Thanksgiving Kosovo-Style...

Early on, I had thought that with Thanksgiving being on a school day, we probably would not have an opportunity to celebrate it, but I was wrong.  Thursday was a Kosovo National Holiday, as they celebrate Albanian Independence Day which is November 28th. Therefore this year, American Thanksgiving Day was a day off from school.  Kaçanik decorated for Albanian Independence Day (Flag Day) early in the week with Albanian flags all over the place and black and red clothing and decorations in store windows.  On Tuesday, I saw a group of young kids dressed in traditional costumes walking along the main street sidewalk with some adults trailing behind.  Traditional dress is a white dress for girls and a white shirt and cream-colored pants for boys  These are trimmed in black, red, and sometimes gold braid and lace.  Often the costume includes a red vest (see below).  The kids wore red crowns with the Albanian eagle or traditional white felt hats.

Kids in traditional dress

Albanian flags decorate the bridge into Kaçanik

Flags line the road in a village we walked by on Sunday

Monday and Tuesday were normal uneventful days with enough time on Tuesday to bake some Cowboy Cookies and get some much-needed cleaning done.  Wednesday the fun began.  Between the afternoon and morning school sessions, students at my school performed traditional dance, instrumentals, and vocals. It was fun to see students perform.  School performances are a big thing for Flag Day as the other schools in the community posted photos of school performances as well.

Cowboy cookies -- oatmeal, chocolate chips, dried cranberries, coconut, walnuts!!!

Students ready to perform

Traditional dancers with red scarves

Meriton playing the guitar

Watching the performance with the other teachers and students

Photos afterward

Wednesday also included a Peace Corps site visit with my project manager, Hyzri.  Site visits are a chance for the project manager to check in and see how classes are going.  The visit went well. In the evening, staff from the school met up at a restaurant for dinner to celebrate Flag Day and that was a fun evening.  We went to Moni and I found out that one of the owners of the restaurant, used to live in Wisconsin and he owns the car with the Wisconsin plates.

Thursday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with Thom's counterparts at Camp Bondsteel in Ferizaj.  This was a traditional Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings and then some.  It requires a special invite and Valon (who works at Bondsteel) invited us to join him as his guests (with Sami and his wife).  The "Chow Hall" as it is called was decorated for Thanksgiving and there were lots of civilian people along with the military personnel enjoying traditional American food.  We saw four members of Peace Corps staff in the Chow hall.  Bondsteel was a little piece of the USA located in Kosovo.

Access badge to Bondsteel Thanksgiving

Decorations in the Chow Hall

The seating area in the mess hall

More holiday decorations

Subway and Burger King at Bondsteel

The outdoor stage

The recreational area

And a real US postal box next to the PX on base

"Black Friday" is a thing in Kosovo as well and Friday after I got done with classes, I headed to Ferizaj for language lessons.  After that, we headed on to Prishtina for the night.  On Saturday, our country director was having another Thanksgiving dinner for us at her home in Prishtina.

Believe it or not, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.   Although the majority of the population does not celebrate Christmas, they do celebrate New Year's with lots of glitzy, gold holiday lights, New Year's trees (Christmas trees), and a holiday market.  We stayed close to the city center and they were setting up the small wooden booths for the holiday market.   The decorations included a really large Santa Claus and other holiday decorations.  It also turned cold on Friday and it snowed a bit as well. 

Mother Teresa Cathedral back right, booths and lights

Super-sized Santa

City center

Flags for Flag Day and holiday decorations

On Saturday morning, we took a long walk before check-out time at our hostel and then we headed to the Newborn Cafe.  This a volunteer hang-out and we enjoyed listening to their Christmas music playlist while sitting beside a nicely decorated live Christmas tree.  So it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  A group of volunteers joined us at the Newborn for a bit, before we headed to Carolyne (our country director) for an afternoon of eating.  Carolyne lives in a home that Peace Corps country directors with her husband, Ben, and her daughter.  She will be leaving us in January to become the country director in Vietnam.  

