Friday, April 24, 2009

Some More Photos!

The Pajove & Bishqem groups & professors at the Culture Day Celebration last Saturday
my host family at the cultural day exchange

Me & Tyler after site placements with the crew

Daryoush, Sofie, & Brett after site placements

The map of Albania with all of our pictures on placement day: Im in the s.central pink area!

These are the yummy typical Albania sandwiches called SUFFLAQE. Addicting...seriously!

My host mom preparing dinner for the night- tomato based soup with veal & potatoes

Kristine, Leslie, Me, & Alex hanging out on the beach during our visit to Lezhe

Carpet Cleaning

I spent last Sunday helping my family clean, or should I say I spent the day WATCHING them clean. Let me tell you- my host family members are professional cleaners- NO JOKE, and I thought I should share this with all of you!

The houses are made of concrete with cement or tile floors in Albania, but every house I’ve been to is also full of gigantic rugs. Naturally, while cleaning my bedroom I swept with a broom, mopped, and called it “clean.” My host mother on the other hand, insisted on removing the gigantic area rug to clean. Instead of arguing with her, I let them roll of the rug and shake it over the balcony. Again, thinking it was “clean,” I started rolling up the rug to take back to my room. They kept yelling “no” and then proceeded to get down on their knees and sweep the rug with a wide array of tiny brooms. The broom series is comparable to how you would use sand paper- start with the large grains and progress to finer sand paper step by step. The last broom in the set looked like a tiny scrub brush, and you would NOT BELIEVE the amount of dirt that came out of that rug after one month. They also managed to pick up a lot of my hair, which then made them concerned that I was losing too much hair and I was sick. I convinced them I was okay and we eventually put the ACTUALLY clean rug back into my room. All I have to say is that I am very thankful for vacuums, and I am still impressed with how good they are at cleaning rugs!

Learning Albanian/Shqip

Almost every second of every day I’m THRILLED the Peace Corps sent me to Albania. The few “off” seconds I have here are when I think “Why didn’t they send me to Latin America, I ALREADY speak SPANISH?!?!” Those “off” seconds mostly come during my own frustration with the language. Don’t get me wrong, the Peace Corps language training is FANTASTIC- they really put a lot of effort into maximum learning and teaching for every learning style every day, but learning Albanian is HARD!

Six days of the week, I have 5 hours of class. I have two different teachers that switch off every other day. Luckily I live with only 3 other site mates right now, so the 4 of us get pretty individualized lessons. The Albanian language has 36 letters, and though the language is very phonetic, I have difficulty pronouncing the letters that don’t exist in English like the Albanian “ë” or “y” (e.g. dy (or 2) is pronounced like deux, but my mouth cannot change shapes to make that sound!) I also find myself constantly pronouncing words incorrectly, which means the meaning of the word changed, and usually it changed to something inappropriate and my host family laughs hysterically.

On the up note, I think I am doing well after 5 weeks in Albania. Two weeks ago we did a sort of scavenger hunt in small groups with the teachers around Elbasan as a test…and I did well according to the feedback! I guess after learning Spanish I know how learn the fastest, and it’s really just talking to as many people as possible. Normally I spend the afternoons and evenings talking to the little neighbor boys and shop owners. They understand me for the most part, and I am getting really good at understand what they are saying (which I think is my strong point). You can check out bbc Albania and watch a news video if you want to hear it for yourself. Better yet, plan a trip over here to visit and you can experience the language first hand. Hopefully I’ll be better by the time you come and you’ll be oh so proud!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

The City of 1,000 Windows

Friday was torture. The Peace Corps staff waited until the very last second of our training day to give us our site placements for the next two years. At 4:00pm, the 3 technical heads stood at the front of our conference room waiting to give us our assignments. After what seemed like the longest announcement of my life, Darina- the health coordinator, gave each of us a large white envelope full of info about our site and also a picture of ourselves. After finding out where we were going, we all taped our pictures to a giant map of Albania so we could visualize where we were going to be.

