Thursday, December 30, 2010
Pictures from Thessaloniki
Per Shume Vjet!
It means "For many years" literally, it is used as a greeting for Christmas and New Years. These past few weeks have been fun. After the waters receded from our little flooding experience Tiff and I quickly headed for Thessaloniki, Greece. It was our first trip outside of Albania since we got here and it was much needed, but Albania wasn't about to let us go that easy. We took a bus from Shkoder to Thessaloniki, for 30 euro each the ticket agent said the trip would take about 10 to 12 hours. On the trip about 3 hours south of Shkoder, there was snow falling and on the ground, (this was somewhere between Durres and Elbasan, for anyone with a sense of Albanian geography) when we pulled into the bus station in Elbasan there were a couple of inches on the ground. Further along the road to Librazhd many cars and other buses stopped to put snow chains on, our bus kept chugging along. Finally on a steep hill somewhere passed Librazhd we met a roadblock of cars stopped on the hill to put chains on, when they stopped others were forced to stop behind them leaving many cars stuck on the side of the snow covered road. What made it even more interesting was the rather large canyon that was right out of the window Tiff and I were looking out of. As the driver and his assistant put the chains on the tires slowly rolling backwards and closer to the edge of this canyon more and more traffic piled up behind us. Finally the bus got the chains on and we crawled slowly over the hill. Shortly after one of the chains came loose and we had to stop to put it back on. Then again, this time the driver decided to take them off completely as the road had been cleared by the plows, and we were off of the large hill. But something didn't seem to be working correctly, we rode the rest of the way through Pogradec, and past Korca stopping every 10 minutes or so for about 5 or 6 minutes to fiddle with the engine and then drove on for about 10 minutes. Finally we made it to the border! Getting through the Albanian checkpoint was easy but then came the Greek checkpoint. We had heard horror stories about the time it took buses to make it through the border, but we figured with Albanians no longer needing visas to go to Greece or most of the rest of the EU it wouldn't be as bad, plus our bus was only about half full so it couldn't take that long right? Wrong! 2 1/2 hours of people selling bags, phone cards, food and drinks, CDs and just begging for money while we sat patiently we were finally through and on our way to Thessaloniki. We didn't stop again except to let a couple of people off at a couple exits on the highway. We finally arrived in Thessaloniki at 8 (7 Albanian time). A total of a 16 1/2 hour trip. Once we got there everything was fantastic, even if a little expensive. I have gotten used to paying Albanian prices for things and was suffering a little from the sticker shock of a 5 euro coffee, or a 2 euro salep from a street vendor. That's all Tiffany heard about the whole trip :) We took our wonderful hosts to a dinner at a restaurant they liked near the water front, and had some of the best seafood we've ever had. The calamari didn't even need marinara sauce to make it delicious. We spent the rest of our week shopping at Ikea and walking the streets checking out churches and other historic sites. One church we went inside was built in the fourth century, and we visited the old Roman agora that had buildings that were built in the fourth century BC. We also took a couple of days to just relax and walk around the little neighborhood where we were staying.
We arrived back to Albania on the 23rd, just in time to sleep through Christmas eve. When we finally got up Christmas day we were suprised to see it much like any other day even on the Catholic side of town. We left on the 26th for Tirana to have another Christmas dinner with our American neighbors in exile before they left for France. They had Christmas dinner catered by "Steven's Center" which gave us a whole turkey, you have no idea how happy were were to see a table with an actual turkey, mashed potatoes and all the fixings even pumkin pie (even though it wasn't as good as Grandma Bloom's pies). We returned to Shkoder the 27th to head back to work for the first time since we had gone to Greece only to find out that the week between Christmas and New Years is much like in the US, some people are there, some people aren't and not a whole lot is going on. Needless to say we have been prepping for New Years and doing some cleaning. Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year, enjoy the last days of 2010, especially you soon to be volunteers who are getting ready to start their service in a short 2 and a half months. Per Shume Vjet Gezuar! Lots of love!