Newborn Cafe and the Christmas tree

Carolyne asked us all to send her a wish list of foods and she had a chef that prepared the food.  For me, she did a rice-stuffed pumpkin and the pumpkin came from Ben's garden.  There was an amazing cabbage slaw, salad, vegetables, and cranberry sauce for me.  There was turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cornbread, and plenty of Kosovo wines. It was a wonderful and relaxing afternoon spent with our Peace Corps family around a super-long Thanksgiving table.   

The Thanksgiving Menu

From one end to the other it is a big group

After an enjoyable afternoon, we headed back to snowy Kaçanik.  

Snow covered Ljuboten

Snack shop across from the school

Cows blocking the road in front of the school

The rock wall that collapsed not far from our apartment

Snowy Kaçanik on Sunday morning

A lot...

This week was a lot.  There was nothing too big or major, but many little things can make it a lot.

Inside the bookfair venue

For starters, last Sunday we went to Tirana, Albania for the day to the Tirana Book Fair with Thom's counterparts, Sami and Valon.  When we travel to a Peace Corps country, we must follow the Peace Corps rules for that country.  In Albania, volunteers can't travel the roads after dark.  So that meant, the guys picked us up at 6 am and we headed to Tirana bright and early.  To get to Tirana from Kosovo, we first headed toward Prishtina and then down to Prizren.  The drive in Albania was beautiful.  The roads through the mountains are amazing feats of engineering and the rugged mountains were breathtaking.  To top it off, the temps in Tirana were around 65f (18 c).  The book fair was entertaining and the crowds at the fair were large.  I got two small cookbooks, Salads and Vegetables that were in Albanian.  

The drive from Kaçanik to Tirana

The entrance to the book fair

The view from the second floor

Leaving the book fair

After the fair, we walked to the tourist areas of starting with something called the Pyramids of Tirana.  Click on the link, because the aerial pictures are much better than anything I took.  Although there are still many buildings reminiscent of the communist era, the architecture of new buildings is very interesting and we enjoy walking the wide tree-lined pedestrian sidewalks.  There are many things we will want to visit the next time were are in Tirana, such as the underground bunkers, the parks, and possibly the zoo.  We just did not have time.  We went to Skanderbeg Square which is the large city center space.  There was a beer fest going on, so we stopped to have a beer, before moving on to the Tirana Castle shopping area.  The castle is also known as Justinian Fortress and dates back to the Byzantine era.  Within the fortress walls are small shops and restaurants that incorporated into the walls of the fortress.  Here we stopped to "pi kafe" or drink coffee (or whatever) at a cafe in the fortress shopping area.

A view of the pyramid as we are walking toward it

A sculpture in front of the pyramid

The stairway up

The view from the top

The view towards the mountains

On top of the pyramid

An interesting building that we see from the pyramid

Another pretty area of Tirana

Wide tree-lined walkways

The entrance to the bunker museum

We will tour it another time as we don't have time today

The mosque near Skanderbeg Square

Really large Albanian Flag

Sign for the beer festival

Interesting food cart

Entrance to the castle shopping area

Inside the castle shopping area

One of the shops

Its already decorated for the holidays

An elf on the castle wall

After that we started our walk back to the car, as nightfalls around 6 pm now and in the mountain passes, it can be even earlier.  So we needed to start the trip out of Albanian before dark.  From Tirana, we drove to Prizren where we stopped for quick bite to eat and then we headed back to Kaçanik.

On Monday, there was nothing unusual.  I did finally make it to all five classes.  I have two in the morning and three with the other English teacher in the afternoon.  The past three Mondays, I was not able to make it to all of the afternoon classes as I had other things going on. 

