So last night after my power was shut off...Not my fault if I did not pay the bills. I never got a bill...the store down below gets bills delivered to them for the everyone in the complex .If you don't pick up your bill, they toss them..I never knew that they even had them. Only 4 months behind. This is just one of the things these people just know because most were born and raised in the city. Most don't even know the street names..no signs...but everyone knows where everything is and where they live....Anyway, sorry, got side tracked.
Last night we had an incredible lightning and thunder storm...A warm fall night and for a while there was no rain....About very 30 seconds to 2 minutes the sky lit up and the city just rumbled. As I mentioned before our city is at the base of a Castle....There are few cooler sights than to see lightning cover the sky and a castle on a mountain top in the foreground. Scooby Doo, ...Where are you????
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
But they understand me....
Hey All, I just read last blog...sorry for all the misspellings and grammar errors. Some days are better than others when it comes to writing. I fixed a few but the real damage is done..sorry.
Work Update: After meeting with the director again....he said..."I am ready to read your proposals for the ideas/projects which you feel need doing"...The Good..I get to do stuff... The Bad, he had/has little idea of why and what he wants me to do here.
The deadline is neser, for website information that I asked my coworkers to work on at the last meeting..Where are they are in the process????....not having looked at it once....After I brought it up to my director, he laughed and said, most of the department heads have never seen or care to see a website.....(Arg....why am I asking them their opinion????...Oh yeah.....But this is the one job the director gave me the second week of my stay here). To combat that issue I am trying to now set up a lesson/meeting on the use and importance of a website now in the rest of the world...and the importance and use of them in Albania 5 years from now. I will limit lesson sites to the Department of Agriculture in the States and the one the Country of Albania has set up. Needless to say, the deadline is now been moved a week and I am in the process of twisting my directors arm to remind/force them to at least describe their individual departments...
Hopefully they will use the other sites as a guide and put their on twist on things. (No I will not personally give the meeting..just the subject matter..one of my computers savey coworkers will conduct it....They told us during training that unless the director/mayor/boss has told a worker directly...not in meetings ...there is no expectation of them doing anything outside their daily routine. The same routine designed 17 years ago...just after the fall of Communism. Oh well, it gives me more time for coffee...
Halloween is this weekend...the Peace Corps is having a big party in Elbasan...Info in next blog entry.
My Shqip....somedays I get compliments how good it is...then my sitemates join us or they meet them later...... they then look at me and say...dude...your Shqip sucks...not really those words but that is what I hear.
If someone cares to work with me..we can have a simple conversation for about 45 minutes. If they don't want work hard at understanding me...I cannot understand a word from them and they don't try to piece together my Shqip....we look at eachother ...and go on to the next person.
Other stuff...Days are really short here...Yesterday the power went out at 3:00 in the afternoon and as of 8:00 this morning still out...Cold #@,.#$%,^/..^$$%.,^%$.,#....shower this morning...Lezhe has a brand new desert shop with relaxed, very very nice seating arangements. The deserts are okay but the place is perfect for coffee, tea or a relaxing soda. It is in the basement of a new building and most locals have not seen it yet...very nice place. They thought me shqip was good...So they said...I only spoke for 3 minutes with only about 21 mistakes...but they understood....
Work Update: After meeting with the director again....he said..."I am ready to read your proposals for the ideas/projects which you feel need doing"...The Good..I get to do stuff... The Bad, he had/has little idea of why and what he wants me to do here.
The deadline is neser, for website information that I asked my coworkers to work on at the last meeting..Where are they are in the process????....not having looked at it once....After I brought it up to my director, he laughed and said, most of the department heads have never seen or care to see a website.....(Arg....why am I asking them their opinion????...Oh yeah.....But this is the one job the director gave me the second week of my stay here). To combat that issue I am trying to now set up a lesson/meeting on the use and importance of a website now in the rest of the world...and the importance and use of them in Albania 5 years from now. I will limit lesson sites to the Department of Agriculture in the States and the one the Country of Albania has set up. Needless to say, the deadline is now been moved a week and I am in the process of twisting my directors arm to remind/force them to at least describe their individual departments...
Hopefully they will use the other sites as a guide and put their on twist on things. (No I will not personally give the meeting..just the subject matter..one of my computers savey coworkers will conduct it....They told us during training that unless the director/mayor/boss has told a worker directly...not in meetings ...there is no expectation of them doing anything outside their daily routine. The same routine designed 17 years ago...just after the fall of Communism. Oh well, it gives me more time for coffee...
Halloween is this weekend...the Peace Corps is having a big party in Elbasan...Info in next blog entry.
My Shqip....somedays I get compliments how good it is...then my sitemates join us or they meet them later...... they then look at me and say...dude...your Shqip sucks...not really those words but that is what I hear.
If someone cares to work with me..we can have a simple conversation for about 45 minutes. If they don't want work hard at understanding me...I cannot understand a word from them and they don't try to piece together my Shqip....we look at eachother ...and go on to the next person.
