We have been in Albania for nearly two
weeks now and are becoming more adept carrying on our daily routine.
We have found that the first few days in a new country are often the
most difficult. If you do not have any concept of where your flat
is, how to shop, how to get from point A to point B, essentially how
to function at any level, you essentially become like a child
dependent on his parents for every task in life. Fortunately,
whenever we have moved to another country, a person or family has
taken us under their wings and taught us the basics. We are grateful
to people over the years for showing us around patiently while we
learn how to live and not just to survive.
The Lorings are helping us adjust here
in Albania. We can now shop successfully for food, go for walks
around town (currently staying on our side of town), take the trash
out (this is very important) and other basic activities. We even
went out to eat on our own once. One item I want to secure early in
our stay in any place away from home today is a cell phone. If I
have a phone and know that I can call for help to our host family,
life is much less scary.
I took a walk this morning by myself as
Phyl(Liz)z is a bit under the weather. Korca reminds me a little of
Albuquerque, where my brother lives. He can leave his house and be
walking in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains within a few
minutes. Fortunately we have a similar situation here. I walked up
the street past “our” grocery store, continued up toward the
Korca Brewery and turn left just before the brewery. If one walks a
few hundred meters on the road you pass institutions that make me
think how blessed I am. A landmark building is a home for the
handicapped. This is actually a wonderful facility that takes good
care of its residents, but I can see them looking out the window
through barred windows while I am strolling freely up the tarmac
toward the sky. Next, I see what I perceive to be a family-built
little prayer chapel, but it may be something else. The road becomes
very steep when I reach this point, moving from a pleasant grade that
raises the pulse somewhat to a cardiac intensive uphill that taxes my
body. But, foolishly I attack it with gusto – more on that later.
Near the top of this steep road is an
Orthodox Church. I doubt that this marvelous little structure set so
high up is attended by many – perhaps it is more of a museum – I
don't know. As I reach the church building I make the decision to
continue walking upward and not turn off on the road to the track
that runs relatively level (no tarmac, just lots of rocks on this
road) and loops back to town. I continue on the steep, upward path.
I am breathing heavily, but feeling pretty good as I trudge up the
steep tarmac. However, about ten or fifteen minutes later, it
becomes apparent that this path is going to defeat me. The top of
the foothills seems mile off and very much higher. I slow down and
walk a little farther when I see an old gentleman sitting on a bench
by the road. I break Albanian cultural traditions and greet him with
a “Hello”. He naturally looks at me and almost smiles, but it
would be just too much for most Eastern Europeans to greet a stranger
on the road, in town, or anywhere.
I realize that if he has stopped at
this point, maybe I should too. I turn left onto a gravel path to a
cell tower but the path seems to go no farther. The old gentleman
gets up and starts walking slowly down a path that goes away from the
road. I stand and try to decide whether or not follow him down as
his ambling looks more recreational than my trekking on the tarmac.
While I am pondering the road or the path, I hear the slapping of a
jogger's footsteps. I man is jogging down the road and passes me by.
Just then a Mercedes roars up the hill. I realize that I am caught
“inbetween”.
My chronological age matches more
closely that of the older gentleman so peacefully meandering down the
path away form the tarmac road. However, my cultural positioning
matches more closely the man jogging downhill and the Mercedes
roaring up the tarmac. What to do? I want to go down the path, but
I somehow end up walking down the tarmac. I find my cultural
positioning stronger than my desire to stroll down the path with the
older man. Somehow staying on the tarmac seemed safer than walking
on the path. I will attempt to choose the path next time.
Albania is the fifth “foreign”
country that we have lived in. However, our town, Korca, contains
the fewest English speaking people of the place we have lived.
Tanzania and Nigeria are former British
colonies and contained large English
speaking expat contingents. The Czech Republic was a tourist
oriented country and of course we taught in an English language
school there so we lived in an English language environment.
Mazatlan was a tourist town also and we had an English language
church to attend Sunday mornings which put us in touch with a few
hundred English speaking people. Here, we are quite isolated
linguistically.
We have spent approximately ten percent
of our lives living outside the USA. This puts us in good stead for
undertaking assignments such as the one we are on. It also causes my
world view to be quite different from the typical American, but still
worlds away form the typical Czech, Mexican or Albanian. I am
“inbetween” many cultures but live for the most part in the
culture of the richest country on earth and I greatly appreciate it
riches. The riches of America are what allow us to work in other
countries!