At night, I have been working on writing a small grant through USAID and Peace Corps.  I was behind on the timeline I had set for myself, because of the rollover accident.  The good news is that I have completed the grant and one of our grant committee volunteers reviewed and it is ready to submit as soon as I get prices from my counterpart.  The grant will help us to create an English Language Lab with technology at the school and also create a mobile lab (with a projector and computer) for use by the other English teachers if the lab is being used.  We plan to purchase smartboards, a printer, two laptops, a projector, speakers, and English materials to be used at the school.

This week, my counterpart had a conference in Finland, so from Tuesday through Friday, I was on my own.  Most of the classes went really well, although some were a little noisier than normal.  I was definitely much more tired at the end of the day after doing the classes on my own.  Some of the classes were just amazing and I enjoyed the conversations with the students.

Me with one of my students, she is an identical twin 

and they are both in the class together

Me with students in Electric Installation (this is an all male class)

Thursday, it snowed during the night and we woke to a little snow dusting of snow.  It was a wet, messy snow, but the students still managed to have snowball fights between classes.  We made an unexpected trip to Ferizaj and although it only took 1 1/2 hours, it was just one more thing in an already busy week. 

Friday, was an interesting day.  It started out with whistling winds and in the first hour class, the boys kept saying that it was the devil.  After finishing the worksheet, one students asked me if I had any nieces his age as he really wants an American girlfriend.  I am afraid I can not help him.  I had the same students for first and second hours.  I went down to the teachers' lounge after first hour and when I came back, I saw some of my students coming down the stairs.  They said one of the windows had broken because of the wind and that they were going to look for the director (principal).  I envisioned broken glass all over the place, but when I got to the room, one of the top windows had blown open and the latch was broken.  The students were standing on desks to fix it.  OSHA rules like not climbing on furniture don't exist here and one student was even standing on the ledge of the window.  The students came back that I had seen on the stairs and they had not found the director.  The room was getting very cold and they were not able to keep the window shut, so I went looking for someone to help.  I found the director and he sent a maintenance person and another guy with a ladder.  They brought a drill and screws.  With the help of the students, they permanently screwed the window shut.

Students helping to fix the window

A student holding the window shut

While this was all going on, I got a message from the East Warden volunteer.  The volunteers in Kosovo are divided into three groups and in the event of emergency, our group meets up in Ferizaj. One of the volunteers acts as the warden and sends out messages with the help of the assistant warden.  We knew that we were going to have a drill sometime this fall and it seemed likely to be this week or next, so I was not surprised to see the message that the drill was taking place.  This meant that I needed to leave school without finishing the classes and head back to the apartment.   All of the volunteers are supposed to have a bag prepared that they can grab that contains emergency items.  For the drill, we were to take the next available bus to Ferizaj and meet our group at the Cherry Bar (our consolidation point).  

My director does not speak a lot of English, so I had a little script in Albanian to let him know that I had to leave for Peace Corps reasons and that I could not stay to finish out the last three classes.  My counterpart received the message as well, although he was still at the conference in Finland.  It was unfortunate that my counterpart was also not in class, so I was not sure what would happen with the rest of our classes.  I saw a few of my students and I let them know that I had to leave and that I would not be in class.  I headed back to the apartment and got my things together.  Thom was already there.  We had about 45 minutes until the next bus to Ferizaj.  When it was time, we headed to the bus station and once in Ferizaj, we took the short walk to the Cherry Lounge.  We arrived to find our two Peace Corps staff, Adrian and Arsim, and two volunteers, Noah and Michael.  We waited for about an hour for the rest of our group to show up, Sarah and Cory were on the same bus from Gjilan.  The last to arrive was Paul from Kamenice.  Once everyone was there, we had a short debriefing and then we went to lunch with the other volunteers to McDonals Grill House (not to be confused with McDonalds) even though they use McDonald's napkins.  I was pleasantly surprised with their mixed salad.  After lunch we headed back to Kaçanik.  

The holiday tree in the square in Ferizaj

Thom's macchiato at the Cherry Bar and Lounge

It was an exhausting week.