Get Grandma Great Greek Grapes

Mi mi mi mi miiiiii

Testing.

-Tap- -Tap- -Tap-

Ehem.

Ladies and gentlemen. You may have noticed that this stage has been a little quiet lately. By lately, of course, I mean, “for the year 2011.” I wish that I had a really good story to tell you that would explain this lack of activity. Given my last entry, perhaps you could have presumed that I eventually became frozen in a state of bionic suspension in my living room, only to thaw out in July in time to sun myself on the beaches and eat absurd amounts of fresh fruit. Or, possibly, in an attempt to truly integrate into the local culture, I swore off all speaking, writing, and thinking in the English language and was avoiding this blog so as not to subject my readers to the generally helpful but always strange world of Google translate: Albanian.

In truth, however, my fingers have been moving this entire time and my Albanian is still mediocre and spoken/written/thought in limited quantities. The more accurate and less exciting reasons could be summarized in the following themes:

Things to do: I have more of them.

Laziness: I'll explain it to you. Later.

Women: Wonderful. Interesting. DISTRACTING.

The GRE: Because “What? I haven't studied math for, like, 8 years,” isn't a good line to put on your grad school application.

Blogging: Ideas? Anyone? Please?

A couple of things have changed lately, however, that make me think that the dust covers may be coming off the set pieces and the lights may once again come back to this show. For one, I made a trip down to Athens last week to take my GRE. The thirty minutes that I had been devoting to studying for it every morning (or there abouts) for the past 6 months now sit conspicuously unoccupied. I thought about using the time to pursue my life-long dream of mastering cross-stitching, but if that doesn't happen, I just may use it to write for this thing once again.

Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, I've come to finally accept the fact that I need a writing plan. Some people seem to have a knack for sitting down at the end of their day and knowing how to put together a narrative for their readers that is accessible, creative, and interesting.

I am not one of them.

Once I established a somewhat normal schedule over here, I found it difficult to know what I it was that I should be writing about. Life was no longer defined by big changes and new discoveries (both of which lend themselves quite well to blog posts), but rather by the subtleties that shape the overall experience. I became overwhelmed by the task of setting them down in a way that is both interesting and understandable to people who have little or no direct experience in this part of the world and my inner writer simply threw in the towel.

Should I hope to return from this sabbatical, I have come to the conclusion that I need a plan. A schedule. A list. Perhaps I won't succeed in communicating everything that I would want to say about the Peace Corps and Albania, but anything would be better than what I've been communicating these last six months. As such, my entries from here on out will fall into the following categories:

-This Month in Pogradec. These entries will attempt to summarize life in Pogradec for that month- what food is available in the markets, how busy the city is, what the weather is like, and any other fun details of life at that time of year.

-The Albanian Travel Guide. Albania covers approximately 11,000 square miles, or roughly the same amount of land as Maryland. Despite this small size, there are many places worth visiting here and you should know about them. I'll use these to highlight one such place and share my own pictures and experiences from there.

-Culinary Corner. I'm not sure what percentage of my life is spent deciding what I want to eat/cook, cooking/going out, and then eating, but I'm pretty sure it is big. My diet isn't dramatically different here than it was in America, but there certainly have been changes. These entries will highlight a food, drink, or cooking experience (If I had only known all along how easy it is to make my own pancakes. Bisquick! You trickster!) that has become commonplace in my Peace Corp life.

-Cili eshte me mire? Translation: which is better? Albanians love to ask this question about just about everything. Food. Land. Languages. Women. Men. Drinks. Dancing. Weddings. Cities. Roads. Families. Fish. Sunglasses. The little yellow flowers that grow in parks. You name it. Are they better in America or Albania? I'll try to avoid outright competition, but in each entry I will highlight one thing about America that I miss in Albania and one thing about Albania that I'll miss when I return to America.

-The Question Box. You, my tens of loyal readers, have questions about life in Albania and the Peace Corps, right? This will be your chance to ask them directly. Within reason, I'll do my best to answer them well.

We'll get July going with a Travel Guide and a This Month in Pogradec. After that, I'll try to run through a cycle of the five each month. Hold me to it.

Blog! Go!