Gezuar Cubed

During the few days between Christmas and New Year’s, I decided to head to Athens. It was a great time! I would truly recommend it. This is the second time I’ve been to Athens and I wasn’t sure if there was enough to keep me busy, but believe me there is so much to see in that city. The only thing that I did which was the same was go to the Parthenon and watch the sunset from this certain hill which is really pretty. Other than that everything was different.
And by the way, I love Greek food. We had KFC, McDonald’s, and Applebee’s. Before you judge me too much, please remember I live in Albania. I do really like Albanian food, but I miss American food. And Greek food is really similar to Albanian food. We did go out to a Greek restaurant one night and it was great. About half way through dinner, these two guys came in. One played the keyboard and the other the bazooki which is some sort of Greek guitar. We were almost the only ones in the restaurants so we had a great private conversation and got to talk to them a little bit. It was a very cool cross cultural experience.
When I got back, I got ready for the biggest holiday in Albania. NEW YEAR’S. I don’t think words can really describe what it is like here on New Year’s. On the days leading up more and more fireworks arrived in Kavaje. They were selling them everywhere and I’m not talking about sparklers, I’m talking about big fireworks that shoot high in the air and explode. Eight year olds were buying them. So all day fireworks are randomly going off, but about 10 minutes before the ball drops they really start going. None of the fireworks are sponsored by the city or anything they are just shooting them off randomly from people’s homes and the main square. So the whole city is just lit up. My next door neighbors were shooting them and I felt like they were going to come into my house. At some point, the fireworks set off a small brush fire near my house. So I watched my neighbor attempt to put it out with a hose. He was hampered by the fact, we had no water at the time. So once his reserve was out, he had to just watch it burn. Eventually some fire fighters showed up and put it out. This year, I observed this all form the comfort/safety of my home. Maybe next year, I will go crazy and wander down to the square. I will never forget New Year’s 2008.

Because of the holidays, I’ve been in a very reflective mood. I’ve been thinking over my life in the last year and how much it has changed. Because of a random set of circumstances, I quit my job last year on my birthday. So I kind of view that as the beginning of this crazy year. Last year’s Christmas was filled with me drinking up the last bits of family time. Then in March, I headed here. It’s been a great experience so far. I’ve done things that I never imagined possible.
School at the high school is going really well. It took a few months for me to get into the swing of things and for the students to get used to my broken Shqip/English conversations and I teach differently than they are used to. But I have mastered the use of the register (the teacher’s grade book) which is way more difficult than you would imagine. And I think some of the stuff I’m saying is getting through to them. And I taught them the phrases TGIF and bling, bling. So clearly they are better off knowing me.
The private school has been great. I teach a beginner class and team teach an advanced class. The beginners are getting to the point where we can have brief conversations in English. The school decided to have a New Year’s party and it was a really great time. Each different class worked on a presentation in English – a song, a story, a dialogue or poem. I taught my class Jingle Bells and they did a great job singing the song. I was a bit worried that my class wouldn’t be as good as the other classes so I pulled a favor and brought a guitar playing friend which ensured that ours was the best. Another highlight was the Romeo and Juliet scene. Two kids asked me to pick out a scene in Romeo and Juliet for them to act. I suggested that I translate it into modern English and they agreed. So I picked the balcony scene. I did forget how ridiculously romantic the play is and I definitely had some fear of screwing up Shakespeare. Especially the really famous lines. "Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?" It was a bit nerve wracking. But they memorized the whole scene and really brought down the house. The party ended with circle dancing and some hip hop. And the party ended at 11:30 am so all of this went on before lunch!
So in summary. I don’t think that I’ve ever had a New Year where I felt that my life had changed so much, but it all has been for the best. I’m enjoying my time here, meeting all kinds of great people, and hopefully making a bit of a difference here.
Hope you enjoy the pic of me shaking it up with my students.

A few pics

My Orlando Bloom lighter - love it
A view of Albania from the top of Albanopoly

More pics to come..... I have a few days off of school so should have time to upload some.

