I have already passed the one week mark, but I’ve had very little opportunity for an update. Luckily, our flights went off without a hitch. We were all incredibly tired of moving our bags and afraid that we’d go over weight, but it ended up going pretty well.
After an 8 ½ hour ride to Munich, we had a three hour layover before flying to Tirana. Afterwards, it was a two hour ride to our training site. We spent the first three days in a hotel attending various introductory training sessions. On Saturday, we all piled into the furgons (vans that serve as public transport) and were shipped off to our new host families. We were all pretty nervous since we had bare bones information about our family on a computer print out.
I couldn’t have gotten any luckier in terms of host families.
We live in a smallish village twenty-five minutes outside of the main training city. My house is almost right next to the school where we have daily language lessons, when most of the other volunteers are at least twenty minutes away. I spent five hours each day between Monday and Saturday learning Albanian. Two days out of the week I travel by furgon to the PC training site in the city for additional lessons pertaining to community service, safety and pedagogy.
My family is really, really great. I have three host brothers who are 8, 15 and 16. They help me a lot with the language, especially since the two oldest ones speak English passably. My host mother is a hairdresser and my father works for the local government. They also own a store and a salon which occupy the lower level of our house. As for the house itself, it’s beautiful. I have my own room with a bunch of leather furniture. We also have a western toilet (as opposed to a Turk), digital cable with hundreds of channels, and even the internet (not very common just yet). Though the PC warned us that we will be making adjustments in standards of living, there isn’t much of a difference. Sure, we have the normal water outages but even those have occurred far less frequently than I had initially expected. I don’t think we represent the average Albanian family, however. There is a vast spread in this society and I believe we are towards the upper end. For example, one of the volunteers out of our group went to a family without running water. Even in our assigned accommodations, you can see the variety of standards here in Albania.
We also eat very well here. Albanians are extremely hospitable and might name this hospitality as their best national asset. I am usually relieved once I know that no more food will be coming because I’m usually stuffed half way through the first dish. I am getting all the dietary properties that I need. We eat meat (usually veal), some fish, and lots of vegetables and fruit. One of my favorite parts of Albania is the coffee culture. First off, they drink REAL coffee (a.k.a Turkish coffee) and they take a while to do it. It’s great to have a chat over an espresso.
Overall, most of the volunteers are adjusting very well. Many of us haven’t had to make many changes. The hardest part so far is the cold. It’s been in the 50s, but the houses keep it much colder. The cold just seeps out of the walls. But I figure if our only complaint is the cold, we have it pretty damn good. Another potential issue is the perception of personal space. As Americans, we are perfectly fine with dining together and then going to our rooms and separate spaces. In Albania, if you do that too often, people think you are depressed. A lot of this first week has been about getting to know each other and finding a balance. I do as much as possible with my family because it is such a great way to learn. In these first couple weeks, I am here to observe and learn and being close to my family is the best way to do that. I am very grateful for the hospitality they have shown me so far and I look forward to getting to know them better as my linguistic skills progress.
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