Site Assignments

This week site announcements came out.  I will be (stuck) with Bill (his blog) for the next two years in Elbasan. Also, John will also be here with us for the next two years (See the picture of the three of us below). Elbasan is the city that I've been in since I arrived in Albania, and so I already know that it's a wonderful city, in a bright green cultivated valley, surrounded by terraced hills and mountains.

They kept everybody wait for some time the day these announcements were handed out. They decided to hand them out in the afternoon. They had stacks of white envelops with our names and sites.  They called you up to pick up your envelope, and you knew then and there were you were going to live for the next two years.  In your envelope, there was a description of your position and the contact information for your counterpart.

I will be a University English Professor at Aleksander Xhuvani University. I will get the opportunity to teach several subjects:

-American Studies
-American Literature
-SLA Research
-Composition
-Reading
-Listening and Speaking
-Presentation & Pronunciation
-Sociolinguistics

I am looking forward to building my CV and enjoying the recursive processes of teaching and learning.

The Up-side to Two Showers a Week

So there is an up-side to taking only two showers a week.  I wouldn’t at first think this is the case since a am a shower-everyday kind of guy, but after three weeks and six showers, I have found something out.  When I realized that there was this hidden up-side, I thought about what the obvious up-side would be, and I came up with saving money on soap. Yes!  It is true; you do save money on soap. In fact, the only brand I know that is available in Albania is Dove and it’s only 50 cents a bar (and not that super-hetero, grey box manly Dove either).  On a side note, I also use Dove antiperspirant (women’s) since they only really have a selection of spray and pump deodorants. And NO! You do not save money on soap because you are spending that money that would have gone to soap on baby-wipes since this is what you use to clean yourself on non-shower days.

So what then is the up-side? It is that you feel incredible, deep-down clean after a shower.  It’s the feeling that every part of you is clean and there is that baby power smell that reminds you that you’ve been reduced to wipey-showers.  So pure and clean - that’s the up-side to two showers a week.

Also, here's a pile of 50 chicken heads - ENJOY!

A Day at the Beach, is a Beach.

Currently I'm in PST - which is pre-service training, so there aren't many fun and interesting things to write about. This weekend however, we set off to different locations around the country to meet with a current PCV.  I went to Durres, which is an ancient port city, aka the beach.  It really isn't warm enough to go to the beach, but it's the 2nd largest city in Albania, and I was looking forward to getting out of the small town for a bit and into a big city.

It has rained almost non-stop since we've gotten here.  The first day we went on a tour of the archaeological museum, which was filled with artifacts that have been found here in Durres.  We also saw the ruins of a marketplace in the center of town and and amphitheater, which is proposed to be the most endangered ancient site.

The next day we went out for Pizza - my first of many in Albania, I'm told.  We then went to a really fancy coffee place where the prices were 3x the normal.  Normal is 50 Leke, and these were 150 Leke - at 130 Leke to $1, that's highway robbery.  I didn't get a drink, just took some photos of the others and theirs.

After that we went to watch a Roma band play some classical music - they were practicing for their performance at the Model UN, which will be held in Durres next week.  They were quite good.

Then we made our ways back to the same place we had lunch to have dinner with some other volunteers and their visitors from my group. While we were in the restaurant, the brute force of the storm that had been peeing down on us all day hit with force. The down pours were peppered (or salted) with pea-sized hail and continued until we gave up on it giving up and left in the flooded streets.  The streets continued to flood even more the closer we got to my hosts apartment, except one random dry street, and we hit water that was at times knee deep on the sidewalk. It was not fun, but the worst experiences are the best stories.