The Quest for American Coffee (Part 1)

I'm begging you all too click on the link that says Katie and Ryan (or maybe it says the Enns) I'm not 100 percent sure. It has so many cute pictures of my new nephew. I love him so much even it is only through photos.

So apparently no one but Americans like American coffee. They have no love for a big mug/styrofoam cup of steaming hot coffee. Here in Albania I get only espreso and Turkish coffee. So I am on a quest. A quest for American coffee. don't get me wrong. I like espressos. I drink them every day. I like Turkish coffee. I drink it every day. I can even make a mean cup of Turkish coffee. If you come to Albania, I'll brew you one. But I can't get american coffee out of my head. It's the only thing (other than family and friends) that I miss right now.

So far i my quest I've attempted to explain to a waitress who had nescafe in the kitchen how to make it. That was less than successful. She didn't have enough so she put it in an espresso cup and it ended up being even stronger than espresso. next time, we left it up to the waitress to figure out and ordered a nescafe. They used cappucino nescafe so it came out really sugary with cream. And if anyone has seen me drink coffee I really don't like sugar in it. Yesterday in Elbasan (attempt 3) resulted in a can of nescafe iced coffee. Although it was tasty it was not meeting my crazy craving. Finally, we decided to walk about 20 minutes across town to the American bakery. I haven't been to the american bakery becaue I'm not to into baked goods, but they have filtered coffee. So after 20 minutes, we arrived and guess what... It was closed because they had a catering event. Sigh.... My quest continues.

So next time you sit down to a big mug of coffee. take a sip for me.

Teza Denise

So I am officially an aunt. My sister had her baby. Bennett Aaron Enns. He is super cute. i saw pictures. I'm sure that there will be pics on Katie's blog so check out the link. I actually got to talk to my parents for a few minutes. Thank Julie my very dear language friend.

Things are well here. I went to bumper cars this morning in Elbasan which was a fun way to spend a dollar.

I also found my flash drive so mom can stop looking it also means that I will hopefully post a few pictures for you all to see the Albanian mountains. They are truly beutiful.

I'm actually chatting with my brother in law right now. Isn't the internet amazing.

will right more later. I'm just hear waiting for my pics of my nephew to download!!

Site Announcement

So its official. I know where I will be for the next two years. I'll be in Kavaja. Its a town near the coast. South of Durres. And near the beach and fairly close to the capitol. I'm really happy with the placement. I'll be really close to several very cool volunteers. You know who you are!

Yeah! It's such a relief to know.

So some funny language blunders just to give you a laugh. I'm trying to increase my vocab (and have learned past tense) but I still really mess things up. There are a lot of words that sound very similar, but are completely different.

For example, I introduced a friend of mine to a bunch of people as my school. I also told a group of kids that my brother in law was a drum. Finally, I constantly am telling people that I eat little girls for breakfast (instead of eggs) Not even joking.

On a brighter note, we had this exercise where we go around with a language teacher around the city and they observe us speaking with Albanians. I did all right.

Talk to you all later.... I miss you all!

Temperature

I think I forgot to mention how beautiful the weather is here. It's been in the upper 70s for the last few weeks. It's cooler in the morning and gets fairly warm throughout the day. It's been sunny every day this week.

I heard that in America we had a lot of snow. Unfortunately, I didn't get to here where this April snow showers were. I'm assuming it is not PA!

Also we had our first earthquake. It shook the school for about 30 seconds. How scary is that! I never felt an earthquake. Two of us ran to the doorway, one hid under the table and the two guys just sat right next to the windows and bookshelves. It was an interesting experience.

The South

So I just got back from my southern adventure. It was awesome. At some point, I'm going to figure out how to post pictures because I think that that would be the best way to describe it.

I went down for a volunteer visit to see how people live after this crazy training. We stopped in at Girokaster on the way down and had lunch with some people at this very nice restauraunt on the top of a hill. Girokaster is a UNESCO site and has a 13th century castle. It's also built on this crazy steep hill. You have to climb almost straight up and there are cars driving beside you. It's really nice there. We didn't have time to go to the castle, just see it from afar so I will have to return there.

Then I went to another town farther south. It's a really tiny town about 45 minutes north of greece. That's were I stayed. The next morning we went to Sarande which is a city on the beach. You can see the Greek island of Corfu from there. The volunteers life is tough! It was a great trip to see some neat things and it was really nice to talk to some current volunteers and hopefully learn from their experiences.

I still do not know where I will be permanantly, but I should find out soon. It's a bit nerve wracking because it takes a very long time to travel to certain places so I have no idea if I will be anywhere near the people who I'm the closest to. Cross your fingers.

The Krew

As an update to my making food adventures. I appreciate all the suggestions, but I think that you overestimated my cooking abilities or the availability of american cooking supplies in Albania or my ability to communicate in Albanian.

Anyway. I ended up food processing tomatoes and throwing in pepper, salt, olive oil, basil and throwing it on top of macaroni. Then at the last second I melted a lot of butter and threw that in and tossed it around.

It vaguely resembled spaghetti sauce (but not really) Not my most succesful cooking adventure, but I didn't have a lot to go on. And I do know that spaghetti sauce is not particularly american, but its tough cooking american here. The important thing was that it was a cross cultural exchange. And the family all ate it so it couldn't have been that bad.

In other news, I'm going down south at the end of the week for a site visit. I'm really excited about that. I will post more later!

Let us think in the imagination of our minds

So many people are asking me about What it is like here. it's a difficult question to answer so I'll do a Day in the Life of Denise.

I wake up at 6:30 and usually take a shower. Then I have a hard boiled egg, a banana, and boiled milk for breakfast. I'm getting used to the egg still. Can't say I ate many of those in the states. Then I head to class for 5 hours or so of language training. This part is pretty intense. It's not that it is very hard, but we move really fast. One day we learn present tense, the next day future. But the teachers are great and my language group is super chill. We laugh a lot.

During language class, we have a break where two of us coffee addicts dash to the cafe for an espresso. Espresso's are 40 cents so they are almost as cheap as the coffee from upstairs. I've drank more espressos in the last two weeks then I ever have in my entire life. I'm averaging 3 a day.

After class is lunch. This could be a toasted sandwhich, rice pilaf, fried potatoes, or salad. It's all pretty cool. The rest of the day might be other kinds of training or could be community project work. I walk back to the host families house around 5 and sit around and drink turkish coffee and talk to my host mom and her friends. This stretches my language ability, but is really fun. Then I do lots of homework. They give us tons of stuff to do so it fills the day. We eat dinner at around 9. Yup I said 9. Then I chit chat more and head to bed. It's a busy life and a lot of fun.

The town is surrounded these awesome hills/mountains that we hike up when we get a free few minutes. The main focus of the first few months is the language. That's pretty much what goes down. It's actually a lot more fun/challenging then it might sound.