We arrived back to Albania on the 23rd, just in time to sleep through Christmas eve. When we finally got up Christmas day we were suprised to see it much like any other day even on the Catholic side of town. We left on the 26th for Tirana to have another Christmas dinner with our American neighbors in exile before they left for France. They had Christmas dinner catered by "Steven's Center" which gave us a whole turkey, you have no idea how happy were were to see a table with an actual turkey, mashed potatoes and all the fixings even pumkin pie (even though it wasn't as good as Grandma Bloom's pies). We returned to Shkoder the 27th to head back to work for the first time since we had gone to Greece only to find out that the week between Christmas and New Years is much like in the US, some people are there, some people aren't and not a whole lot is going on. Needless to say we have been prepping for New Years and doing some cleaning. Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year, enjoy the last days of 2010, especially you soon to be volunteers who are getting ready to start their service in a short 2 and a half months. Per Shume Vjet Gezuar! Lots of love!
Sunday, December 5, 2010
wet and wild
This will be a short one but we wanted to update everyone with our status. There has been some flooding in Shkoder this past week, our part of town has not been affected and we did not really notice a difference in the happenings around town other than some shorter tempers and a lot of people walking around with wet pants. That and constant buzz of helicopters and military personel carriers moving through town. The villages have been hit the worst as normal, but the US ambassador along with the staff at the Peace Corps here in Albania have moved us temporarily to Tirana. They will continue to monitor the situation in the north and will let us return to Shkoder as soon as they feel we are safe. We will post more later complete with our own pictures and stories from Shkoder. Until then the best article we have seen was on CNN, so for now hope all is well in the US and we are doing well here.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Sometimes this country is just strange...
Since I haven't sat down to write in so long this will be a mix of stories from the past month or so. Don't take strange in a bad way. Strange can be good. I used to call Tiff strange or weird and she would be offended, its not a bad thing, you are different, and different can be good. Albania is strange, Albanians are strange. This whole experience can be really strange. Let me start with my best example, I was heading to work one morning and got in the elevator to head up to the office on the 7th floor. I got in and pressed the 6 on the elevator like I always do, because in the elevator the ground floor is 0, but if you took the stairs up one flight you would see a sign announcing that you are on the second floor, strange. Back to the elevator, and elderly gentleman gets in with me after parking his bicycle in the hallway, the doors close and we begin making our way up, he asks me if I live in the building, I answer "no, I work here." He hears my obvious accent and then asks me something I don't quite understand, I ask him to repeat it and he second time I pick up what he asked me. He wanted to know if I was Turkish. Really? Me? Have you seen me? Do I look Turkish at all? I'll give you almost any Western European country you want because you probably don't see that many but Turkish, not so much. I told him that no I am from America just as the elevator reached his floor. Strange.
I went to the Vodaphone store to put money on my phone so I could make phone calls and send texts. I got to the store and told the guy behind the desk that I wanted to add one thousand leke (about 10 dollars) to my phone. He looked at me like I was crazy and said I could add that amount. I put my phone down and pulled a one thousand leke note out of my wallet and handed it to him. He took it, put my phone number into the computer and I got a text message saying I had ONE THOUSAND LEKE added to my account. As I turned around to leave he told me that I really wanted ten thousand leke on my phone not one thousand. Strange. The Albanians like to use a system of called old leke. I guess a while ago the government wanted to use smaller amounts of money to fit more equally with the standard dollar, pound and euro, so they dropped a zero from the currency. The problem was they didn't force anyone to use it. I'm almost sure if I went and asked the Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, how much his car cost he would reply to me in old leke. I realize by now that this blog is probably being read not only by family and friends, but maybe some new group 14 volunteers, so here is my tidbit of advice for you. Love the old leke system. It is actually easier for me to understand a price in old leke than new, for example dy mije pese cind pese dhejte (2,550) versus dy cind pesedhejte e pese. (255) have someone read those to you as fast as they can, which one do you understand more easily? The first one right, that extra 0 keeps really long weird number sequences from happening at the end. Granted we generally get both prices because we look, act, sound, and smell like foreigners, but I like the old leke best, and I'm guessing if you are coming here you will someday too. You'll complain about it, we all do, but then you'll come to embrace it and if your confused just ask, but generally you'll know that you pay 500 leke for a dinner out and 50 leke for a candy bar, not 5000 for dinner and 500 for a candy bar.
