My first classes went well. So far I have started one advanced level course and one intermediate level course. Today I walked into the classroom and asked myself, Why don't girls want to learn English? There were about twenty five boys sitting in the classroom eager to listen to what I had to say. (Or at least patiently wait to ask me for coffee at the end of class.) Thankfully a few girls straggled in late.

I walked part of the way home tonight with one of my new students. She made a comment that I was smiling during the whole class (and actually sometimes laughing.) I think even the students can see how happy I am to be teaching again. Now if I didn't have to write a lesson plan for tomorrow I would be even happier. But I must get to that now...

I think the calendar is a little confused. In September it was freezing here and winter-like. Now its the end of October and its beautiful. Yesterday and today I was outside in a t-shirt, I am still in disbelief.

I start teaching tomorrow. I am happy to finally be busy again and seeing my students more often. But at the same time I am a bit overwhelmed by the amount of students I have.

Hungry?

I am glad Bajram is only once (actually twice) a year! This is the holiday that ends the Muslim month of fasting. This holiday lasts for three days. During these three days you visit your friends and family. At each visit you eat lots of sweets - always Baklava and some other assortment of cakes. Now since I am an international, I get special treatment - more Baklava on my plate and extra encouragement to eat EVERYTHING that is on my plate. I just don't understand. My Albanian friends do not have to eat ALL the baklava. When they leave some on their plate no comment is made, but when I do I am encouraged to eat more. I am told, "you didn't eat anything," when I have just come from three visits where I ate at least two pieces of cake or Baklava and drank many glasses of soda and coffee.

I made the mistake of starting off this morning with a piece of baklava, actually maybe the mistake was eating the second piece. (It was really good and I knew no one else would make it this way - with coconut inside instead of nuts.) After this my next visit was cancelled and I stayed longer than expected at my friend's house. This led to eating a mandarin and a small piece of pite (cabbage pie.)

I then went to the village school where I used to teach. First stop – the director’s office. Here I found the director in the middle of a meeting with some Ministry of Education officials. All was put on hold to greet me, the token American, and make comments about how Albanian I am, how I should marry an Albanian guy, and how I should stay in this country forever. (These are common topics at every visit!) I exchanged numbers with a guy whose daughter lives in Boston and whom I am now supposed to call when I go home for Christmas. (Everyone has a relative somewhere in America.)

I then proceeded on to the teacher’s lounge. I didn’t quite make it that far, but saw some teachers outside enjoying the beautiful weather, so I stopped there to talk with them. We chatted for a bit (I got to tell my story about my recent marriage proposal - after I was asked if anything is new in the guy department – again a common question.) Then we finally moved inside. Some teachers went to their classroom while I stayed with others and drank coffee. Before I knew it, three teachers and I were walking out of the school. Wait? Wasn’t there still another hour of school? No, its still a holiday, the third day, half of the students had already left so the teachers decided they were done too.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making three visits to these teachers and the director. At each house I had to eat a plate full of cakes and baklava. Interestingly enough I also left each house with something. I left the first house with a hand-knit table topper, the second house with a large bag of apples, and the third house with a plate full of pite (cheese pie). I love that village!

At the second house I went to I was surprised. I do not know why things like this still surprise me, but they do. I am slowly understanding how small a country of 2.5 million people really is. About two months ago I went with one of my students here in the city I live in now, the capitol city, to visit her family in the village she is from. This village is near my old city and near the village I was in today. Well it turns out that she, my student, is related to one of the teachers at the school, whose house I was at this afternoon. This teacher and her mom were visiting this other family on Monday and my student was there. For some reason they started talking about me, and they realized they both knew me. I guess I had told my student I used to teach at this village school and really liked the village. I am glad I said such positive things.

So, I drove home with a full stomach and made it just in time for bible study. But for some reason, after everything was over I was still hungry. I decided upon some brown bread and ajvar (pepper paste) for dinner. Now I am full and satisfied…and I don’t need to eat baklava again for awhile.

Students

Finally I have started getting ready to teach again. Last week I had two info sessions for my English classes and so far I have 135 applications. Only 35 new students have actually taken my placement exam, so hopefully I will not actually have over 100 students. Its nice to have such a positive interest. I am excited to be interacting with students again and getting ready to teach. I have another week of info sessions and giving the placement exam, then I start teaching next week.

