For holiday break, we opted for someplace warmer and we decided upon Malta, primarily because there was a direct flight from Skopje. We didn't know back in October, when we decided how much we would need it. It has been abnormally foggy, cloudy, and smoggy in Kosovo this November and December.
On Christmas Eve day, we headed to Prizren with our bags packed for the trip. We planned to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with some of the other volunteers. We meet up at a response volunteer's home around 6 pm to have dinner and to decorate the tree. As people arrived, Doug (the response volunteer) and a few others left to get the food. Others arrived. We had a pretty large group and some of us were staying for the night as Doug has a good sized apartment,
However, our plans change very quickly after dinner. I was sitting at the kitchen table talking with several people, when the room got fuzzy. I thought it would pass and just tried to focus on the conversation. The next thing I know, I am waking up to everyone gathered around me. I had blacked out. The EMTs were already on there way and someone had already contacted our Peace Corps doctor, Votim. I felt fine at this point and was able to walk, but when the EMTs arrived the immediately took my blood pressure and it was really low. My blood pressure is normally low, but this was lower than my normal. So Thom and I grab our stuff and headed in an ambulance to the Prizren Hospital.
There they did some blood work and I got some water. Although, they wanted to do an infusion, my blood pressure reading was better, so we waited for the ambulance that would take me to the American Hospital in Prishtina. I spent Christmas Day in the hospital and they ran a bunch of tests. They did not find a cause other than I was a little dehydrated. Votim (our PC doctor) was great as he navigated between the hospital docs and the medical team in Washington. Actually, Washington seemed fine with the test results and for a brief moment, we thought we might actually be able to go back to the Christmas Dinner in Prizren. Buses between Prishtina and Prizren run everyday and Christmas is not a major holiday here. But then the doctor at the hospital wanted to have me on a halter monitor for 24 hours, so I had to spend Christmas Day in the hospital.
On the 26th, they took the monitor off in the morning and still didn't find anything wrong, so they ran two more tests. We were getting to the point where it would be hard to catch a bus and make our flight, so we had to take a taxi to Skopje. But that worked out and we made it to Malta.
Our first day in Malta was sunny and in the 60s. We are in the capital city of Valletta and we spent the day walking around the city which is a walled fortress. The sites were amazing. We walked through Christmas celebrations, botanical gardens, parks, holiday markets, an art exhibit, and tourists streets full of visitors. Malta was an English colony. English is the common language. The steering wheel is on the right as we quickly learned on our taxi ride from the airport.
We had lunch at a fastfood kebab place. It was really good. We had falafel wraps with three salads of your choice in the wrap. For dinner, we went to the Naan Bar Indian restaurant. We walked by it earlier and it smelled so good we decided to go back.
After dinner, we came back and relaxed. At 10 pm, I attended a virtual baby shower for one of Thom's nephew's wife. The baby is due in April. The mom-to-be lives in Seattle, Washington and the shower was given by family in Ohio. It was nice to catch up with family at the virtual shower and it was a great Christmas day, even if it was two days late.
Day 1 Photos of Malta
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