Other stuff...Days are really short here...Yesterday the power went out at 3:00 in the afternoon and as of 8:00 this morning still out...Cold #@,.#$%,^/..^$$%.,^%$.,#....shower this morning...Lezhe has a brand new desert shop with relaxed, very very nice seating arangements. The deserts are okay but the place is perfect for coffee, tea or a relaxing soda. It is in the basement of a new building and most locals have not seen it yet...very nice place. They thought me shqip was good...So they said...I only spoke for 3 minutes with only about 21 mistakes...but they understood....
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Cruizing on Empty
Things are starting to get a little busier here for me. Last week Opportunity Albania, an organization that works on giving loans to Low Income Albanians approached me and asked if I would be interested in working a couple days a week with them on marketing. I introduced myself to them when I when I first got here, so they knew I was in town. Another volunteer works for them in a neighboring town so they are familiar with the PC and our services. As of now, I said, they would have to ask my director, since the Department of Agriculture was where I was assigned.
I also made a friend who not only speaks english well but is someone who I have much in common. He is
an English Teacher from a neighboring village, a very good friend of my Shqip teacher, and a former soccer player. He also works out regularly at the same fitness center as I.
As for adventures, I went to the city of Berat last weekend. The city of 1000 windows, located on the side and base of the biggest castle in Albania. While the castle was not that big, it still has people living in it that have never been to town or outside of the castle. The city itself was beautiful with lots of windows, history and was also fairly clean(a big deal here in Albania). I stayed with a PC volunteer and toured the city, and bars (bars=locals= coffee shops=sitting lounges) (Starbucks meets local bar). We saw a professional soccer game and ate creps and what they feel is the best Pizza in Albania. (good pizza, great location and atmosphere)
I got the opportunity to play some young kid in ping-pong who I met on the 3 hour furgon ride. While I beat him, his friends, who are much lesser of players beat me...lots of excuses....the paddles were padded on one side, not the other, lighting was bad, and they had every desire to kick the Americans Butt..they did.. Just as I was getting used to the Home court" the ball went into the Turkish Toilet and the day of pingpong for 5 guys was over.
Language update...good moments..many bad days
Work Update...Not much just yet.
I also made a friend who not only speaks english well but is someone who I have much in common. He is
an English Teacher from a neighboring village, a very good friend of my Shqip teacher, and a former soccer player. He also works out regularly at the same fitness center as I.
As for adventures, I went to the city of Berat last weekend. The city of 1000 windows, located on the side and base of the biggest castle in Albania. While the castle was not that big, it still has people living in it that have never been to town or outside of the castle. The city itself was beautiful with lots of windows, history and was also fairly clean(a big deal here in Albania). I stayed with a PC volunteer and toured the city, and bars (bars=locals= coffee shops=sitting lounges) (Starbucks meets local bar). We saw a professional soccer game and ate creps and what they feel is the best Pizza in Albania. (good pizza, great location and atmosphere)
I got the opportunity to play some young kid in ping-pong who I met on the 3 hour furgon ride. While I beat him, his friends, who are much lesser of players beat me...lots of excuses....the paddles were padded on one side, not the other, lighting was bad, and they had every desire to kick the Americans Butt..they did.. Just as I was getting used to the Home court" the ball went into the Turkish Toilet and the day of pingpong for 5 guys was over.
Language update...good moments..many bad days
Work Update...Not much just yet.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
House Wife in Trainning
Sorry all, it has been two weeks since my entry...and in case you are wondering, my laptop is finally running well. As good as new. I even have the updated versions of Microsoft XP and everything else. It was almost worth the wait. My wireless is also working so I can now go to an internet cafe plug in my computer and work for free. Now/today is the first day for this.
Work update..Language classes with co-workers...Going well. My first few classes I thought went very well since I wrote the lesson plan myself, but then my co-workers wanted me to follow a book recommended by the local schools. The book was not written by native English Speaker and is loaded with improper grammer and miss spellings. The class likes using the book, so I asked my fellow "English Teachers" from the Peace Corps why Albanians like the using books. They said it was because every subject is highly regulated in the schools, and teachers are required to teach only what they are instructed to teach, and the books are their resourse...This leads to a lack of imagination in the classroom and very boring lessons in all subjects, but it is how most Albanians feel comfortable learning....so for now.."its by the book"
Language in Schools. I am pretty worthless there so far. The teacher and I go over the lesson in the morning before class 7:15 to 8:00 and she tells me what to read and where to jump in. Those books are so messed up that I try to encourage her to skip some of the lessons in them...She says that in Albania, if you skip lessons, even if they are poorly written and impossible to do according to the instructions, you do them...Why...because students will feel that the teacher is skipping them because they cannot do them...We teach them anyway...the kids get them wrong...but are impossible to get right...and the students feel that they are stupid not the teachers....humm......
As for my 3 girls (daughter of those I work with...they are doing well. I did a review of words from many weeks ago, they still got most of them...but now we have to really start working on speaking. They can translate well from English to Shqip and Shqip to English but cannot form sentences orally.
Work Projects...."Neser" i will start them...I tried to set up a meeting with my director last week to pin him down on projects that I have started or can start, or his vision of my role here at the Department. He said he has not had time to think about it, so we went to a meeting in another city...had coffee for a couple of hours with a few people and came home. End of day....
