I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas Week

This is my first Christmas ever outside of the US. I decided to go down to visit my friends Chris and Courtney in Gjirokaster in the very south of the country. Gjirokaster is a great old city and probably one of Albania’s most beautiful sites. It is an old city built onto the side of a mountain all out of stone. It is a trip that I’ve been meaning to take since the summer, but something about 12 hours on a bus kept making me put it off. From top to bottom, Albania is shorter than Colorado, but because of the conditions of the roads it takes more than twice as long to travel the same distance. I decided to do the trip strait through and take the night bus on the way down. Allan (another volunteer in Gjiro) was nice enough to pick me up from the bus when it arrived at 3AM.

The first bit of holiday spirit was found decorating Allan’s apartment and lighting an improvised Menorah (turns out I’m not the only Jew in Albania) made of beer bottles (Linus- one more for your collection).
We then met up with Chris and Courtney and Courtney’s Aunt and Uncle (visiting from America) for the beginning of the Christmas festivities. We had a nice traditional Albanian dinner on Christmas Eve and then on Christmas itself we banded together to make the best Christmas dinner that we could muster (and it was pretty good, if I do say so myself). My favorite part was my gingerbread cookies-

A note for my mom: I’ve been on the lookout ever since I arrived for cookie cutters. I know that you’ve been able to find them all over the world, but I think that Albania might be that one place with no cookie cutters.

So without cookie cutters, we improvised. Every person cut out at least one cookie and they ran the gamut: from palm tree to fighting pirate to stegosaurus. And they tasted pretty good too. We had dinner at Allan’s office- he works in an NGO that works for the conservation and restoration of Gjirokaster’s historical sites- and has a great office in a restored house on top of hill with a great view. We also had latkes and bread sticks and chicken and salad and I’m making myself hungry just talking about it! During dinner, we were all able to use the internet in the office and talk to our families at home on Skype. My sister finally got a webcam and microphone, so for the first time since I left I was able to see her and my nieces on video. After dinner we went back to C&C’s house where Cam and Donna (Court’s Uncle and Aunt) had put together stockings for all of us! Having Cam and Donna there really made the holiday. They adopted all of us like their own kids and took care of us the whole week.



After Christmas we spent the rest of the week exploring the beautiful city of Gjirokaster. What this really means is a lot of climbing up, up, up. We went up to the castle and one of the restored houses and stopped a lot for coffee. On Saturday it snowed. Apparently snow is a kind of rare occurrence in Gjirokaster, but the city covered in white was really beautiful and even with the snow it was not as cold down south as it has been up in Peshkopi (when I got home I found that it had snowed here too and has been snowing steadily ever since.) Overall it was a great Christmas/Hanukkah. Thanks a bunch to Chris, Courtney, Cam, Donna and everyone else down in Gjiro for making it a great holiday!