Didn't want it until I thought I'd lost it..

After returning from traveling outside of Albania, I must admit, my life here has taken some getting used to again.. This has been my first week back to work and it's been pretty hectic to say the least in the Bashkia the first full week of the year. I'm still going to staff meetings every morning at 8:00am. Staff meetings that about 90% I don't understand, but I think just showing up every morning and sitting in them and actually being there is something. Every morning, once the Mayor has gone through everyone else and asks them if they have any problems or concerns he looks back at the back chair at me and says, "Brenna, a keni problem?" Every morning I respond with a "jo, falimenderit" and the meeting is adjourned. That little interaction has led to many coffees together and shume respekt, I guess just the fact I show up every morning and just around town in general, the town's pretty small and word gets around fast. I wonder what will happen that one wonderous day I do have a question or a problem.. My office has now moved to the mayor's reception office where I sit on a couch and use a coffee table for a desk but you know, I don't hate it. I'm right in the mix of things and people that see me in the Bashkia also see me on the street and recognize me as a worker in the Bashkia which is nice, as an American to be integrated and as a woman to have some sort of respect as a worker outside the home.

Anyways, today there was a feste for 21 years of Democracy in which I was supposed to take pictures for the Bashkia's website.. Since the auditorium filled up quickly and I was snapping photos of the circle dancing outside, I cut my losses and went to coffee with some women I work with who also didn't get in. During coffee I was asked to marry two different people, someone's son and someone's brother. The fact that I'm not married or not engaged by the age of 23 still comes as a shock to most Albanians, especially women, but not today. I sat a table with the two women who were trying to marry me off, both of which were married, a woman who, I would guess, is in her 50's and has never been married and a woman, guessing again, who is around 25 or 26 and not married. How refreshing it was to not be questioned to death once I reviled my singleness and once I said "No, I'm not married, maybe later" and "No thank you for the offer of your son, I'm independent," that it was totally dropped. I was beginning to worry I had lost my mojo, matter of fact my 'foreign appeal' because I hadn't gotten a marriage proposal offer in a while. Glad to know I still got it, even though I wasn't sure I wanted it until I thought I'd lost it.

Anyways, after coffee I tried to go back to the celebration to try and snap some photos of the inside of the auditorium. Well, remember me ignorantly thinking some of my foreign appeal had worn off after being here for 8 months? Wrong. I walked through a sea of young boys who couldn't get into their favorite lokal after school to get a soda because it was closed off. The door was open, and I'm not exaggerating when I say this, the sea of people literally parted. Filled with screams of "she works for the Bashkia" and "clear the road, have respect for the American" oh, and "she has to take pictures for the mayor, watch out!" (Sidenote: you'll notice in all the photos of the mass swarms of people leaving and entering, they're all men). At one point I think my feet left the ground as a few men lifted me to the front of the crowd. The level of respect I have for the people in my community continues to grow as their Albanian hospitality continues to shine through, even if sometimes it's overbearing (force fed, not being let pay for anything, being let to the front of 100's of locals). Sure there's a rat kid thrown in there every once and a while or an older man who stares just a little too long for comfort, but honestly, some of the most hospitable people I've met in my life have been in Bajram Curri; minus the fact that a line at the ATM or in general in public doesn't seem to be part of common courtesy.

I was talking to Kim online and she told me about going to see her landlord for the first time since we got back from our trip and she sniffed one time and he took her to the pharmacy, bought her medicine, went and got a space heater out of his own house, replaced the bulbs and took it to her home. If someone could find me a landlord in America that would do that, consider it rented.