The J: Albert Einstein to say the obvious was a very intelligent man. He also summarized the core belief of Peace Corps which had its 56th anniversary on March 1.
Though we constantly tell ourselves, and anyone reading this, that we will be better and start writing more blogs, the habit hasn’t really taken hold. This is all really to just say we have much to cover and only a short while to get there. I have a half page of ideas I hope to discuss sometime, but I will just talk about a few events.
Let’s start with a brief recap of the biggest festival/holiday of the year here, New Year’s. During communist times it was the largest holiday people celebrated because it wasn’t associated with religion. Religion was made illegal under the communist rule and persecuted. People would come together and try and celebrate with whatever small excess they were able to save. This usually wasn’t that much more than usual due to the many flaws with communist systems that have been tried over the years. (Hopefully a post for another time). Today they put American Thanksgivings to shame with what excess they can. They have “Babagjyshi i Vitit te Ri” Old Man of New Years which is basically Santa but he comes on New Year’s and is pretty much just as unrelated as normal Santa from religion and Christ. By which I mean very unrelated. Now people come together to eat too much food and desserts (usually baklavas) and then dance and shoot off fireworks all night.
We decided to host some other volunteers and a few Shqiptars here at the hostel in town. We even had a guest from PC Georgia. We bought several kilograms of various meats including a delicious spicy sausage called suxhuk (sue-juke) and some veggies and bread for a well balanced meal. Amy and I made a chocolate cake that didn’t turn out quite right, due to what we later slowly realized was our bottom oven heating coiling being broken. However the stove is a story of denial for another time. The middle of the cake was still raw so we spread it into a smaller pan and baked it. We put it back into the bigger cake when it was done to make a nice looking Frankenstein cake. Luckily we just covered it with frosting and no one was the wiser.
We brought all the food up to the hostel which is on a hill overlooking half the town. We hung out playing card games, drinking, and chatting. Amy and I eventually went into the kitchen to start making the meat. When midnight came around we got to see a beautiful firework show all over the city that went on in strong fashion for at least 10 minutes and to lesser degrees for at least an hour with random fireworks going off until morning. I have talked to several people around town and they all say that the fireworks used to be better, but the economy is worse now so people don’t buy as many fireworks. There were several parties at places around the city; some with a cover charge and that started only after midnight. I am too old for the “club scene” so we just hung out and went home.
Being from Colorado where fireworks are illegal, due to fire concerns which are not a concern here as people set fire to trash or fields and leave them unattended, fireworks haven’t been a common experience for me. I have been pleasantly surprised with the times I have seen them here in Albania. The other time outside of New Year’s I have seen a real firework show here was when our city held a special election because the previous mayor had to resign from office for inappropriate acts. The party that won set off a wonderful 20-30 minutes fireworks display about 100 yards from our house. People were banging drums and celebrating their party’s victory.
That paragraph was really just a convoluted way to get to politics in Albania. Politics is everything here- identity to many and livelihood for many others. Election season is in full swing here and will be going strong until the middle of June. I will get into politics and things in the next blog. That I swear I will post tomorrow. But this one has been sitting around since early March and figured “perfect” shouldn’t be the enemy of good.
Shout outs to our families for care packages filled with delicious foods and only some slightly silly things to ship across the globe. Also shout out for Amy’s aunts for sending cards they are always wonderful to read. My effort on Shqip is a 5-6 and my level is like a 3-4.
The Ginger & The Jew 