Outdoor Ambassadors Leadership Training..

Officially snowed out..

I left Bajram Curri for the Outdoor Amabassador Conference in Elbasan, that went great by the way. Just at 40 kids from all parts of Albania got to attend the training on leadership and environmental stewardship. The money for the conference was funded by a Peace Corps Partnership grant and all the kids who attended were able to attended, no charge to them. I gave two sessions over the weekend and the kids were really receptive and eager to learn.

Anyways, I got a phone call from Peace Corps Saturday evening telling me not to even try to get back to Bajram Curri for at least a week because all the roads are completely blocked.  The Prime Minister declared a stage of Natural Disaster in the North of Albania today. We have almost 15 feet of snow. 15 feet of snow. I've been reading all over the news what a horrible winter this is for Europe and now it has snuck it's way up to my back door.. literally creeping closer and closer everyday. I talked to my sitemates and they said it was probably a good thing that I'm not there right now. As of now my plan is just to hang out in the south of Albania, I'm in Corovode right now working on editing the G.A.D. documentary we started. Most of the south of Albania, besides a few regions, is just getting a lot of rain instead of snow.

I read an article that there was an avalanche in a small village of Kosovo, on the border of Kosovo and Albania, that trapped and killed 9 people. The scary thing is that this village is right by the road that we travel to get to Bajram Curri and has probably received almost the same amount of snow as we have. A small girl was saved from the snow pile but her entire family was lost in this tragedy.

I don't know when I'll be able to return back to my apartment, but I only packed for 3 days so looks like I'm going to be marinating a lot or stopping by a market to pick up some second hand clothes. That's honestly small problems compared to what I would be having if I was home.

Water reserves on deck..

So.. since my last post about snow, it hasn't stopped snowing. We now have over a meter of snow and Bajram Curri has turned into a life sized ant farm with paved out pathways to stores and bars with walls of over three feet of snow locking you into the paths. 

School has been cancelled until further notice, there is no public transportation in or out of the town and I haven't had water for almost 5 days. Which has led me to using my reserve of water that my landlady made me fill up this summer and has been sitting in my bathroom since then. So glad I didn't ask questions and just listened to her because it's the only thing washing my dishes and helping me cook. I have no idea when I'll get water next or if my pipes are frozen or not.. It's kind of hard to tell anything but I do know now that the 'it's summer and that's why we don't have a lot of water' answer is now proven false. We haven't been losing power as much as I would expect with this much so, but I don't want to speak too soon.

We went on a walk yesterday and it was beautiful, I wanted to enjoy the snow before it got mushy. It's going to be around for a while because the forecast reads nothing but negative degrees celsius. The town does have a somewhat eery feeling though because it's so quite and a lot of people are just staying inside all day.

I've heard from a lot of people that this is the most snow that they've had in years. People are scraping off the snow from tops of buildings so they don't cave in, cars are completely covered in snow and look like hills.. this is the most snow I've ever seen in my life and I don't hate it. 

I know the first thing people worry about in the states with winter weather is getting food and losing power.. since I walk to get my food and lose power a lot anyways, it makes it way different. It's hard to run out of bread when there's 5 places in town that make their own bread or chickens that lay the eggs in the villages around us.

The most snow in Tropoja since 1984..

Outside my apartment building..

Our walk around town in the snow..

Albanian birthday tradition..

In America, it's always so exciting to go out with your friends and family because you know that your dinner and drinks with be taken care of, why? Because it's your birthday. Well, in Albania, the tradition is 100% ass-backwards. The person who's birthday it is is responsible for taking everyone out for drinks and coffee. Today was my counterparts birthday. After the staff meeting, we all trekked through the 1.5 feet of snow to go to the nicest lokal in Bajram Curri for drinks.

The women all ordered tea or coffee while the men ordered round after round of coffee/raki, red bull/vodka, coffee/Jack Daniels, etc. Now, typically at the end of coffees there is a huge fight about who is going to pay. It is not Albanian tradition for everyone to pay for their own, the idea is that someone pays this time and someone else will get it the next time, kind of like bar hopping where one person buys the rounds at one bar and the next person gets the next round, and so on..

Not this coffee. I counted, there were 27 people at 5 tables pushed together and guess who gets the tab? That's right, the birthday boy. I mean, I guess you could compare it to having a party and the person who has the party generally forks out the money, but this is the equivalent to going for drinks with 25 coworkers and being left with the bill because it's your birthday. I saw him later on through the day, it's a small town, having coffees with relatives and friends, all of which he was expected to pay for, and did.  I made him a birthday card, one in English, one in Shqip, which everyone just got such a kick out of because 'why was I giving him something on his birthday.' There's a lot of things I accept or traditions I go along with, even if I don't understand them, but this one is by far the craziest to me.

It also makes me kinda glad my birthday is in August, 'pushim month' which is typically the vacation month and no one is around.

52 centimeters of snow and counting..

Which is a little over a 1.5 feet, for those still on the metric system. Who am I kidding, I used my phone's converter to figure out how much it was today after the engineer measured. Its snowing all over Albania this week and I don't think we got the most out of everyone but we got enough. I've never been in this snow before in my life.. almost two feet? Okay, maybe when I was 8 during that huge ice and snow storm we had that one time. I mean, it's so different when you don't have a car, can walk to work, don't have centralized heating, hot water, are used to the power going out.. I mean the idea of a 'snow day' doesn't really exist. Everyone runs late anyways, the people in the villages get to run a little more late than everyone today, I guess that's a plus. School only went half a day today and is called off tomorrow because a lot of the kids come from villages by furgon and the roads are the best.

So for all of you stateside, enjoying that nice 18 degree weather, wishing that you had more of a winter.. just remember me, sitting in my apartment with my wood stove on, my water pipes frozen, three layers, handwarmers and 4 blankets on. Yeah, thats 65 degrees fahrenheit.