Half-way around the world

I’m seven hours ahead. Just thought I would let you know. Next week I will be eight hours ahead, because Albania, like the rest of Europe does Daylight Savings time on March 30th. By the way, each of my calendars has different days for Daylight Savings listed and none of them are March 30th. Have I told you how much I hate Daylight Savings? Well I do. And now that I’ve come here, I have to do Daylight Savings twice in one spring. Fantastic!

Anyway, so we have arrived. The end of Staging was good. I am starting to get to know all the rest of my group. There are 37 of us right now. We started with 38 but lost one before Staging even got going (I never even met him). Apparently he decided to go get married and go to grad school. At least he made that decision in Philly rather than in the Munich airport or something. I know that there will probably be other volunteers to leave early, but at this point it is really hard to guess who it might be. I’ve heard that often the people you least expect to make it will be the most successful. There are 15 of us in the Community and Organizational Development (COD) sector. I think that the experiences of the group vary greatly. There are few just out of college to a couple that have been working in the field for 20 years. I feel like I am in the middle. I have some experience and a fancy degree, but I still have a lot to learn.

For the first three days of training we are staying in a hotel in Elbasan, a medium sized town in Central Albania. Elbasan has all the comforts of home- Internet cafés, appliance stores and Greek restaurants. There is a University here that focuses a lot on teacher training. Many of our language trainers attended Elbasan University. Tomorrow we leave the comforts of the hotel to go to our training host families. We are split up in groups of 4-6 volunteers in small towns or villages near Elbasan (and by near I mean up to 45 minutes by bus). These small sites are where we will do most of our language training and work on training projects. Two days a week we will travel to Elbasan to do trainings in large groups.

So far, there has not been too much in the way of adjustment or culture shock problems because we are still in our little American bubble at the hotel. Tomorrow when we go to our host families, I expect that will all change. We have had our first two Albanian lessons, and although it is hard, I am pretty confident that I can learn.

That is it right now from Albania. I will post again soon about my host family and how training is going.

Mirupafshim!