How our days go

A view from our balcony

We have begun to fall into a predictable daily routine and rhythm of life. The first two days of school, the kids were still jet lagged and extremely unhappy about being woken up. So after that they were much more motivated to go to bed early and we've been doing much better. Usually we wake up around 6:00 when it starts to get light, and read Calvin & Hobbes (or something, but that's the current favorite) until breakfast - cereal, fruit, and scrambled eggs. There is tons of amazing fruit all around, especially stone fruits are ripe and in season just now.

Pazari i Ri, recently renovated - yellow building at right is Stephen Center, where we stayed one summer

We leave the house around 7:20 for the 1-mile walk to school. It's a gentle downhill to the canal/river, then a few more blocks uphill, and our best time so far has been 28 minutes! The time passes faster with stories, questions, or verbal games. The kids are complaining a lot less now than they did last week!

After I drop them at school (Terry usually walks with us too), Terry and I grab a quick coffee before he heads to his office and head back home. It's a nice time to catch up with each other. On the way home I usually do the grocery shopping, then at the house putter around with whatever I have on my to-do list for the day.

Our hosts' grapevine

At 3:00 or so I head out to pick up the kids again. The walk home is leisurely and can take almost an hour, with stops for a snack or if we need to use a bathroom at a coffeeshop on the way.

Pazari i Ri, on the way home

Eventually they'll be wearing uniforms with the school colors and logo, but at the moment they just wear their own clothes. Shorts on the days they have P.E.

Close to the school

They are fascinated by the few stray dogs we see around, which all have ear tags and look pretty well-fed. We speculated that people at the restaurants give them scraps of food and water. I told them about stray dogs I've seen in other places that are skinny and dirty, and Gabe asked me why I never took them to a vet, because wouldn't that be a good thing to do? Too true...

He also asked about an elderly man we've seen sitting and begging near the new mosque, and wanted to know how much food the man could buy if we gave him five bucks. We looked at posted menus nearby and saw that he could buy 10 pieces of pizza, or five loaves of bread. G also wondered if the man could maybe collect scrap metal and make it into things that he could sell. We haven't seen him for a few days now though so I'm not sure if the $5 plan will go into effect or not.

Val loves being in school, even though it seems like she gets hit on the head with a basketball just about every day at recess, but she reports that she's getting lots of education and can't WAIT to be given homework! These first 2 weeks have been mostly getting settled in and learning about each other, some assessment (testing) and figuring out the routines of the school.

Today our host downstairs was harvesting the very ripe grapes from his vine, and I wonder if he's planning to make raki (grape brandy)? It's very traditional here. It's been a bit torturous walking past those grapes multiple times a day, not so much because of the wasps that hang around them all the time, but because they look so delicious! Our hosts gave us two bunches on the first day and they were so good.

The Familiar Strange

There is a saying that anthropologists like to repeat, but which I now find has been attributed to sociologists, poets, and artists as well - that our work is meant to render the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. In fact this was the theme of the American Anthropological Association meetings in Denver two years ago.

This arrival in Albania has been strangely familiar. But also familiarly strange. In contrast to our arrival in 2010, when Gabriel was a wee baby and Valerie a not-quite-verbal toddler, it has been so, so easy. Having the kids in school but no steady job leaves me with loads of unstructured time at home. We have a lot of friends here already, and we know where to buy food.

On Monday after dropping the kids off at school I wandered around the center of the city for another two hours or so until my feet and legs ached, visiting many old haunts - streets and parks and bridges that hold so many memories. But without a stroller in front and a baby strapped to my chest the distances seem so much shorter! I walked by the store where I first went grocery shopping seven years ago, when I didn't even know the word for eggs (vezë). It looks the same.

A lot of things have changed. The city is far, far cleaner than I remember and I remember hearing about an anti-litter campaign a couple years ago when we came for vacation. There are new buildings completed and others going up; the walking mall in Skenderbeg square has been completely remodeled. An enormous mosque is under construction near the parliament buildings. Near where we are staying, the Pazari i Ri (New Market) has also been completely remodeled, with whimsical sculptures of storks made out of twigs at every entrance, and the only rose-sculpted ice cream in the city available there (this is a thing, apparently).

On the weekend we took the kids to the municipal swimming pool, which has some new water slides for the kids' pool - which I remember as being as deep and scary as the Mariana Trench, but is actually hardly more than knee-deep to an adult (things look different after your kids learn to swim!) We also went to the big park by the lake, where new playground equipment has been added, wonderful wooden and rope climbing areas and obstacle courses.

There has been a LOT of fussing from the single-digit-age set about how much walking we have been doing but we figure it will build character :-) We did take a taxi home from the lakeside area, and the route took us past our old neighborhood and my breath caught, I remember being so happy there. And I now it wasn't all sunshine and roses, but this is the primary emotion I associate with these places.

I know that V. and G. don't have all the same associations, or any of my memories; they're already bored by our constant recitations "oh, I remember coming here when you were a baby" - I hope they will make great memories this year. And if they don't, that's ok too.

We Are Here

Albania - Shqiperia - when we had the chance to go pretty much anywhere in the world this year, we chose this place. I don't think I ever quite got over leaving in 2012. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't re-living those years, this is a new chapter. But I am so happy to be back.

We are staying in a third-floor flat in an old villa, in an old neighborhood of twisting rrugicës and tiled roofs. It is a quiet neighborhood, especially since the school across the street is not yet in session and the heat of summer rises all day long. The pattern of sounds: a rooster, a dog barking, voices talking in the rhythmic, emphatic rise and fall of Albanian - Shqip, the odd motorcycle passing by. The Muslim call to prayer, but even closer to this house Catholic church bells in the morning and evening. A doppler-ized Despacito from a passing car.

Our hostess/landlady brought us a dish full of fresh figs the day we arrived, and her grown son cut us two bunches of small, sweet seedless green grapes from the vine that curls around the bannister of the outside staircase and up over our balcony above it. Huge wasps linger over the sweet juice, especially at mid-day, so Valerie makes me walk in front of her up and down to the patio below where arugula and parsley grow alongside the walk out to the street.

We hauled seven suitcases and five carry-on bags up two flights of stairs on Tuesday afternoon, and just as Terry brought up the last two, heavy drops of rain began to splatter by our feet. For the next two hours it poured rain, mixed with hail. The cool air felt so fresh after 18 hours of travel and the hot truck ride from the airport when Valerie fell asleep on my shoulder.

~::~

Yesterday was a long day, and the kids were done, and done in, by evening. We walked 1.7 km to their new school and took care of business there, then walked back to the house in the midday heat. We had ice cream and then went to see Shpresa, their former nanny, in the same small house she has lived in for thirty years. After two hours of snacking on popcorn and çibuk, playing with the dogs, and listening to me talk with Shpresa and her husband Berti in Shqip, they were exhausted. We had one more agenda item, dinner with Terry's colleagues from before (they still call themselves "the family" even though most of the original team have moved on to jobs in other countries or other NGOs) - they brought a bunch of helium balloons for the kids! Gabriel lasted longer than Val did; it was just too much for my introverted girl. We took the pizza home and ate in total silence while she read Calvin & Hobbes comics.

~::~

School starts on Monday. Terry has already been working on various projects for his various affiliations since before we left the US; I am eager, so eager for this new chapter to start in my life too. I am so thankful.