Let it snow . . .

Winter has arrived in Peshkopi. I know that some of you in Denver have had a pretty harsh, cold and snowy winter already, but here in Albania, the winter so far has actually been pretty mild. This is of course mostly good news because when it gets cold here, it gets really cold because there is no insulation or central heating. This week, however, the winter has arrived. On Friday night I was lucky enough to be out to dinner with Dylan, Turi and Dylan's counterpart Habibi when it started snowing for the first time this winter. I say I was lucky because it was beautiful and also because by the morning there was barely a dusting and by the next afternoon the snow was gone. Driving home from dinner as the big, wet flakes fell on the lit city . . . gorgeous. I wish that I could have effectively captured it on film, but I'm afraid that I couldn't. Over the weekend it continued to snow off and on and I snuggled into my wood-stove heated room. Up until this point, I've felt pangs every time I started up my stove- is it really cold enough? Do I want to waste this wood? (not to mention the pollution pangs I always get), but when it is really cold, I feel less bad about using the wood for some reason. Anyway, don't ask me . . .

Next week I'll be going to Italy for Christmas and New Years with Connie, another PCV. When I get home, hopefully I won't have frozen pipes like I did after my vacation last year.

Happy holidays and let it snow!!!

Let it snow (and be cold)

Seriously, I don’t want to be that girl who complains about how cold it is all the time, but man is it cold. I now understand how very lucky I was to grow up in a house with central heating. I have a weather ticker on my desktop that tells me the forecast and current temps for both Peshkopi and Denver (or anywhere else I would want). Over the past few weeks I’ve seen that Denver is actually a bit colder than Peshkopi in general, but I have never felt this cold all the time! The biggest difference of course, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the houses are not well insulated and they don’t have heating systems. While my wood stove works well to heat one room it leaves the rest of the house frigid (going to the bathroom feels like going on an arctic expedition). My biggest issue since I returned to p-town for New Years is that my pipes seem to be frozen and I have not had more than a trickle of water for more than a week. This makes washing clothes, dishes and myself pretty difficult.

On the bright side, it has been snowing a lot and I love the snow. It covers the whole city in a beautiful blanket of white and as long as I don’t have anywhere to go, I’m happy. In fact one of my favorite things is snuggling in front of my fire with a hot cup of coco and reading a good book. It’s just when I have to go outside (or to the other room) that there’s a problem.

For now, I can deal with the water issues and the cold. Let it snow!

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!

Skiing and my new camera

In preperation for my trip, I am buying some new (sometimes badly needed) stuff. One of my few major puchases is a new camera. It was delievered last week and I got to try it out for the first time this weekend at the annual Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) Ski Weekend at Snow Mountain Ranch outside of Winter Park. Since my parents have been heavily involved in the RPCV group in Denver since before I was born and we all like to ski, this has been an annual trip for our family for as long as I can remember. I decided to just cross-country ski this year (trying to save money and all) and then we went tubeing on the second day. The sled hill at SMR has a rope tow. . . that was of couse not working when we were there. While the snow was great and the tubeing was fun, I have my doubts about whether or not the trip down the hill was worth the hike back up. The law of sled gravity: what goes down must come back up.
Anyway, it was fun and good family time.