Laughter is the Best Medicine

I'm sitting in the Bishop home once again, this time listening to a rather noisy cow next-door. Speaking of cows... I walked past a couple of them tied up on the sidewalk in town, with not a care in the world. Except they should care, because they were tied up next to the butcher's shop! I felt kinda bad for them. But fresh beef is something to be prized in Albania... not many people eat much meat because it's expensive. So yeah, I'm getting to eat lots of bread and vegetables!! Good thing I love my veggies. And they have some good ones here, too. Last night, I got to experience making what they call berek... it's a classic Albanian dish - basically a big savory stuffed pastry that looks like a pizza with a pie crust on top. Our landlady, Mariana, has a job making them, so she's very good at it. The ingredients are very simple, but she threw all the ingredients together without measuring anything. Danika and I are hoping to make some ourselves sometime, but it could be disastrous. I will keep you posted on any developments there.

Ina is a 16-year-old girl who lives just behind the Bishops' house, and she has an incredible singing voice. Dawn asked me before I came if I could work with her while I was here. We had our first voice lesson on Saturday and another one this afternoon. She's very good at English so the lessons go pretty smoothly as far as communication, but this is the first time I've ever taught voice before, and I feel like I'm learning just as much as she is as I try to remember what I used to do when I took voice lessons. Plus I have to play piano all while watching and listening to her, and if you know how ADD I am, you'd understand that it's a bit of a challenge. But as she left today she thanked me over and over for working with her. She's so sweet, and so patient, because I feel like I should be thanking HER for dealing with my ADD-ness!



It's been quite an eventful weekend so far. Josh Bishop fell on a hard tile floor at church yesterday and broke his wrist. Apparently there have been many broken bones in this adventurous family, but of course it wasn't pleasant at the time, especially not for Josh. He didn't cry, but he did turn very pale and almost fainted... and when I saw his hand hanging limply from his very red and swollen wrist, I nearly started to cry myself! It looked so painful. He was taken to the local hospital, had his wrist set, and got it casted, but it certainly changed up the flow of the afternoon quite a bit. You never know what can happen in a given day!

Cultural note: Did you know that when Albanians nod their head it means "no" and a shake means "yes?" I had read that in a book before I came but wasn't sure how true it would be. It is. My first couple days here I was super sensitive about communicating yes and no correctly to people, but since it's not natural for me to do it, I kept getting so confused about how to speak with my head, that I finally realized I probably looked like I was having spasms. But I think since I'm American it's a given that I'm gonna look silly with a lot of my communicating, so I just do what I normally do. I'm trying to focus right now on picking up as much practical language as I can, so I'm putting the head nod on hold. Maybe I'll start to do it eventually.

Being immersed in the Albanian language is so much fun and absolutely frustrating at the same time. Our host family speaks no English, so communication is very primitive. The kids in many ways are the best teachers for us, because they love to point at objects and make us say the Albanian word for each object. Miscommunication happens constantly, and sometimes it can get me into trouble. For example, last night my housemate, Danika, and I were hanging out at the family's house, and Mariana noticed that my foot was very swollen (it's been that way since September, and I haven't been able to figure out exactly why.) There happened to be a mosquito bite on top of the same foot, and I think she may have thought that I'm allergic. I tried to tell her that I was okay and couldn't do anything about it, but I'm still very, very limited in my language ability and perhaps even more so in nonverbal communication, so she was very concerned. She took out her husband's raki (a strong drink that most Albanian men drink for socializing) and dabbed it on the mosquito bite with a napkin. After that I smelled like I'd spent all evening at the bar, but at least my mosquito bite wasn't as itchy! Thankfully, it wasn't yet too late to call Dawn Bishop, and she was able to translate. We all laughed. We laugh a lot. After all, laughter is the best medicine, even for cross-cultural mix-ups!