…..I guess you know you’ve integrated when…

At a friend's birthday with some other PCVs.

1. You can do a traditional circle dance that most Albanians don’t know

2. You can have a newly-met middle-aged woman flash you her panties and you aren’t shocked by it

3. You now find yourself strangely attracted to traditional Albanian ‘looks like you shat your pants’ man attire

4. You can bust out the cabbage patch and running man at a work party where all of your colleagues (including the vice mayor) are present without any shame!

5. You can cry into your potato soup at school while eating with other teachers as your 30 students stare you down

**See below for stories!

So after being here for a year and a half, most days I still find it utterly amazing that I was sent to a Peace Corps country where 1) Every body LOVES to dance!, 2) They LOVE coffee and coffee culture, 3) They have the mountains and the beach! (best of both worlds!) 4) Most people tend to arrive more fashionably late to things than myself, and 5) They love fashion! I thought that I would be giving most of these things up when I joined the Peace Corps, so it is amazing that on a daily basis I encounter these things regularly! Needless to say, it is an odd and exciting encounter to feel like you have finally integrated into a community...though there are still many things I will never understand. So below are a few moments over the last couple of weeks where I just had to laugh at myself (and others) and look at my life as an outside observer for a moment to really grasp how much I have learned and grown over my time here.

Story 1. Last week at the vocational school where I teach we had a graduation party where students from the previous session (Jan-June 2010) received their diplomas. All of the students from previous and current sessions were there and it was fun to have them all together again and to celebrate. Many of them are now continuing on to higher education while others are working and sometimes providing the only source of income for their families…at the age of 18 or 19! In normal fashion, a dance party ensued after the ceremony. There are quite a few regional dances in this country, but most Albanians don’t know all of them. So it was extremely fun when they played a song from the region of Kukes (northern part of Albania bordering with Kosovo) and I and only about 6 other Albanians knew it. I always enjoy the shock factor!

Giving an impromptu speech...cooking teacher on left, student with microphone, director of children's center right.

Cooking and sewing students enrolled in the current session.

Story 2. I just started teaching yoga classes a couple of weeks ago for middle-aged women. The first day it was only my sitemate Bree with 3 of her colleagues from work that I was introduced to that day. After Bree telling them approximately 5-6 times to ‘wear athletic clothes,’ 2 of them showed up in dresses. Needless to say, this is Albania and clothing restrictions have never stopped most people from accomplishing anything!...let alone lifting and bending your legs into yoga positions. So as I was leading class facing everyone, let’s just say I had an amazing vantage point to see everything! I must commend her for persistence. Other highlights include me saying ‘merri kafshe’ about 4 times before being corrected that it is ‘merri kofshe.’ Something I already know, but momentarily forgot that it is inappropriate to ask someone to ‘grab your animal’ when really you mean ‘grab your thigh.’


Story 3. This past weekend the National Albanian Folk Dancing group came to our cultural palace in Burrel. They were really amazing! It’s always nice to see dance and music that is codified after experiencing the popular evolution of it in what you witness at parties and weddings, etc. I still hold that traditional Albanian man pants do look like they shat themselves. However, considering that I’ve sharted myself twice this year, perhaps it’s time I invest in a pair (thankfully, these occasions have made my New Year’s resolution pretty easy to figure out this year….Goal 1: don’t shart yourself!...let’s hope for a successful year!).

Traditional Albanian man attire with traditional instruments.

National Albanian Folk Group performing in Burrel

Story 4. As I said, people here LOVE to dance. ALL people. Including the young to the old; the small to the large; the sweaty sweaters to the shakers; and the lowest secretary to the highest supervisor. Meaning…my best friend and colleague Ilda threw a going away party for everybody that works at city hall. If you have never experienced your professional work colleagues club dancing at 3 in the afternoon, perhaps you should move to Albania for a little while because it is quite a fun occurrence. There was an assortment of circle dancing, awkward Albanian shimmying couple dancing (again, this goes without saying, but if you’ve never seen a 50 year old man shimmying with a frilly handkerchief in his hand, it’s high time you pick things up and head on over here), waltzing, and club dancing. So I thought it was an appropriate occasion to introduce everyone to really cliché old-school American dances…the cabbage patch, the running man, the sprinkler…. Don’t worry, I sometimes share the better parts of our culture as well. …so next time I’ll try to remember the shopping cart and lawnmower (though they don’t have quite as much relevance here because people don’t use either of these things).

Nothing like rocking out to the political jingle of last year's election!

Club dancing with the colleagues at 3 in the afternoon.

Something you will never see in America on the dance floor...

Story 5. As I said, there was a going away party for Ilda, one of my best friends here in Burrel. She is going to England for 9 months to study English to improve her conversational and writing skills and just to experience another culture and way of thinking. I am super excited for her!!! This is the first time that she will be living out of Albania, and I can only imagine how much she will learn and grow! However…as she stopped by school on Friday to say a final goodbye before she flew out that night, the tears I had been holding back finally came! After she left, I went to eat lunch with all of the teachers and students in the kitchen/dining area. About halfway through my meal, I started crying again…into my bowl of potato soup. Most people probably would think I’m a nut-job, but the sewing teaching grabbed me a stack of napkins to use and the cooking teacher just said to me ‘oh, you’re one of us now.’ I think Albanians typically do cry about things more than Americans (i.e. weddings, people going away, etc), but also he was implying that most Albanians have someone very close to them that live or work abroad and they are sad that the person can’t be close to them anymore. And I must admit it is quite a strange experience to be in a foreign country and have someone I love leave me….usually this job is accomplished by me when I leave my friends and family in America and go across the world…. So now I guess I know what it feels like! ….I just hope none of you are crying into your potato soup over me!

Me and Ilda