Back to School, Back to School

Last week was the first week of school. On the first day, I saw male students hanging curtains up in their classroom and heard “Take My Breath Away” as a ringtone on someone’s cell phone. The first week was relatively uneventful and I haven’t had very much formal classroom work just yet. That will pick up once lessons start and all the organization, logistics, registration and getting to know you things are over. So far, I’ve been doing research on grants and thinking about needs assessment and project planning.

And again, it becomes very obvious to me that PCVs cast very long shadows. In my first weeks in Golem, I was told and often directly compared to the two previous volunteers. In the beginning, I thought a lot about how the other volunteers would influence the way people think of me. People here remember them so well that I feel like I almost know them, even though they’ve been gone for some years. Luckily, the comparisons made directly to my face have been favorable, and I get the feeling that I am very different from them both in personality and ambition.

As the year began, it was also time to reflect on the fact that I’ve been here for six months already and am rapidly approaching the ¼ pole of my service. Mostly when I think about all that’s been happening, it feels like it’s gone by so quickly. But when I think that I’ll be staying here for two whole school years, it seems like it’s going to be forever until my service is finished. Of course the reality of time and how it elapses is somewhere in the middle. There is reason to believe, however, that if the summer went by at lightning speed and I wasn’t working the entire time, now that I’m working full-time it is really going to fly.

On the six-month anniversary of my departure, I thought about that day and what I was doing in the days leading up to it. I thought a lot about my parents. You’d think, at this point, that I’d be used to being away. I lived in Germany twice and studied away from home, and I never felt a particular sense of homesickness. What I’m feeling now isn’t really homesickness either, but more like peoplesickness. I miss the people in my life more than any particular place. Living all over the world drastically changes your concept of “home.” Largely because the people are spread out and not concentrated in one specific place and neither are you.

I miss, in no particular order: strawberries; roughhousing with Fernie; dinner and hockey games and any subsequent screaming at the television, good or bad, emanating therefrom; eating steaks and Dad’s barbecued chicken from the grill on the back porch; movie nights, borderline-obsessive amounts of telephone calls with the only person that I’m ever on the phone with (ever); being told the same stories about taking the academic course when Grammy should have taken the homemaking course; being able to know exactly what a store has and knowing things will be in stock; meals that don’t require hours of preparation, i.e. things you can just serve from the freezer or a can after heating; real book stores; sidewalks; and ground beef.

Things that I have learned and loved, in no particular order: balconies; sea breezes; listening to music with the bus or furgon windows rolled down; bean byrek; Red Bull; my students and their dreams and inspirations; the Albanian language; drinking high-test coffee with my mom / colleagues / friends; the simple joy of shopping at EuroMax and finding things that remind you a little bit of home (wherever or whatever “home” is); $3 pizzas; petulla (it’s kind of like funnel cake, but better); and the ability of Albanians to do so much with what they have: some of them make their own cheese, yogurt, grow their own chickens, hatch their own eggs, and make their own bread. Although many people want nothing more than to come to America, there is so much to be said and appreciated about life here, and self-sufficiency is but one aspect of my admiration.

It’s also time to reflect about our purpose and our goals, professional and personal, and the progress that we’ve made on them. At this point, I recognize that I have a lot to learn and a lot I want to give, but I am very pleased with the experience so far.

And finally, I think about my parents. It’s hard for me to talk about them without getting overly emotional. The only difference between now and the other times I was away is that it’s for a long time and that I’m older. I had initially planned to go right from university into Peace Corps—and was crushed when my departure date got pushed back not once, but twice. But with the perspective that time provides, I can look back on those six months that I spent at home and be grateful for the blessing in disguise. I met a whole group of new people at my job at an afterschool program and I got to spend some additional time at home. There is no saying what the arrangements will be when I go home, and it’s very certain that I won’t be spending such a long clip of time at home again. But it’s only now until I can look at that experience and really appreciate it. So thank you.