I just couldn’t do it.  My brain was so overwhelmed from the language and stress that there was no way I was going into their house.  Blame it on all of the times I had been told as a child to not talk to strangers much less join them in their homes but I had to get out.  So in my broken Shqip I told them I had to go because I wanted to get home before it rained and I tried to leave.  They told me not to worry, that I could stay at their house until it was clear and that if it was dark they would walk me down the hill.  When I kept refusing and started to say goodbye, they offered me an umbrella as a last ditch effort to help me.  I of course said no and went to say goodbye to the girl.  And then she asked me the question that I was totally unprepared for, “Will you come back to visit again?”.  Completely caught off guard, I said yes and ran away.  Man that girl was good. I immediately regretted that I hadn’t stayed their and visited.  Here I was a foreigner who barely spoke their language and I was saying no to their hospitality.  Then it started to rain and rain hard.  At that moment I decided that the Albanian gods were sending me a message.  I resolved to always say yes to Albanian hospitality unless I already had plans.  And since then I’ve for the most part stuck to this rule.  But the one thing I failed to do was to go back and visit that family again.

So back to present day.  I decided to climb the trail and risk the fact that the family might be outside.  In my ignorance, I thought that since it was only 8 AM maybe they would still be in the house.  But of course I was spotted by none other than the grandma.  Shqiptar grandmas (gjyshes) are notorious.  The best way I can describe them is as a combination of a babushka and an Italian grandmother.  And as anyone who has either knows, there is no saying no to them.  I still held out hope that I could get through with a simple hello and how are you but that hope was dashed as soon as I spoke.  Her face lit up and she yelled inside that the American was back.  Apparently I wasn’t forgotten even after almost 2 months.  And at that moment, in all honesty, I almost cried.  I couldn’t believe that they would remember the American girl they had talked to for maybe half an hour max 2 months ago especially after I had refused their invitation.  And not only did they recognize me but they remembered that I had a little brother and that I was from California and that I was teaching English.  I hadn’t felt this loved since I left my host family.  And when this time when they told me to “Hajde, Hajde. Pi kafe. Hajde.” I didn’t even hesitate. 

First, one of the sisters took me down to the grape vines.  She was explaining to me the different types of grapes they have: grapes for wine, grapes to eat, grapes for raki (Albanian moonshine) and we picked a few bundles of grapes to eat and headed inside.  There they turned on the morning news and I sat around with the women eating grapes and drinking milk while the little kids danced around the house.  It was perfect.  Granted there were times when I didn’t understand or when conversation was difficult but I felt at home.  After an hour, I had to leave to make it back in time for tutoring and I actually felt sad to be leaving.  I said goodbye to everyone and promised that next time I wouldn’t wait 2 months to visit.  And just when I thought their hospitality was as good as it could get, they gave me a bag of grapes to take home.  I wish I had the words to explain how much their hospitality meant to me. Since I don't have a sitemate here, I am constantly faced with questions about being alone but moments like this make me realize that while I might be the lone American in Gramsh, I am never alone here.

As I walked home, I made a point to say hello to everyone I passed.  I even gave a few grapes to some kids in the village.  And I met two more gjyshes on the bridge back into town who asked me the typical questions.  But this time, rather than internally rolling my eyes and counting the seconds until I could continue, I enjoyed our conversation and asked them my own questions.  When we said goodbye I got a good gjyshe chest and arm rub from them both and I knew it was going to be a good day.  

Sometimes, it can be easy to get too comfortable here.  After being productive all I want to do is sit at home with a nice big cup of tea and watch a movie or read a book.  But days like this remind me of why I came here and why I have to continue to push myself.  Plus it doesn’t hurt that now I have 2 huge bundles of grapes to enjoy!

An Appeal

Hello friends,

Since I've been here in Albania, many of you have asked if there is anything you can do to help support me.  While I love a good letter and care package, I have a slightly different request at the moment.

As you may have noticed from my pictures, Albania is a beautiful country.  I can honestly say that I haven't seen this much natural beauty in such a small area ever in my life.  Yet many youth don't have the opportunity to appreciate and explore their own country.  I was lucky enough to grow up in a community that put a premium on educating youth about environmental preservation and conservation. Lessons on composting and recycling were mixed in with trash clean ups and class gardens throughout my childhood.  Here in Albania, youth face a very different reality.  The ideas of preservation and conservation are new in this country where until 20 years ago, plastic bags didn't exist and having a car was a privilege few enjoyed.  Since Albania's rapid development, these things have become common place and have led to serious environmental issues.  The Outdoor Ambassadors (OA) program is a nation-wide program run by PCVs along with local counterparts that seeks to provide Albanian youth with the opportunity to learn about and explore nature.  Students participate in activities ranging from hiking trips, ecology lessons, trash pick ups, town beautification, and public awareness campaigns, to name a few.  I myself have had the opportunity to see the OA group in Gramsh in action and I can say that I can't imagine a better program to be involved with.  Not only does OA provide a space for youth to explore the nature around them, but it also provides an outlet for students who, unlike in America, don't have a plethora of extra curricular activities to chose from.

While I could go on about the wonders of OA for way longer, I will spare you and get to the point.  Every year OA hosts a summer camp for youth from across Albania.  Here, students have the opportunity to attend classes on topics ranging from nutrition to biodiversity as well as have a camp experience that we in America take for granted.  For most camp participants, this will be their first opportunity to meet with and socialize with youth from all around the country.  This year, the OA committee needs donations to make the camp possible.  Any donation would truly help (just $20 can pay for 1 day's worth of food and housing for a student).  The deadline to donate is August 1st and if our goal isn't met by then, we will lose all of the money that has been donated so far and have to cancel the camp for this year.  All of you who know me know how awkward I find it to ask for donations and that I wouldn't be writing to you unless it was something that I truly believed could make a difference.  So I would encourage you to visit this website to learn more about the program and how you can make a donation. 


For more information on the OA program visit their website: http://www.outdoorambassadors.org/

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I promise another update will be coming soon.