June 2012
15 posts
Albania, my home. These past couple of weeks I’ve had the opportunity to travel quite a bit throughout Albania, mainly on the weekends, and this country has never felt more like home.
Although my language is less than spectacular (I’m in a post-schooling lull), I know enough to get by and feel included in the culture. Finally. I even helped a tourist find out where, when and how much a bus was...
One of the worst feelings is getting on the furgon five minutes too early before takeoff. Granted I get a better seat, without the movement of the mini-bus I’m without air, and I swear I could not be sweating more. The gjyshi sitting next to me smells as if he’s slaughtered a pig and hasn’t showered in a year. I put my ear-buds in, shove my nose into the clean-smelling backpack on my lap, and...
And let us together put some hope into the world, into our countries, into our smallest local towns, so that another young child out there somewhere — whether in Gjirokaser, Albania, or even in Mississippi — can see it, recognize it, and, for the first time, know what it is like to feel it.
For an article worth reading, click here.
Summer is upon us. As I sit here at 8pm in my 35°C apartment, watching my new friend, the gecko, crawl slowly towards the colony of daddy long-legs above my desk, I contemplate my next move. Should I go outside draped in my PeaceCorps issued mosquito net and risk their attack? Should I cook dinner and risk melting onto the floor? Nope. My best option will be to continue this afternoon’s event –...
I walk up my hill panting heavily as the Lezhën heat sticks to me, open the gate to my commune as Onyx greets me with his new kitten friends (a couple weeks old maybe?), climb some stairs and sneak past my landlord/third mother Gjyli (it may sound terrible, but if you knew how much she likes to talk you’d be on my side), enter my studio-shtepi and crash. Here ends my first official week as a Peace...