I just put together these pictures of some of my past students. Enjoy the show!

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Rest - and my past week

Finally after a few days of craziness and lack of sleep I got a good night's sleep. It was very hard for me, but I actually went to bed at 10pm last night. In my mind that is just too early and I knew there were other things I should be doing. But on about 4 hours of sleep a night for the past few days, I was not capable of doing any work last night. So I crawled into bed, watched a little TV and probably feel asleep by 11pm. Amazingly I didn't get out of bed until 9:30 this morning. I did wake up many times this morning, but I kept turning back over and telling myself I didn't really need to wake up. Finally I feel rested and ready to face the day. Its a good feeling...too bad I don't expect to get much sleep tonight.

So you may ask, why haven't you been sleeping Lynn? Here is the story. On Saturday my friend and former roommate who is studying in the US came back here for a conference. Saturday night we drove to her hometown to visit her family. I probably got a reasonable amount of sleep that night...oh no, now I remember. Although we were both falling asleep while watching a movie, once everyone else went to bed, and we were ready for bed, for some reason we started talking.... I think I got 5 hours of sleep.

(Random note: I just answered my home phone...not many people usually call that number as cell phones are more commonly used here. The person on the other end was speaking some random language. She was definitely not speaking the most commonly used language here, and I don't even think she was using the other language. She didn't know English, but kept rambling in whatever language she was speaking. I don't understand with country codes and everything how you can call the wrong number. Maybe she was trying to reach someone in this country, but just a different number.)

Then on Sunday at 10am my friend, her sister and I got on a bus and headed to the next country over to visit their mom and two brothers. After a long bus ride we arrived at 5:30pm and spent about 24 hours there. At 8pm Monday night we got back on the bus and headed back to this country. When we got on the bus the driver said we would arrive at 2:30 or 3am. Ahh, I thought, that would be nice. That would allow us to be able to sleep for a few hours before driving back to the capitol city. Unfortunately the bus stopped twice for long coffee/dinner breaks and there was some road construction so we didn't arrive until 5:30am. I maybe got a total of 2 hours of horrible sleep while on the bus. We went to my friend's house and slept for about 3 hours, then headed back in the car to my city.

For some reason once I got home on Tuesday I thought I would be exhausted and take a nap, but I had too much to do. (If I did I probably wouldn't have woken up.) That night my friend, her niece and another friend came over my apartment. Although at about midnight I was tired and ready for bed, I had company so I couldn't just ignore them. At about 2:00am we all headed to bed. But for some reason I wasn't tired anymore. Then, again my friend and I started talking...and it was 3:30am the last time I looked at the clock.

I woke up the next morning at 9:10am...and I was supposed to meet someone at 9am...oops! Quickly I rushed to get ready and left by 9:40. My day continued in a rush like this. I actually didn't even have a moment to stop and eat anything until after 8pm. So after such a full day once I got home I crashed, and enjoyed the 10 1/2 hours of sleep I finally got!

Tonight is the last night my friend is here. I will bring her to the airport at 5:30am tomorrow morning...so therefore, I predict a lack of sleep again tonight.

Liberties

While listening to Larry King Live today I heard Bono talk about the new RED campaign. Bono is always doing something to help fight against inequality, against AIDS, against poverty in Africa. The list could go on and on. Today he talked about America and how he thought America means equality (in a summary of his words). Those words made me think. Being here in a foreign country, although I still love my mother country and am very thankful for all the freedoms it gives me, I hate it when people fantasize about how wonderful America is. Seriously, its not all its cracked up to be. But at the same time, it does give you more freedom than most other countries. It gives you more possibilities. It gives you equality. The question then becomes, what are all the Americans doing with that freedom, those possibilities, that equality? I ask you today, what are you doing with what God has given you by being born in America? If you have an American passport you have freedom like no other citizen has. Are you doing something to help those less fortunate than you? Are you giving of your time, money, resources? Are you aware of what's going on in the rest of the world. Pick your country, pick your passion, there are many choices. But don't just sit at home in America enjoying all the luxuries of life, not realizing there is a whole different world out there.

Here are some things you could start with
...until you find where your passion is.

