I don't think these photos can fully convey the ambiance of the place - the water was incredibly clear and incredibly cold, and you could see it bubbling up from under the sand or trickling in from among the rocks. From the boat, we picked blackberries that hung out over the water - plump and fresh and sweet. Too bad we could only reach one each!
Sorry for the slow-down in posting. Last Tuesday I got sick - well, I guess it started Sunday with a sore throat, followed by a sore tongue (weirdest symptom ever) and everything tasted odd. Then couldn't keep anything down for about 24 hours, just small sips of water or diluted juice. Also, euphemistically speaking, GI "issues." By Thursday I felt fine but Valerie was sick. All day Friday, all she wanted to do was lie down. Poor sickie. Thing is, I'd been building up momentum for another potty-training push that was supposed to start Thursday. But between me being sick and her being sick, it didn't happen. But she kept talking about it once she felt better (basically back to normal by Sunday afternoon) and this morning she turned down a diaper and.... (drum roll)... wanted to sit on the potty! This was a huge step forward for us so I decided to go with it, ditched my plans for the day, and spent all day setting the timer on our iTouch to go off every 20 minutes with a duck sound for the alarm. "When you hear the duck," she kept saying all day, "time to go sit on the potty!" We had two hits and three misses, but I'm just so happy that we're moving in the right direction at last. We'll see what tomorrow brings...
There are one or two other places I go to regularly but I don't have pictures of them yet. 
Terry bought a second floor fan for our apt. today, and Gabriel was completely fascinated. He was not very happy when we took away the screwdriver, though. How cute is that pudgy little guy though? (Gabriel is pretty adorable, too, don't you think?) :-)
Our street is lined with empty storefronts interspersed with small mom-and-pops. In the space of one block, there are two seamstresses, two small groceries, two fruit-and-vegetable marts, a butcher’s shop, an internet café, two regular cafes, two clothing shops, a used-clothing store, and a “dyqan ndryshme” – I suppose you’d call it a variety store? They sell laundry baskets, mops, plastic tubs, house slippers, clocks, knick-knacks, hair accessories, makeup, mirrors, sewing thread, scissors… it’s our own little micro-Wal-Mart. It’s easy to run down and buy a quart of milk or a bag of çubuk, or any of those random little things you need but don’t want to make a long trip for.
Here’s my problem – the food stuff, it isn’t always fresh. Every time I’ve bought produce, dairy, or meat, I’ve been disappointed. The rope of onions I bought one day all had rotten centers. The plums and nectarines grew mold overnight. The chicken breasts and ground beef sat in my fridge for just one day before I put them in the freezer, and upon thawing smelled bad and I had to throw them out.
And I feel bad, because I walk past the empty storefronts with big “FOR RENT OR SALE” signs in our building, and I don’t want these other shops to close for lack of business. But slow business is the reason their stuff goes bad – they probably buy the cheap, low-quality stuff to begin with, and then it sits too long because the turnover isn’t fast enough. So I feel like by not shopping there I’m contributing to the problem. But I can’t feed my family tainted meat or rotten fruit. So… I go around the corner to the nicer shops on the main avenue. And feel guilty walking past the local guy.
(Although I guess as long as I can avoid the Italian chain grocery store I’m still more or less ok.)
This is "Panther's" picnic - I think baby panther is holding a "tomato." The blue triangles are fish, the books are sandwiches, and I'm not sure what the pelican is supposed to be but it's something edible. 
I went to the US Embassy in Tirana yesterday just past noon to renew my passport, which will expire in December, inside the six months recommended. As I walked up towards the high yellow walls along Rruga e Elbasanit, I could feel the sweat start to trickle down my back, and I couldn’t help but think how different this was from my visit last November, when I went for an affidavit of something or other as part of my residency visa application. Then it was cold, wet, and windy; I was wrapped up in warm woolen layers (scarf, hat, sweater, coat). Yesterday was a warm, clear summer day, and this change of seasons more than anything else makes me feel like we’ve been here for a solidly long time.