Staying on the money theme, in the US I always (tried) to carry around a 20 dollar bill, I figured I could use it in case of emergency, car needed gas, needed to grab a bite, whatever came up. Whatever it was from a pack of gum or candy bar no one wouldn't take a 20. Here having a 2000 leke (roughly 20 bucks) note is like being cursed. You go to the ATM and people are standing in line at one while another is completely free, I walk up to the free one knowing exactly what will happen, I will get my weekly budget out ( I try to go to the ATM once a week, this prevents me from spending too much money on coke early in the month only to run out of toilet paper at the end, a little extreme of an example but it is my way of budgeting) and from the machine will slide a 2000 leke bill. I hit myself for coming after the bank has closed for the day (3:00 pm) put the bill in my wallet and begin planning how to spend it. I try to spend about 500 leke a day so 2000 would be 4 days of my week. And to hand a cashier, waiter, anyone short of the beggar on the street 2000 leke you will get a death stare worthy only of having cursed someones dying grandmother. Many of the businesses that we frequent often would tell us to pay next time, but we are on the other side of town we either have to wait for the manager to find change or walk away without or groceries. This will happen less often with 1000 leke usually at a coffee bar when you are paying 120 leke for a couple of coffees. But change is a foreign concept to many people here. And we won't even mention being given change in bubble gum. I heard once a volunteer saved his and bought something entirely with gum given as change. Me, I eat my change the lemon and cola is pretty good even though it is out of flavor by the time I get home. Strange. Hope things are well in the USA, enjoy your holiday this week. If there is anything in the Black Friday ads I could use in Albania feel free to go to the stores Thursday night wait outside all night buy it Friday morning (now that is STRANGE) and spend the 60 some dollars it costs to ship it here to me. I love not working retail right now!!
I went to the Vodaphone store to put money on my phone so I could make phone calls and send texts. I got to the store and told the guy behind the desk that I wanted to add one thousand leke (about 10 dollars) to my phone. He looked at me like I was crazy and said I could add that amount. I put my phone down and pulled a one thousand leke note out of my wallet and handed it to him. He took it, put my phone number into the computer and I got a text message saying I had ONE THOUSAND LEKE added to my account. As I turned around to leave he told me that I really wanted ten thousand leke on my phone not one thousand. Strange. The Albanians like to use a system of called old leke. I guess a while ago the government wanted to use smaller amounts of money to fit more equally with the standard dollar, pound and euro, so they dropped a zero from the currency. The problem was they didn't force anyone to use it. I'm almost sure if I went and asked the Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, how much his car cost he would reply to me in old leke. I realize by now that this blog is probably being read not only by family and friends, but maybe some new group 14 volunteers, so here is my tidbit of advice for you. Love the old leke system. It is actually easier for me to understand a price in old leke than new, for example dy mije pese cind pese dhejte (2,550) versus dy cind pesedhejte e pese. (255) have someone read those to you as fast as they can, which one do you understand more easily? The first one right, that extra 0 keeps really long weird number sequences from happening at the end. Granted we generally get both prices because we look, act, sound, and smell like foreigners, but I like the old leke best, and I'm guessing if you are coming here you will someday too. You'll complain about it, we all do, but then you'll come to embrace it and if your confused just ask, but generally you'll know that you pay 500 leke for a dinner out and 50 leke for a candy bar, not 5000 for dinner and 500 for a candy bar.