Shop at Gap and buy RED products
Help bring clean water to Africa
Provide a bed for an orphan in Moldova
Stand up for liberty in SE Asia
Help end human rights violations
Support the orphans in Rwanda
Feed the hungry

Slideshow

Wow, I just wasted about...hmmm lets see...maybe only one hour, no probably more like two. In the end it is worth it. I found a great slideshow website that makes great fun picture slide shows, and then it even gives you the web lingo you need to post it on your webpage. Once I found the website and put my pictures in it was simple. Now I have a fun slide show on the top of this page. There are many other fun options. So now instead of being boring and pasting a list of pictures I will post a slideshow that displays them much more interestingly.

Now I will go and vacuum like I planned on two hours ago.

Recently someone asked me which I thought was more important to put on a blog, words or pictures? Right now I feel that pictures are enough. I am out of energy to write many words, so I will leave you with more pictures from the mural.

Lesson of the day: Always check on your flight a few days before you are supposed to leave.

I have never done this regularly, and typically trust the system too much. Yesterday I brought the last team member to the airport and found out her flight no longer existed. The travel agent forgot to notify her of this change, and we forgot to check.

So I had company last night. We watched the movie my mom sent me with this team (Along Came Polly) and I enjoyed having company for dinner. I love to cook, but I do not like cooking for myself. Besides that I faded in and out of sleep all afternoon and evening, truly worn out and in need of rest.

Now its back to teaching and trying to work out that schedule.

Mural pictures

I finally have some more pictures of the mural work for you. After the sketch was on the wall the students started applying color. These are a few pictures of the work throughout the week.









And the final product:


Ta Da...doesn't it look great. I was pretty impressed.


This is what I spent most of my days doing, since I am not a painter:

Drinking coffee

Talking with soldiers

Driving (usually my hands were on the wheel. I think I had just killed a fly and was trying to wipe it off my hands.)

Mural update

Yea, I am happy, I got 9 hours of sleep last night. It was so nice to be able to go to bed knowing I could sleep a long time. Although I thought I would get so much accomplished being home this morning it looks like I will have time to update this blog, run to the post office to pick up a package, make and eat lunch, and head out to the mural site. At least I got caught up on some much needed sleep. I believe my tiredness was causing me to be a bit emotional yesterday, and that wasn't a good combination with the guys harassing me. Thankfully after I hid in a corner for awhile and read my bible I had a better attitude and just started joking about my new boyfriend. I will try to find some pictures later, you all will be impressed.

As for an update on the mural, its coming along great. My co-worker took the team out to the site this morning to do some final touch-ups. I will be heading there a bit later with the translators. This afternoon we will have a small dedication ceremony for the mural and then a fun (hopefully) party. The US military band is even coming to play for our party. It should be a good time for all.

The last couple days went very well. The students who helped paint the mural have bonded well with the team and it looks like they are working hard, but also having fun. We also offered some art classes this week to give the rest of the kids hanging around something to do. The first few days of those there was not much interest, then it became chaotic so many people were there, and finally yesterday, the last day of classes, it was down to a nice orderly fashion.

The highlight of my day - knowing that I get to sleep in tomorrow.

The worst part of my day - being cornered by two annoying guys, one telling me "I love you." (the only English words he knows. He asked me to marry him the other day. I don't think he understands "no" even in his own language.) Why can't I be this popular with American guys?

I am exhausted, but finally have a few more pictures (thanks Mary) so I will post a couple from this past Saturday when we went up into the mountains for my birthday.

After a busy weekend of kids club and sightseeing its nice to be back to the mural. Now I just need to see if I can find a place to take a nap during the day, since I do not seem to find enough time to sleep at night. Where do the hours go? But I think I remember the not so distant days when I complained I had too much free time. I sure won't do that again.

Really, overall the mural is coming along great. This week we have had warm sun every day. The mural is coming together and starting to look good. Its especially fun to realize that its the local high school students who have done almost all the painting. The team from America has just directed and supervised the mural.

Another fun part about this mural is that I have gotten to know some of the American military here in this country. For the past three years I have been trying to get on to the American base, with no success. Now I have some friends and I think I will be able to get on with no problem - at least until they leave in December...and by then maybe I will make some more military friends. Today I even got some chow hall Mexican food. It was a bit cold and mushy, but still Mexican. And one guy said he would bring me diet Dr. Pepper tomorrow if I would give him some water today - we'll see if he follows through on that one. (Yes I know, I am working hard over here.)