Coffee American style part 2

Add Starbucks coffee to your french press - generously donated by your sister.

How to make American coffee in Albania

Take one camp stove. The electricity goes out a lot so we all have these. Add water in your Turkish coffee maker

Light it up with your Orlando Bloom lighter (which ended up on a entirely other post) See next post for more details.

Thanksgiving

So I had my first Thanksgiving in Albania and it was a great experience. To be clear, Albanians do not celebrate Thanksgiving. It seems though that Little Bajram (which might be the Feast of Ede) is somehow related to being thankful. The first Thanksgiving adventure was in one of my classes. It was the private course that I teach in the afternoon. I had the idea to teach them how to draw a turkey using their hand. Something got lost in the translation/demonstration because I ended up with every single picture being a tracing of their hand with a picture of a turkey drawn next to it. Which makes no thanksgiving sense, but they did have a lot of fun. The other challenge was that I was trying to explain to them the complexities of Thanksgiving. I tried to explain how we celebrate the fact that the Native Americans became friends with the Pilgrims, but that isn’t really the whole story. The complexities of this were completely lost on them and I ended up having to tell the story in all of its stereotypical glory, but I really did try.

After school was finished, I headed up to Durres where the plan was to get together with an older couple here who were cooking a turkey. They ended up getting sick so my not so old friend and I were given the turkey and given instructions. An Albanian friend of the Durres crew got the turkey especially for us from the village. There were definitely some interesting Albanian challenges. First, we had to scrub the turkey with hot water. The only place that hot water comes out of the spout is the shower and the hot water wasn’t turned on. So we turned the hot water on, waited 45 minutes for it to heat up and then gave the turkey a nice shower. Then we covered it in butter and spices and popped it in the oven. Keeping in mind that we had a limited time because the lights were scheduled to go out right around the time the turkey was supposed to be done. The stove doesn’t have any number markings on it so we put it about where we thought it should be. Ten minutes in we checked it and the turkey was already brown and the oven was filled with smoke. Clearly, it was a little too hot. Thinking it was ruined, we turned the oven down. The lights went out before it was completely done, but we left it in the still hot oven for a few more minutes and it seemed to work.

About an hour in, I was left alone to finish all of the cooking while Matt went and got our other friend who was coming from the far north. The couple had made us stuffing and I made mashed potatoes. Against all odds, the turkey was actually pretty good. We had turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes and everything was delicious. We even had enough left over for Black Friday leftovers!! It was great to spend some time with some American friends even though I was so far away from my family and friends.

Side note… It was about 70 the whole weekend so it was gorgeous and we walked along the sea on Black Friday in perfect weather. My friend from the far north was particularly enjoying it because he hasn’t taken off his coat even to sleep because it is so cold up there. The weather didn’t stay too long and it is back to being slightly chilly. So to everyone out there. Gezuar Dite Falemenderimeve. Happy Thanksgiving.

Scruffy Jumper

So I was wandering through this grocery store the other and just kept having to laugh. First, it can be a little bit of a potshot when you are buying things here. There are a lot of products which are made for Albania so I can usually muddle through the labels in Albanian and determine what’s inside, but the ones in Macedonian, Greek, Italian, and Russian are still at a loss to me.
There is not a lot of American products here. There are a lot of Italian and Greek stuff. Randomly, one of the only American products (other than Coke) is Philadelphia Cream Cheese. And by the way… it is delicious. And reminds me of home.
Thirdly, the baby food and the liquor are in the same aisle. I’m from Pennsylvania so its weird enough for me to see liquor in a grocery store, but it cracked me up to see liquor sharing the aisle with baby food.
I was looking for chicken breast which they don’t have any, but fortunately they have not run out of sheep’s head so I picked up a few for a delicious soup.
Finally, they have Titanic chocolate here. It has a picture of Leonardo and Kate Winslet on the front. When did this movie come out?!? I swear I remember going to a midnight show my freshman year of college (which was quite a while ago.) I decided not to buy the Titanic chocolate.