brenna journeys.: 4/1/12

Monday

Renovations underway...

Our grant project has started. Donated basketball rims & backboards and painting the court has begun!..

Sunday

Visiting my host family for the first time..

Since Bajram Curri is so isolated and getting to the capital is even a big deal, I've kind of been slacking on going to visit my host family which is, from Bajram Curri, 10 hours of travel. I finally went back this weekend to visit them. It was so strange, I felt like I was revisiting my childhood home. This was the place where I learned to walk, talk.. everything. I was greeted by many hugs and cheek kisses, I actually was walking up to the house and ran into my host dad and brother going to get meat from the butcher for dinner. It almost felt like I was being greeted by my family in America as happy as they were to see me, it was nice.

A new trainee lives in the house of my Dad's cousin, which shares a front yard with my house. We spent the afternoon taking pictures, drinking juice, reading Shqip, watching my brother play video games on the computer and catching up. They were really impressed on my Albanian skills compared to what they were when I lived with them and even told me I looked more 'elegant' or thin. My oldest host sister had moved out because she was engaged so she had moved in with her fiance's family but would be coming for dinner. She's still in high school and has one more year left, he is out of high school and a waiter at a lokal.

For dinner we had two kinds of meat, grilled peppers, cheese, fried potatoes, egg byrek and mixed salad. A meal fit for a king. I couldn't even force my entire piece of tre leche or three milk cake down, just a few bites, even though it's my favorite desert. My little brother wanted me to sleep in the room with him, that used to be my room, so we feel asleep together in our twin sized beds, heads facing each other. We left the light on until he feel asleep and then my host mom came and gave me a hug.

I woke up, wanting to be out of Bishqem by 7am and my host mom was up putting together a huge bag of produce for me to take home with me. After swearing in I went up to Bajram Curri with over 3 kilos of peppers and this time I came home with fresh oranges, peppers and cucumbers from their green houses.

A quick trip back to my roots..

Host grandma, sister and mom..

Host cousin & brother.. they're a hand full..

Host dad driving to get the meat for dinner..

Hanging out in the yard..

Walk around Elbasan...

Part of the COD panel that presented to the new trainees..

First flash mob in Albania..

Click here to view.

Tropoje e Paster...

Ta Pastrojmë Shqipërinë në Ditë, flash mob!...

So last weekend we had Albania's first ever flash mob! We teamed up with Greenline Albania and Let's Do It Albania to produce Albania's first ever flash mob, or smart mob (since it has a reason or something to promote). After months and months of planning it all came together and we had almost 200 participates in the flash mob, Americans and Albanians alike.

I, unlike the rest of the flash mob participants didn't have to learn the dance because, like usual, I was in charge of recording! We had a team of 6 PCV's at all different angles around the flash mob recording every second of the event so that we could create one YouTube video to use for further promotion of the clean-up day in Albania! Other PCV's have started joking that I'm a "mobile marketing firm."

I had my tripod and flipcam set up on the fourth floor of the Taiwan Center in Tirana so I could get a good areal view of the entire event and it literally gave me chills watching it. Working with such a huge NGO in Albania and having such a large event on Earth Day is a huge success for Peace Corps and for Albania. The original date had to change for the clean-up day because a government mandated one was set for April 20th, so now the date has been set to September 17th. Lets do it!

Celebrating after Flash Mob sukses!..

The making of a Flash Mob..

Group 1 practicing in an abandoned building..

Practicing day of..

My post at the top of the Taiwan Center..

Girls night out in Tirana..

Tuesday

Everything at once..

The phrase, when it rains it pours, is relavent here in two different ways. The first, literally, it's been raining for about a week straight now. The other, figuratively, once one thing went wrong in my apartment, everything did. Last week I got a knock on my door from a neighbor telling me that my water pipe was leaking everywhere. After a quick glance outside my door I realized that this was true. I told her I would take care of it tomorrow since it was around 6:00pm and the working day had long been over, so we turned off the pipe all together and considered it put on hold.

The next morning around 6:30am I get another, more rapid, heavy knock on my door; same person, more rage. We usually get water in the morning around this time and my water pipe had leaked so much during this short period that it was seeping through the cement flooring onto the second floor of the apartment building.

Now here's a little background, during the winter my water pipe froze completely, blocking any water from entering my apartment at all. My landlord got someone to take this pipe out completely and exchange it for a new one, this was about 3 months ago, not enough time for this new pipe to break.

Any who, I had no idea who this man was or what his number was and this frustrated my neighbor and so she called my landlord herself. My landlord, who has been such a big help with anything I need, then called me and said her and the repair man were on their way. After replacing the pipe again, with what looks like a water hose tube and some sheep's wool mixed with cement, the water pipe was fixed, again. This was great too because I had all these clothes I was trying to get rid of and my landlord took them for herself, daughter and sister because "they're fat like me."

So, that was last week. This week my power has been off two out of three days after I returned from Tirana. Since it's been raining, I thought it was just weather related, until I did a little investigation yesterday. I looked outside to the rest of the apartment building and everyone had power except my floor. I soon got power after that and just thought maybe it took a while for it to come to my floor.

Last night my power was out from about 7:00pm on until this morning, getting ready in the dark is always a feat. I returned home for lunch and everyone's electricity was on except mine. Now this happened a few months ago when the electrical company thought I hadn't paid my bill, until I showed them I had and they turned it back on. Hoping to skip this step, I asked my neighbor if she had power, even though I saw she did, just to bring awareness to it. My power was back on within a matter of minutes. Come to find out her husband accidentally turned it off while making repairs to their apartment. Easier solution than I thought.

Also, when I returned from Tirana, my internet connection stopped working. Well, I just got upgraded to wifi and it's faster than ever! Nice. As frustrating as things can get here with the little inconviences they're usually fixedI live in one of the nicest apartments in my building and these are minor, fixable things but it's usually a prolonged solution. My neighbors are some of the nicest people that I've ever met and it's so remarkable how hospitable they are to me, even though I've lived here for almost a year. No where I've lived as ever felt more like a community than where I live now. I feel safer and more at home in my apartment thousands of miles away from everything I knew before than I ever felt in America.