Staying on the money theme, in the US I always (tried) to carry around a 20 dollar bill, I figured I could use it in case of emergency, car needed gas, needed to grab a bite, whatever came up. Whatever it was from a pack of gum or candy bar no one wouldn't take a 20. Here having a 2000 leke (roughly 20 bucks) note is like being cursed. You go to the ATM and people are standing in line at one while another is completely free, I walk up to the free one knowing exactly what will happen, I will get my weekly budget out ( I try to go to the ATM once a week, this prevents me from spending too much money on coke early in the month only to run out of toilet paper at the end, a little extreme of an example but it is my way of budgeting) and from the machine will slide a 2000 leke bill. I hit myself for coming after the bank has closed for the day (3:00 pm) put the bill in my wallet and begin planning how to spend it. I try to spend about 500 leke a day so 2000 would be 4 days of my week. And to hand a cashier, waiter, anyone short of the beggar on the street 2000 leke you will get a death stare worthy only of having cursed someones dying grandmother. Many of the businesses that we frequent often would tell us to pay next time, but we are on the other side of town we either have to wait for the manager to find change or walk away without or groceries. This will happen less often with 1000 leke usually at a coffee bar when you are paying 120 leke for a couple of coffees. But change is a foreign concept to many people here. And we won't even mention being given change in bubble gum. I heard once a volunteer saved his and bought something entirely with gum given as change. Me, I eat my change the lemon and cola is pretty good even though it is out of flavor by the time I get home. Strange. Hope things are well in the USA, enjoy your holiday this week. If there is anything in the Black Friday ads I could use in Albania feel free to go to the stores Thursday night wait outside all night buy it Friday morning (now that is STRANGE) and spend the 60 some dollars it costs to ship it here to me. I love not working retail right now!!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
gjakmarrje comes (again) to Shkoder
What a weekend! Things kicked off Friday, I came home early to start a relaxing weekend, and it really has been, but in a very weird way.
Gjakmarrje (jock marr yea, or just jock marr) is the Albanian found in the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin. The Kanun has been present in Albanian society for a long time but was made into a formal code somewhere around the 15th century. The kanun or code has many rules and I'm sure most Albanians don't know them all but one that many people know is gjakmarrje. It literally means blood taking (gjak is blood and marr is the verb to take). The code goes something like this... If a person, lets just say person A, kills another person, person B, then the male family members of person B are responsible to murder a male family member from the family of person A. It could be person A or his brothers, father, sons, or cousins for that matter. Normally all of the stipulations are decided upon by a meeting of the families and the chief of the tribe, when there was a tribal chief to mediate meetings. Things that could be decided in this meeting were the members of the family that were eligible or ineligible for the blood feud, or if a family was wealthy enough they could buy their families out of the blood feud. Family members are always safe in their own house, but not outside of it. This practice is also what keeps foreigners and guests safe here. If person C were to come to your house for a few days from out of town and while they were in town they were killed, you would be responsible for avenging person C's death. As residents of Shkoder blood feud is a little more visible to us than to many other volunteers in Albania. The Kanun has always been more predominant in the north than in the south and during communism it was the main form of justice since Hoxha's army did not venture into the mountain highlands. Thethi ( a city in the north of Albania) is cut off from any contact for around 6 months a year depending on the snows, and that is presently imagine when Albania had all of 20 cars, that is really cut off from the rest of the world. After the fall of communism in Albania people felt once again that they had to manage for themselves, and the Kanun reemerged as the primary means of creating "justice" that the state was not able to guarantee. One particular example is a great one to show the lack of power that government had. During the years immediately following the fall of communism everyone built whatever they could where ever they could trying to gain a claim to land. Many former parks and green spaces were overrun with illegal buildings even in the capital city of Tirana. One place that many people chose to build was a long the river that ran through the heart of the city. The government came along and started destroying the houses along the river and forcing people out of their homes they had built but one family was engaged in a blood feud...so what choice did the government have? Of course they let the home stay illegally on the river. Eventually the family members passed away of natural cause and the house still sits on the river in the heart of Tirana.
