Everyone told me to stop calling her "new Ina," and I have complied. Thursday was Besarta's first day with us. She said this is her first job... ever. She seems pretty relaxed and competent, however, so I think we're being sandbagged.
As you can see, this photo is rather dark. One of my new normals is rationed electricity. We had a half-day of training today, and there was no electricity in the school. This was apparently intentional. It was cloudy today as well, so seeing the whiteboard indoors was challenging. Also, when there is electricity, occasional light flickers are common. These were more frequent at our hotel in the capital city (Tirana) than where I am now in the villages, oddly enough.
Also, when the sun is out to power my home's solar panel, hot water for a shower takes maybe 20ish minutes to generate. On a cloudy day or after the sun has gone down, getting hot water can take 90ish minutes. There are lots of new normals. I think I've pretty much adapted to them.
Here are some more photos of what our training looks like. It's a mix of lecture, practicing, and activities.
Sometimes we have guests. The guy on the left is a current PCV who is about halfway through his service. The other gentleman is an Albanian Peace Corps associate.
They spoke to us on the topic of "intentional relationship building"--essentially about the importance of meeting new people and establishing meaningful relationships to allow us to integrate into the community. Historically, I have a tendency to spend my free time alone, and I often neglect to get to know even the co-workers in my immediate vicinity all that well. So this will be good for me, I think.
One day we had two young students come visit our class to ask and answer questions in Albanian. (Remember, there are kids in the neighboring rooms having regular school during weekdays.) These two little girls were great.
Sometimes it's hard to focus on training when there are so many interesting distractions. The view from our classroom window, for example, looks like this:
Speaking of distractions, I'll close with this: today on our morning coffee break, Michelle regaled us with the harrowing tale of how her host family spent the previous evening: amidst laughter and drinking liberal amounts of wine, her host family cut off the head of a goat (I THINK the goat was already deceased?) and carved it up for the meat and organs (brain, eyes, etc.) that it contained. Naturally I asked for photos of this event. Sadly, Michelle did not take any photos. But I did snap a pic of Sarah's reaction to hearing about the goat decapitation. It's almost as good as photos of the event, and it also expresses how I still feel about a lot of things here.
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