The mustache? For two weeks.

This has been a big weekend. Last Thursday, we marked the end of our Pre-Service Training with a swearing-in ceremony in Elbasan that officially made us Peace Corps volunteers. Afterward, many of us went out to our favorite bar in the city and spent most of the afternoon doing the usual activities: sitting in the shady courtyard drinking cheap beer, playing cards, and talking. It was a bittersweet day- we were all happy to be done with training and excited to go to our sites and begin our work, but it was also the last time that we were all going to be together as a group for many months. Saying goodbye to the other volunteers from Bishqem was especially difficult. For the past two months, I saw them practically every single day. I wasn't sure how that was going to play out in the beginning, but we ended up getting along remarkably well. They became such an integral part of my peace corps experience that it is hard for me to imagine going through the rest of the two years without them. I'll adjust, I'm sure, but the first few weeks will be very odd.



The next morning, I packed all of my bags and said farewell to my host family. That was another very difficult goodbye. When I first moved into their home in March, I thought it would be odd to live in the home of a family with whom I didn't share a common language. As the weeks progressed and my language improved, I could gradually talk to them about more and more things, but I never reached the point at which I could talk to them about my true feelings on an issue or expand upon an opinion far beyond whether or not I liked something. In many ways, I consider the ability to do those things to be vitally important to forming a strong relationship with someone. What I discovered with my host family, though, is that you can communicate some of those things simply by sharing a space with them, greeting them every day, and sharing times of celebration and disappointment with them. I truly do consider them to be my family in Albania and will dearly miss seeing them each day.



Ok. Enough of the sappy stuff. When I was living in Bishqem, my internet access was fairly limited and didn't get to share many of the pictures or stories from day to day life. Now that I do have internet access, I want to start recapping some of those experiences from PST.

A short time before I left for Albania, I read "The World According to Garp" by John Irving. Great book, if you wondering. Anyway, the book tells the story about the life of an author. At certain points in the book, you get to read short stories written by the fictional author as a way of following his progression as a writer. His first short story was set in Vienna and is about a young boy who is traveling with his family when they have an encounter with a group of gypsies and their pet bear. It is a cute story, but when I read it I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh John Irving, couldn't you come up with a slightly more realistic plot? I mean, a pet bear? Nobody actually has...



"...a pet bear." You win, John Irving. You always do. This friendly creature and his less than friendly owner were touring Elbasan for a few days this spring. He makes his living by allowing people to pay to get a picture taken with the bear. The death stare that he is giving me has something to do with the fact that I was not paying him for my personal memories of his bear. In this world of digital cameras, I would have to say his business plan seems flawed, but at the end of the day, I'm not the one with the bear. So yeah. Come to Albania! We have pet bears!