Me, personally.... I'm going to..... BERAT!!!!! (and I'm SOOO very excited about it!)
Feel free to google it or check out the 2 pictures I have of the city so far. Berat is located in Central Southern Albania and is a fairly large town with a population of 65,000. It is well known for the castle (see picture) and for the name - city of 1000 windows (see picture again). I'll be replacing a volunteer from group 10 who leaves in June when I move to my new home. I will NOT be with anyone else from my group (#12), but there is currently a TEFL Volunteer there from Group 11 (she's been there for a year). I do have a lot of friends in my group close by, so I'm okay with being somewhat alone. In 4 weeks, I will meet my Albanian counterpart...the person I will work with on projects for the next two years. She is from Berat and works for the Public Health Institute in the city. After a 2 day conference with her, I will go visit my site for 4 days and get to know the town, MAYBE see my future apartment, and get to meet some people!!
I think everyone was fairly content with their placements and I'm am ecstatic. GOOGLE BERAT... It is BEAUTIFUL! (This means you should all attempt to come visit me soon!)
More soon!
love, Kate


Pic of the 1000 windows from the top of the mountain
The Castle in Berat!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

PCV Vistit To Lezha!

The first weekend in April we were paired up with a current volunteer (NOTE: I am a "TRAINEE" or PCT until swear-in in June... then I become a "VOLUNTEER" or PCV). So, they chose a volunteer and a city for each one of us and off we went around the entire country of Albania. For four days we got to check out their lives and see how they have managed to make it through their first year. I was sent to Lezha... close to the most northern beach on the west coast. I went with 3 other volunteers in my group but they stayed with other current PCV's. Overall the trip was WELL WORTH IT. I lucked out and had an awesome hostess (Bethany), who showed me around, introduced me to all the people she works with, and gave me a pretty great idea of her life as a volunteer. On that note: I find out FRIDAY where I'll be living come June, so stay tuned for my new home announcement!!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

YES and NO

Here's an interesting little fact about the Albanian YES and NO:
YES = PO and NO = JO (pronounced YO)
As if the rhyming factor didn't make it hard enough to keep the two straight in my head, I still cannot rely on shaking my head in the normal way we Americans do. Instead, by shaking my head no, I am ACTUALLY saying yes in Albanian. I am still confused by this every day because it is pretty hard to break a habit you've had for 24 years. Moral of the story, head shaking to designate yes or no is NOT a universal language. =)

FINALLY some pictures!

The socks for around the house my sis in law knitted for me... how pretty!
The bedroom of my current residence

Daryoush, Carrie Ann, Me, & Tyler- sitemates

In case you weren't paying attention to the news... Albania was welcomed into NATO on
Saturday April 4th, and it is kind of a BIG deal!

Sitemates with our teacher Suzana during a quick break

Me with Gjushe (gma), Leta (sis in law), and Dashi (host mom)

Luli my host dad and I

Dyli, me, and Ueda (host bro & sis)

leta, me, and host mom

my house! (carrie ann is on the porch)

Sunday, April 5, 2009

A brief look into Albanian Health Care

My first three months in Albania are dedicated to training: culture, history, language, and sector specified training. And as most of you know, I'm here in Albania serving as health volunteer, so my Health Sector training is to become slowly but surely acquainted with the current health care system in Albania. Personally, I found the system extremely intriguing and decided to share some facts with you if you are also interested...

Albania was under communist rule until 1991, and under this regime the health care system was nearly faultless. However, within the last 18 years, between the recovery from communism, a drug looting scandal in 1997, and the Kosovo Crisis of '98-'99, a serious toll was taken on the health care system. One-fourth of city health care centers and 2/3 of village health care centers were destroyed and up to 30% of medical staff abandoned there posts. To this day, it's hard to keep doctors and nurses in the country to serve when Greece and Italy are so close and offer much higher salaries.

Albania does have a current health insurance program in effect for nation, where people pay 6% of their income to register with a primary care doctor and receive all services for free with a small co-pay for some medications. Unfortunately, the amount of corruption within this system surpasses the health insurance, and most people who pay do NOT receive the care they are promised, especially those in smaller villages. Most health care is paid from the pockets of the people, and there are unfortunately no NGO's or charities to help people who cannot afford care.

STATS: Inf. Mortality: 28/1000 live births and increasing, Maternal Mortality: 55/10,000 live births. Leading causes of death include 1) Cardiovascular 2)Trauma 3)Malig. Disease and 4)Respiratory Disease.

In general, I feel that it is almost unbelievable I'm living in a post-communist society. As much as I've read, learned, and know about Communism, seeing the effects first hand are pretty incredible though hard to wrap my head around and come to terms with living here. I'll be keeping you updated with more about this as I start getting my foot in the door of the health care system here in Albania. Enjoy =)

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Group Picture!

This is a group picture upon arrival in Albania... after our 10 hour flight and a couple of long days