In Shkoder we have at least one house where we know that a current family is trapped as self made prisoners, and we have heard rumors about a second house that is close to one of our favorite restaurants, what we had not heard about was an actual killing because of a blood feud. I figured that these men just holed themselves up inside their houses until they eventually passed away from old age. That is until this weekend. I was on facebook catching up on the latest farmville news when my friend and local pastor posted that all the events for this coming weekend were cancelled. He has a friend in from the Netherlands or some other country and so I gave him a text message to see if everything was ok. He replied back that a pastor had been killed here in Shkoder. I got a call from a co-worker at the Aarhus center that I have been working with to meet him to give him the pictures that I had from a meeting we had on Tuesday. He was one the phone when I arrived and when he finished his conversation he looked extremely distressed. I know how small the 4th largest city in Albania is and knew that he had just heard the same news I had heard a few minutes earlier. From the news reports I have read and people I have talked to the cousin of this pastor murdered someone between 5 to 8 years ago. The brother of the victim took his revenge on Friday. People are in shock over the murder especially since it took place in a very public area of town near the pedestrian walkway. The key issue, in my opinion, is what changes will come about because of this event. Obviously changing the public opinion on blood feud is many years off but I believe it is the responsibility of the governments of Shkoder city, district and region as well as the national government to begin putting an end to blood feuds in whatever way possible. It appears that Albania and Bosnia will gain visa free travel to EU nations this November. They also hope to someday gain admittance into the European Union. I find it very hard to believe that the European nations will admit Albania with a system that at the very least permits and in many ways encourages an eye for an eye, especially when it spreads to entire family of the perpetrator.
In other news, we had our first major power outage of out time here just over 32 hours. The power went out sometime before 1:30 Tuesday afternoon, and returned 9:31 Wednesday night. Luckily we had not been shopping recently and lost very little food, just a few apples that were sitting in the puddle of defrosted freezer ice. I managed to make it through the whole Buckeyes game last night but fell asleep during the michigan-michigan State game. (the power outage really adjusted my sleeping schedule to sleep by 10 or 10:30) I woke up to a pleasant surprise of MSU beating u of m. What I discovered later because it didn't even make the first headline of ESPN.com was that Alabama also lost to South Carolina. So now Ohio State should be #1 in the BCS poll that is due to be released some time this evening. Makes a good end to a rather shocking weekend. Go Bucks!!
Gjakmarrje (jock marr yea, or just jock marr) is the Albanian found in the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin. The Kanun has been present in Albanian society for a long time but was made into a formal code somewhere around the 15th century. The kanun or code has many rules and I'm sure most Albanians don't know them all but one that many people know is gjakmarrje. It literally means blood taking (gjak is blood and marr is the verb to take). The code goes something like this... If a person, lets just say person A, kills another person, person B, then the male family members of person B are responsible to murder a male family member from the family of person A. It could be person A or his brothers, father, sons, or cousins for that matter. Normally all of the stipulations are decided upon by a meeting of the families and the chief of the tribe, when there was a tribal chief to mediate meetings. Things that could be decided in this meeting were the members of the family that were eligible or ineligible for the blood feud, or if a family was wealthy enough they could buy their families out of the blood feud. Family members are always safe in their own house, but not outside of it. This practice is also what keeps foreigners and guests safe here. If person C were to come to your house for a few days from out of town and while they were in town they were killed, you would be responsible for avenging person C's death. As residents of Shkoder blood feud is a little more visible to us than to many other volunteers in Albania. The Kanun has always been more predominant in the north than in the south and during communism it was the main form of justice since Hoxha's army did not venture into the mountain highlands. Thethi ( a city in the north of Albania) is cut off from any contact for around 6 months a year depending on the snows, and that is presently imagine when Albania had all of 20 cars, that is really cut off from the rest of the world. After the fall of communism in Albania people felt once again that they had to manage for themselves, and the Kanun reemerged as the primary means of creating "justice" that the state was not able to guarantee. One particular example is a great one to show the lack of power that government had. During the years immediately following the fall of communism everyone built whatever they could where ever they could trying to gain a claim to land. Many former parks and green spaces were overrun with illegal buildings even in the capital city of Tirana. One place that many people chose to build was a long the river that ran through the heart of the city. The government came along and started destroying the houses along the river and forcing people out of their homes they had built but one family was engaged in a blood feud...so what choice did the government have? Of course they let the home stay illegally on the river. Eventually the family members passed away of natural cause and the house still sits on the river in the heart of Tirana.