Hows My Shqip.
1. I was walking one day by a cafe and waved to a woman in the cafe that I thought I knew. She looked at me funny and after a closer look, I realized it was not her...Then...3 big guys come out of the bar...one her fiance, and started asking me "What is up!!!"... in Shqip, and made lots of toughguy jestures and words...needless to say...I ended up having a beer with the boys...and the next day played one of the guys in PingPong..He said he was #1 player in Lezhe...Not any more...thank you very much...we had a few beers and called it a night.
2. I set up a pre-test for myself with head of language department in the Peace Corps. She ended or session by calling my language teacher and complimented her on her teachings...She said "not her words" He butchers the language in terms of grammer and pronounciations, but speaks in sentances and I can understand what he is trying to communicate...and he can understand me...His vocabulary is comming along well. ............I am happy with that...See above example for my communication abilities.
3. I am really tired of studying. I just want to start reading some books. I have only read one since getting here.
Ping Pong:There is still one guy I have not seen since he beat me, so am waiting for him to come back in to try again.
Mistakes Made
The computer guy said that in some places around my apartment I have wireless internet access. One day about 5:00ish I set out to find it. I figured most of the kids in the hood knew who I was, and while being interested, would leave me alone. Within 5 minutes I had about 15 kids around me all ages and most of which I had not seen before and some asking for money, thinking I was rich being and American with a Laptop. Most stopped asking for money after a few words but ..... Opps,........ I later talked to my counterpart/coworker about it, she said that they all are good kids and while talk tough, will leave you alone and besides, like most people here, think that peace corps people are really CIA or FBI or Police. Kinda Cool Ey? Others feel that I am in training to be a housewife, since I have been spotted hanging my laundry outside my balcony and cook my own meals....
Work update..Language classes with co-workers...Going well. My first few classes I thought went very well since I wrote the lesson plan myself, but then my co-workers wanted me to follow a book recommended by the local schools. The book was not written by native English Speaker and is loaded with improper grammer and miss spellings. The class likes using the book, so I asked my fellow "English Teachers" from the Peace Corps why Albanians like the using books. They said it was because every subject is highly regulated in the schools, and teachers are required to teach only what they are instructed to teach, and the books are their resourse...This leads to a lack of imagination in the classroom and very boring lessons in all subjects, but it is how most Albanians feel comfortable learning....so for now.."its by the book"
Language in Schools. I am pretty worthless there so far. The teacher and I go over the lesson in the morning before class 7:15 to 8:00 and she tells me what to read and where to jump in. Those books are so messed up that I try to encourage her to skip some of the lessons in them...She says that in Albania, if you skip lessons, even if they are poorly written and impossible to do according to the instructions, you do them...Why...because students will feel that the teacher is skipping them because they cannot do them...We teach them anyway...the kids get them wrong...but are impossible to get right...and the students feel that they are stupid not the teachers....humm......
As for my 3 girls (daughter of those I work with...they are doing well. I did a review of words from many weeks ago, they still got most of them...but now we have to really start working on speaking. They can translate well from English to Shqip and Shqip to English but cannot form sentences orally.
Work Projects...."Neser" i will start them...I tried to set up a meeting with my director last week to pin him down on projects that I have started or can start, or his vision of my role here at the Department. He said he has not had time to think about it, so we went to a meeting in another city...had coffee for a couple of hours with a few people and came home. End of day....
Hows My Shqip.
1. I was walking one day by a cafe and waved to a woman in the cafe that I thought I knew. She looked at me funny and after a closer look, I realized it was not her...Then...3 big guys come out of the bar...one her fiance, and started asking me "What is up!!!"... in Shqip, and made lots of toughguy jestures and words...needless to say...I ended up having a beer with the boys...and the next day played one of the guys in PingPong..He said he was #1 player in Lezhe...Not any more...thank you very much...we had a few beers and called it a night.
2. I set up a pre-test for myself with head of language department in the Peace Corps. She ended or session by calling my language teacher and complimented her on her teachings...She said "not her words" He butchers the language in terms of grammer and pronounciations, but speaks in sentances and I can understand what he is trying to communicate...and he can understand me...His vocabulary is comming along well. ............I am happy with that...See above example for my communication abilities.
3. I am really tired of studying. I just want to start reading some books. I have only read one since getting here.
Ping Pong:There is still one guy I have not seen since he beat me, so am waiting for him to come back in to try again.
Mistakes Made
The computer guy said that in some places around my apartment I have wireless internet access. One day about 5:00ish I set out to find it. I figured most of the kids in the hood knew who I was, and while being interested, would leave me alone. Within 5 minutes I had about 15 kids around me all ages and most of which I had not seen before and some asking for money, thinking I was rich being and American with a Laptop. Most stopped asking for money after a few words but ..... Opps,........ I later talked to my counterpart/coworker about it, she said that they all are good kids and while talk tough, will leave you alone and besides, like most people here, think that peace corps people are really CIA or FBI or Police. Kinda Cool Ey? Others feel that I am in training to be a housewife, since I have been spotted hanging my laundry outside my balcony and cook my own meals....
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