Small bits

I lost my CNN. I have cable TV from my landlord and for some reason or another every so often some of the channels change. First I lost Digiplus, a channel that showed mostly American tv shows and Spanish/Portuguese/Italian soap operas. That was sad, but the real blow came when last week CNN World became a German channel that has infomercials during the day and poker tournaments at night. I still have one movie channel showing mostly bad action (Jean Claude van Dam, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan etc.) but occasionally gems like all three Terminators and the original Superman movies. This is a real blow because it comes at the same time that we are also loosing our Newsweek service. For the past 25 years or so, Newsweek has provided free weekly copies to all PCVs. They have decided that the expense of this service is too great and that most volunteers now have access to other sources of news (like the internet). That’s all well and good, but when I am working with dial-up and have to do a lot of other things on line it is often hard to sift through news (and it takes forever to load and my internet is expensive). Should I write a letter to my congressman?

I’ve always loved the spring. Here, the spring seemed to pass by too quickly with rainy days and then all of a sudden it was June 1st and hot. Usually I like the summer- in Denver the summer is hot, but with beautiful cooling thunderstorms in the afternoons. Here, it was just hot. I’m thinking that I will like the fall here. Today, when I woke up it was pleasantly foggy. I’m looking forward to getting my wood stove running and snuggling with a hot cup of tea and a good book. I’m a little worried about winter . . . nothing seems to be insulated for the snows that they tell me will come.

The Georgians are coming. You may have seen in coverage of the conflict in the Republic of Georgia that all of the Peace Corps Volunteers stationed there were evacuated. I think that many of them will return to the US and a few of them may try to return to Georgia to help with relief, but some of them are choosing to be reassigned. Albania has offered to take in 12 volunteers. They are scheduled to arrive next week. I’m not sure what I would do in their situation- they were almost done with training and learning one obscure language (Georgian is in fact even more obscure than Albanian- it isn’t even the same language family as we are) and now they have to go through weeks more training in a new obscure language and get used to a new strange culture, all after having been through what I imagine was a very scary experience. I wish them luck and want them to know that when they arrive, the volunteers and staff here will do whatever we can to the transition smooth. Welcome to Albania!