In Shkoder we have at least one house where we know that a current family is trapped as self made prisoners, and we have heard rumors about a second house that is close to one of our favorite restaurants, what we had not heard about was an actual killing because of a blood feud. I figured that these men just holed themselves up inside their houses until they eventually passed away from old age. That is until this weekend. I was on facebook catching up on the latest farmville news when my friend and local pastor posted that all the events for this coming weekend were cancelled. He has a friend in from the Netherlands or some other country and so I gave him a text message to see if everything was ok. He replied back that a pastor had been killed here in Shkoder. I got a call from a co-worker at the Aarhus center that I have been working with to meet him to give him the pictures that I had from a meeting we had on Tuesday. He was one the phone when I arrived and when he finished his conversation he looked extremely distressed. I know how small the 4th largest city in Albania is and knew that he had just heard the same news I had heard a few minutes earlier. From the news reports I have read and people I have talked to the cousin of this pastor murdered someone between 5 to 8 years ago. The brother of the victim took his revenge on Friday. People are in shock over the murder especially since it took place in a very public area of town near the pedestrian walkway. The key issue, in my opinion, is what changes will come about because of this event. Obviously changing the public opinion on blood feud is many years off but I believe it is the responsibility of the governments of Shkoder city, district and region as well as the national government to begin putting an end to blood feuds in whatever way possible. It appears that Albania and Bosnia will gain visa free travel to EU nations this November. They also hope to someday gain admittance into the European Union. I find it very hard to believe that the European nations will admit Albania with a system that at the very least permits and in many ways encourages an eye for an eye, especially when it spreads to entire family of the perpetrator.
In other news, we had our first major power outage of out time here just over 32 hours. The power went out sometime before 1:30 Tuesday afternoon, and returned 9:31 Wednesday night. Luckily we had not been shopping recently and lost very little food, just a few apples that were sitting in the puddle of defrosted freezer ice. I managed to make it through the whole Buckeyes game last night but fell asleep during the michigan-michigan State game. (the power outage really adjusted my sleeping schedule to sleep by 10 or 10:30) I woke up to a pleasant surprise of MSU beating u of m. What I discovered later because it didn't even make the first headline of ESPN.com was that Alabama also lost to South Carolina. So now Ohio State should be #1 in the BCS poll that is due to be released some time this evening. Makes a good end to a rather shocking weekend. Go Bucks!!
Sunday, October 3, 2010
working too much?
It has been a rather busy couple of weeks. Two Wednesdays ago a Peace Corps representative met with Tiff and I and a coworker in our office talking about how our first three months were going in the office. After talking with her for for about an hour, she implied that I worked too much. I think that I was taking tsaying that we were working 24/7 too literally and I am trying to relax the amount of time I spend at the office. But things are picking up quickly. Last Saturday, the 25th of September a village outside of Shkoder held the first (hopefully annual) "Play for Peace" soccer tournament. The day was centered around the International Day of Peace (September 21) and organized by The Door, an NGO funded by Norwegian Aid. Tiffany and I had proposed the idea to Kastriot a while back, and he ran with the idea. The Peace Corps country director came and spoke on a very wet and rather chilly day, but we still had a full complement of teams. 4 boys teams and 4 girls teams competed. In the end the boys from Berdice and the girls from Juban won. Everyone involved was very excited on the success for both the soccer games and the crowd turnout (which was estimated between 200-250) in spite of the terrible weather. That afternoon we welcomed other volunteers from "the north" for our first northern dinner. We had a potluck at our place with veggie lasagna, spicy chicken bruschetta, babaganoush, samosas, chili, rice with veggies, potato and corn salad, fruit pizza, brownies, oatmeal raisin cookies, fruit salad, and honey cake, along with a few drinks. The party was a success but we were exhausted from the soccer tournament and I fell asleep in the 2nd quarter of the Buckeyes game (which was already a blowout by that point). The week was filled with coffee meetings and planning for an environmental group that Tiff and I are wanting to start here in