So I arrived at the back entrance to the complex, the entrance for visa and citizen services, and had to wait in a narrow alley in the hot sun with about thirty other people – all Albanians, as far as I could tell – since the office was still closed for lunch. It was moderately interesting to see how different people reacted differently to the situation; the woman whose swollen feet strained in her cheap black shoes humbly took her place in line; the woman carrying an expensive purse and the prosperous-looking man with his cell phone in a belt holster stood in the shade near the wall until the security guard told them to move; then they stood at the edge of the sidewalk (still in the shade) about six inches closer to the rest of us but nowhere near the rest of us, on the other side of the alley where they’d been told to go.
At five minutes to 1:00, the guard (heavy night-stick, but no gun) motioned me over towards the entrance and asked “citizen?” I said yes, and he nodded and opened the heavy door for me. At the security booth I relinquished my cell phone, went through the metal detector, and was in. As I walked across a small, shaded courtyard, I could see obliquely the long line of Albanians watching me through the gate.
It’s a weird feeling, getting shunted to the front of the line. I remember the same thing happening to me in Peru when I was 19 and had to renew my US passport while there on a break from college. The difference is that I am also a Peruvian citizen, and the long line of people I walked past that time were all Peruvians. And it felt wrong. It felt wrong to have a privilege that these men, women, and children didn’t have, as I walked past them feeling in the pit of my being “I am one of you, too!” and knowing at the same time that in many ways I am not.
If you think the DMV is a strange place, the visa application office at the US Embassy in Albania is even stranger. It’s a small room, with six glassed-in windows. 1-4 are for visa services, 5 is for citizen services and the sixth is the teller where you pay the fees. There are eleven chairs, but the ebb and flow of people means that up to 25 or so can stuff themselves in at once. Framed photos on the wall of Barak Obama, Joe Biden, and Hilary Clinton smile with shining teeth across from a painting of an girl in traditional Albanian costume holding a sheep, her long flowing brown hair enveloping a dove. You wonder if staunch Republicans waiting in this room for citizenship services feel more, or less, at home when they see the photos.
There is no real privacy. You can hear every conversation that takes place. The woman trying to explain to the visa officer where she actually lives, since she spends part of the year in her home in Albania and part of the year in her home in Macedonia (where her husband lives and works); the man applying for a visa for his young wife and three-month-old baby who is told he has to “bring proof that you were in Albania during the dates you say you were,” even though he has everything the web site said he should bring; the family of three who talk in nearly-perfect English with the visa officers but in Albanian with each other; the man answering extremely personal questions about his relationship history with his American wife; you can hear everything they say, and it feels awkward and wrong to be privy to the complexities of these strangers’ lives.
You think about the performance each interaction entails; wondering how people decided what to wear that day; noting body language, tone of voice, the phrasing of responses. You notice yourself acting more American – using colloquialisms, making unabashed eye contact with a strange man to show you are a liberated American woman. Even with the security guard, you say “thank you” when you retrieve your cell phone, not “Faleminderit.” Like every other applicant there, you are extremely polite.
I left the Embassy just short of an hour after I had arrived, with a receipt to pick up my new passport in a couple of weeks. I realized I was hungry since I’d left for my 1:15 appointment (which is kind of a joke, since up to four people can have an appointment for the same time slot, and they just take you in the order you show up; but since everybody wants to be on time, it’s a weird mad little scramble as all four jockey for their place in line) without eating. Dealing with bureaucrats is always unnerving, even when you have in your hand that magical talisman, that blue and gold passport; even when you know that the minute you open your mouth to speak the American officer behind the window will smile and you will see him relax just the tiniest little bit and he will meet your gaze with friendliness and regard, and you know he will be thinking “oh, she’s American; she’s an expat in Albania, like me,” and you will let him think that you are just like him, because it will help you get what you want.
