New Years

We arrived back in Albania in the middle of a warm spell. On New Year's Day, the temperatures were up to 70 degrees. In Bulgaria, my friend Nik told us that we had arrived during a warm spell as well and that the week before it had been in the minuses.

Overall, we were very lucky with the weather on our trip through Macedonia and Bulgaria. There were other problems, however, but nothing that we couldn't handle. I’m going to post individual entries for each day of our trip along with photos. My friend Kristine and I went, and you can read more about our trip from her perspective over at her blog.

I didn’t buy anything of significance for myself on the trip except a nice fountain pen and a ton of spices at a "real" supermarket. For my family, I bought peanut butter, soap, coffee and chocolates. They really enjoyed their gifts and I was the first out of the three volunteers that have stayed with them to bring something back. Again, courtesy and consideration are things that my parents have taught me and that I’m glad to have learned. I didn’t have much money to spend but my host sister told me that wasn’t at all the point… it was just the thought.



I got back to my site just in time for New Years, lucky for me. My host dad personally selected meat from an animal slaughter that he witnessed. Our New Year's Eve dinner started with a traditional mixed plate of egg, tomato, cucumber, salami and salce kosi, a yogurt sauce with a very strong garlic taste. After that, we had a beef roulade filled with diced carrots and potatoes. Then beef steak, but not the kind Americans are used to. This steak is thin, pan-fried, seasoned with pepper, oregano, garlic and salt and with little marbling. So it's a little chewier but still very good. We had a turkey stuffed with vegetables and walnuts that my host mom killed. My dad served me a huge piece of breast meat and I was content. To finish, the famed baklava.

We sat around watching special editions of television shows. Tired from my travels, I went to bed around 11:00 but asked them to wake me up in an hour. Even if they hadn't come to get me, there's no possible way I could have slept through all the insanity that was about to come. Watching from my balcony, I was overwhelmed by an amount of fireworks that I had never, ever seen before in my life. Maybe that's because everything would have been illegal back home. A full moon wasn’t the only thing that lit up the sky as literally hundreds of fireworks went off in every direction. Pretty ones, incredibly loud ones... a whole cornucopia. And when it was all over, the smoke enveloped our little village and just laid there.

The next two days were spent visiting and receiving guests, as well as continuing to stuff ourselves with food. What a nice welcoming back home after my trip.