Shkoder. US Aid had a meeting on Friday to help plan the next phase of their local governance program which Tiff helped organize bringing a few NGOs that weren't invited by city hall and met with the representative before the meeting. Tiff also has helped the Aarhus Center complete a few post season beach surveys, and we were very surprised with some of the responses. We have also been busy watching all of the new fall TV shows, and catching up on the ones we have been missing. I thought we watched a lot of TV in the US but it is true when they say you never watch as much TV than when you are in Albania. On Tueday I will travel back to Puka to attend a deforestation round table that hopefully will end with a convention being signed by all the leaders of the Puka region to stop illegal logging. We will also have information sessions in the schools for the Outdoor Ambassadors group that we want to have the first meeting on the 13th of October. I have some other plans for groups I want to organize but I'll wait to get more information before I share that with the world (or all 8 people that read the blog). In other news it looks like Tiff's family will be visiting us in the spring, which is very exciting for us and I think they are excited as well. We are always excited to have more visitors. Hope all is well in the US and to talk to everyone soon.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
It's that time of year again
First off we'd like to thank everyone who has sent care packages recently. The Youngstown gang, including mom, grandparents, and UC & AG, Newark mom and dad, and Aunt Marcy. I think the post office is getting tired of us as they are now setting time constraints for us coming in to pick up the latest two packages between 8 and 12 noon, so I got myself out of bed one chilly fall morning and rode my bike down to the post office. After fighting my way up to the front of the "line" they brought out two packages full of goodies. Spices, candy, rain boots for Tiff and lots of other stuff.
We have decided that if we never reuse any of the reusable shopping bags we will still have extras to give away as wrapping paper for gifts! Thank you all very much for all of them but we have got more than what we know what to do with now.
What these weeks have been filled with are football of the American variety. We were out of town for the Marshall game (we left town on Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. the game was actually Friday morning at 1:30 a.m.) but we downloaded the game online to see it later in the week. The game we wanted to make sure we saw was the OSU- Miami game. We had a friend (Buckeye) come in from a town nearby and we made hot dogs, mac and cheese, chips and guacamole, pasta salad and had plenty of American candy to go around. This was the first attempt of watching a Buckeye game in real time over the internet. Here is the result: 
We moved the couch in the bedroom, set a projector on a table sitting on the bed and turned on the game. We watched the first drive of Ohio State and the internet went out all over Shkoder. (Aunt Marcy: I know what you were going through for the Marshall game.) The girls gave up on the game about 10:30 when the internet still hadn't come back, I went outside to let the girls sleep and the internet came back with a few minutes to go in the 2nd half. I watched the rest of the game outside, trying not to yell too much. When the game ended and OSU had won I was still wide awake and watched some of the Penn State- Alabama game, until I finally passed out from exhaustion. We got up in the morning to watch the whole game, and I tried to be quiet about who won. Of course everyone was happy once Pryor downed the ball the final time and all of us could say (a few hours late) that we had beat Miami (again)! Yesterday we could not find the game online to watch but we were able to listen to a radio broadcast of the game. It makes us feel more at home to know every Saturday and Sunday we can settle in behind the computer and watch (or listen) to the Buckeyes winning, and the Browns losing, although hopefully that will change soon. We hope to have at least one more Buckeye Big Screen showing here this season, and maybe more depending on when the games are. We do pretty well with the noon or 1 p.m. starts but the 3:30's require a mid day nap, and the 7s require going through jet lag again. We hope to watch the game against that team up north at the end of November, and maybe the Penn State game depending on the time. There is an actual tOSU grad here in Albania and she has promised Buckeye candy if we host another party. We might even invite the traitor from Berat who was born in Ohio but likes corn and blue better than scarlet and grey, just to give us someone to pick on. Hope all is well in the USA, hope your teams are winning, unless their name starts with and M and ends with an ichigan. Go Bucks! O - H...!
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