Why are we in Albania? The answer is
simple. We feel equipped by our past and blessed by our present
circumstances in life so that we can do things others might find
difficult. However, especially to me, John, living in another land
and teaching missionary children is a joy. In fact, it is much
easier for me to live here and teach than it would be to minister in
certain areas at home. God gives us grace and abilities to do
different things and I feel that this is mine in particular and that
Phyl(Liz) is well equipped for this type of undertaking also. She is
so creative in all aspects of life that she can function well in all
places and situations. One of the greatest evidences of this fact is
how she can make a great meal out of the foods we have been able to
buy here.
Our great joy here is working with
Ashlie and Isaac. Ashlie is fourteen and a beautiful young lady.
She is much like our granddaughter Kaley in personality – not a
morning person for one thing. Isaac is a no nonsense type of boy
somewhat like our grandson Steve. He is very sharp academically and
tackles all assignments with gusto. We supervise their computer
based home schooling from 9:00 AM until they finish their work –
usually around 2:00 PM. We do take the mandatory (in my mind) snack
break around 11:00 each day. It has been fun getting to know Ashlie
and Isaac and finding how to best work with the learning styles of
these two very different young people. John does the math and
science for both of them while PhylLiz usually takes on the Bible,
History, Geography, Spelling, etc. Each day is different in who
supervises exactly who supervises which subjects depending on the
number of assignments each one has for the day and who is away doing
a quite rigorous hike or bike ride – each of them go on about a two
hour hike or bike ride each week, leaving us with only one student at
the beginning of Monday through Thursday. On Fridays we then all go
together on a walk/adventure accompanied by food and drinks.
Our first few days here have gone well.
We did have a period of about forty-eight hours of clouds, rain and
gloomy weather, but for the most part, the weather has been sunny.
It was a little too warm the first week, but now that fall is here,
our highs are in the sixties and seventies – just right.
On my walk this morning I saw something
that I have never seen in America. There were a group of boys
playing football (aka soccer in America) in what was essentially a
forest. It was an orderly planted forest of pine trees that are
quite tall with their lower branches trimmed quite high. My thoughts
were that playing on such a field would teach one to keep his head up
while dribbling and that passing must be more pinpoint that on an
open field. I think these are two lessons that should apply to all
of life. We need to keep our thoughts on high while we go about the
basics of life and make sure our communications with others are spot
on and clear. Otherwise we will be crashing into barriers in life
and our words with our family, friends and colleagues will not convey
the message we want them to as they bounce off our different
personalities.
Speaking of football, the Lorings are
great fans and we can watch the Premiership matches with them
anytime. Ian and his Albanian friend Holder watch all the Manchester
United matches. We will be headed to the Lorings later this
afternoon to see Arsenal's match at 4:00 followed by the Man U match
at 6:30. I think God knew what he was doing when He brought us here!
We have been in Albania for two weeks and have settled into our assignment of tutoring Ashlie and Isaac. When not on school time, we enjoy taking walks about the city of Korçë. There are always interesting anthropological differences to observe. Here are some of my observations and what I have learned from our host family.
I see wedding dresses in quite a number of shops. It is the custom here for a bride to rent three dresses: one for a Friday night feast with the groom's parents, another for a Saturday dinner with the bride's family, and a third for the Sunday wedding which may take place in a church or city hall. After the wedding the bridal couple drive through the town in a decorated car while honking horns gather everyone's attention. 
We see cut logs being delivered to houses by small three wheeled trucks or donkey carts. Then men proceed to split the logs by hand as they chop for many hours to prepare the wood for heating in the small wood burning stoves that heat these apartments in the winter. I have been told that it may snow as early as November. This town sits at the elevation of 4,000 feet in a high plateau area between mountain ranges. Will tell you later what kind of weather winter presents here. Right now it is feeling very much like fall in the Midwest.
Many of the streets are narrow cobblestone or combo of broken stone and dirt. These also double as walkways as there are no sidewalks in the residential areas. Unlike Prague where we were looking down to avoid puppy poop, here we look down to dodge donkey dung. Many of the streets are currently dug up to put in larger sewer lines in order for waste water to flow more freely with capacity to also carry flushed toilet paper. This makes for the current bit of inconvenience, but we are grateful to have good water pressure to take showers, do laundry, and the water is safe to drink.
