Oh, Technology

I need to vent… I hate technology!!! The internet has been down at work since yesterday afternoon, which is connected to the phones. So to make calls for work, I had to use my cell phone today. I tried to do some writing on the grant this afternoon, but every time I needed to look up a piece of info or refer to an email, I had to put it on my mental to-do list for later when the Internet is better. I decided to come over to the Bishops and use their Internet, which at least goes in and out… but I found out that an in-and-out connection isn’t very good for Skyping. I was just trying to talk with a friend from the U.S. a few minutes ago over Skype, and the connection kept cutting us off every 30 seconds. Ugh! It made me feel pretty much helpless. Oh, technology.

On a happier note, the last couple days I have gotten to do a significant amount of socializing. Yesterday I chatted for a while with two of the day care workers at the center. They’re around my age, and they’re Christians as well. We have a little more in common than perhaps the people I live near (don’t get me wrong… I LOVE my neighbors, too!) They get to practice their English on me, and I get to practice my Albanian on them.

Something Short

As I sit in my bedroom with the window open, the curtain is blowing back and forth rather violently for an afternoon. I can even hear the wind at times. For once I can sit here without the fan on in my room and feel pretty much comfortable temperature wise, even though it’s the hottest part of the day. This breeze we have today is very welcome after a week of very still, hot, humid weather. Last night I experienced the most sleepless night I’ve had since my arrival, because even with the fan on and the window open, there was no escape from the heat! As we get deeper into summer, the heat gets hotter. This week my physical energy level was much lower than in the previous two weeks, which helped me understand even more why few people go out in the afternoons.

My landlord and landlady work very hard to provide for their family. Arti has a large cart of sandals which he takes into town every day to sell, and Mariana makes berek pastry every night to sell to shops in the city. Now that beach season is here, they have begun taking food and drinks to the beach to sell to tourists to try to make a little more money. I did enough complaining about the heat this week for a whole family, but when I think about Arti and Mariana outside in that heat faithfully going out to earn money every day to support their family, it reminds me to toughen up and bear it.

Last night Danika and I attended our first authentic Albanian birthday party. Klesti is one of the little boys who lives in the house just in front of us and is in and out of our apartment all the time. He turned six yesterday, so his aunt and mother made dinner (darkë) for the family and a birthday cake (tortë). Enida and Redi (our landlord’s children) sang the happy birthday song in English, so of course Danika and I were able to join in. Then several of the family members pulled bills out of their pockets and gave them to Klesti… it is customary to give money to someone when they have a birthday. The family toasted to him, wishing him many more happy years. In fact, whenever you share a drink or a meal with someone here, it is typical to do a toast with your glass or coffee cup and say, “Gezuar!” which is similar to saying “Cheers!” Tomorrow Klesti and his little brother are going with their mother to Greece to visit their father who works as a field worker during the summers. We are going to miss them!

As of yesterday, it’s official that I am going to stay in Albania for two weeks longer than originally planned. The time is going by far too quickly, and since my future plans are still up in the air, I wanted to stay on just a little longer. Now instead of saying that I have two weeks left, I have an entire month!

This is a short post… okay, shorter than they usually are, but I’ll close with another cultural note: As an unmarried person I am still considered a “girl.” No matter how old you are, you are considered a child if you are unmarried – eight, eighteen, or twenty-eight. The other night I was at the Bishops’ house finishing some work while Danika came back to the apartment. Instead of leaving her alone, our host family wanted to keep her company because they didn’t want her to get scared, at home alone. If we’re out of the house past 9:00 p.m., Mariana always calls to see where we are because she doesn’t want anything to happen to her “girls.” You can rest easy, because we are well looked after :)

We are doing a good deal of PR this week. Monday I interviewed the director of a school just outside of the Kënet, and yesterday I interviewed the vice-director of the Këneta school. Anisa has been a GREAT help with interviews as a translator, especially since she has a teaching background and understands the educational issues we are trying to understand and address. And as an added bonus, we get to hang out more! On Monday after an interview, we got coffee together and talked for a couple hours. It was my first time at one of the locales here, which is crazy, because cafés are everywhere! Most of my coffee-drinking thus far has been in people’s homes, so it was nice to get out. Socializing and drinking a coffee together outside is a huge part of the culture here. Relationships are #1, and you see cafés in practically every other building!

Saranda

This past weekend Danika, my housemate, and I took a seven-hour bus ride to a city in the south called Saranda. I had planned this trip before coming out here, because my cousin's wife, Vana, grew up in Saranda before she went to the States for college, and she just happened to be in Saranda in the middle of my stay here in Albania! (Coincidence? I think not ) It came at a very good time, as last week was a very busy week, and Danika and I were both in need of some rest.

I got to meet Vana's family for the first time and stay with them in their little apartment located a five-minute walk from the beach with a perfect view of the harbor from their balcony. It was stunning! If the sky is clear, you can actually see the nearest Greek island of Corfu which you can reach by ferry from Saranda in 20 minutes. We would have jumped on the ferry immediately, except I didn't bring my passport to Saranda! Ugh! I know better for next time, I guess.

Before leaving Durres, Ken gave me the number for a guy he knew in Saranda who houses missionaries sometimes. We planned to stay with Vana's parents on Friday night and then stay at the missionary house on Saturday night. When we got to Saranda I told Vana about him, and he just so happened to be a friend of hers who she knew in high school! But wait, it gets even better.... Vana's family took us to dinner on Friday night at their favorite pizza restaurant, and he happened to show up there too! This is just one of the many ways I've seen God provide when He didn't have to.

A Post Long Past Due

I offer you my sincerest apologies for not blogging this week! I won’t start into excuses, because it will only waste time and cyberspace, and there are lots of things to write about the past week. So here goes!

As I may or may not have mentioned in a previous post, one of my initial tasks was to focus on language learning. This is a very basic and essential part of being a missionary… which seems like common sense and is reiterated in mission courses, but now that I’m on the field, I have a much more personal understanding. Ken and Dawn’s (and Global Partner’s) vision for this field is to see a sustainable Albanian church formed – not a foreign church dependent upon foreigners for its survival. My housemate puts it this way: if you’re doing your job right as a missionary, then you won’t be needed forever. The point of missions and church planting is to allow the Holy Spirit to work from within the culture as new believers are discipled and can disciple their own people. Discipleship works like multiplication. But now I’m getting a bit off track, so let’s get back to what I wanted to say.