LIVING IN ALBANIA
by Richard L. Bowman

January 26, 2014

A Little Different Sunday

Our morning plans were for both of us to go to the church begun by Mennonites here in Lezhë. But we sensed I had a stomach bug, so I stayed home and slept nearly the whole two and a half hours Elsie was gone. We are thanking God that my discomfort has not gotten worse.  So I have eating and drinking rather light diets today. In fact a did eat a few helping of yogurt this afternoon. It comes in a plastic jug similar to milk, which is what we thought it was when we bought it. While it is not sweet, it is also less acidic than some of the unsweetened yogurt we are used to the US. I like it.

Yogurt in a Plastic Jug-Super!  (26-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

It was a bright sunny day for most of the afternoon, so I ventured out on the balcony to take some pictures. Along the wall of the building are a number of pots with plants in them. So I am excited about learning their local names. The one looked like a Geranium plant, but none of the others looked familiar.

Plants on Our Balcony  (26-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Looking up and out from our balcony, one can see several interesting vistas. The three photos below are first looking to the left from our balcony, the next is from looking to the right across our neighbors balcony (note the mountain in the background with antenna towers on it), and the third is straight ahead from our balcony (note the mountain in that direction has a castle on it which we hope to visit sometime).

View to the Left of Our Balcony  (26-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

View to the Right of Our Balcony  (26-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

View Straight Ahead from Our Balcony  (26-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

To help put all of this in perspective, the photo I posted on Jan. 23 was taken in the direction roughly halfway between first and third photos above and aimed slightly more downwardd.

I do enjoy working with puns and humor of various genre, but I know that does not always translate across cultures. So when Elsie thinks I have pushed to far I do take her comments to heart even when I argue with her on the point. So this evening when Allen called to check on how I was feeling and shared that Klodi enjoyed my humor yesterday at lunch, I was rather excited. Maybe all my students will do is to look at me strangely and groan when I make a joke, but apparently some of my humor is able to bridge cultures. So maybe it can break up the tedium of learning physics. But of course, as all of you know, learning physics is phun!

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January 25, 2014

It's Saturday--a Recap!

We did meet with Allen for lunch as well as the young man he brought along from Lushnuë for a youth meeting at the church. His name is Klodian (or Klodi, for short). It was "shum mirë" (very good) to talk with both men and learn about another part of Albania. We also talked about the the Albanian language "Shqip" and how it has two main dialects. Gheg is spoken in the northern half of Albania and in Kosovo, while Tosk is mainly spoken in the southern half of Albania.

Below are photos of Klodi, Allen and Elsie entering the restaurant and Allen and Klodi at lunch.

Klodi, Allen ands Elsie Entering the Restaurant  (25-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Allen and Klodi Help Us Understand Albania  (25-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

On the way to the restaurant, we passed the apartment complex where Phil and Betsy Moyer are staying while they teach biology and tutor at Lezha Academic Center.

Apartment Building where Mohers Live  (25-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

As we passed by the building, Allen told us that apartment was the one in which our son and daughter-in-law stayed during their six months with a YES team in Albania in 1996. So that was a nice connection for us.

This evening we spent some more time reviewing the CD and book we have to help us learn a bit of Albanian. We are also eager to attend church for the first time in Albania tomorrow. Allen will be preaching, and even without knowing the language, God's Spirit will help us to worship together in spirit.

Mirupafshim! (Good-bye!)

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January 25, 2014

City Sounds and More New Friends

This morning I captured the sound of the rain and the sound of the mosque calling Moslems to pray. Since it is Saturday, we can also here more children, but they may not have been very noisy at 8:30 a.m. or so. Watch the video; it is only a minute long. Below is a photo of the mosque (a few blocks from our building) as seen from our balcony.

The Lezhë Mosque (a Few Blocks from Our Apartment)  (25-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Last evening a group of us teachers from Lezha Academic Center at together, and we all seemed to enjoy the relaxation at the end of the week. However, although they did not show it, it must have seemed a bit overwhelming to Betsy and Phil Moyer who just arrived in Albania yesterday from the USA. The photo below is poor quality, but our new friends are all high quality!

Eating Together at Hotel Liss  (24-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Today we have lunch with Allen Umble a long-term missionary leader living in Lushnuë, probably about a three hour drive south of here. We have known him since he started attending Mount Clinton Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA, USA, where we are members, some years ago. It will be good to see him in his "home" setting.

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January 24, 2014

Take a Look at Us Now!

We are getting more into the swing of living in Albania. Hopefully I am saying that each day. So today after we did some clearing up today, finding places for most things. Here is a picture of us waiting to go eat out this evening with some teachers from Lezha Academic Center.

Elsie and I Sitting in Our Apartment  (24-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

It is also time for you all to see where our apartment is located. We are on the fourth floor of the building below (above My Bar where we can and do go for coffee and tea). Our balcony is on the right of the photo of that building.

Our Apartment on Fourth Floor  (24-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

We do have a few steps to climb, but we are getting more used to doing so. And maybe it will help us to get more in shape.

Just a few houses after we come through the gate onto the sidewalk is a vegetable shop. The food is very nicely displayed, and the bright colors attracted me. The shop keeper said I could take some pictures, so I did, thanks to his kindness.

The next shop sells mainly cheese and other dairy products. When I went there over noon today, the granddaughter of the woman who runs the shop was "holding the fort" for her grandmother. She is a sophomore in high school and knew English fairly well, so I asked a number of questions about the cheeses and bought some goat cheese.

While there I was accosted by a young boy wanting to sell me what he held in his outstretched hand and soon thereafter by a woman who could have been a relative asking me for money. Might these have been some Roma persons (gypsies)? I don't know. Though I felt bad not helping them with any money, that is what we are told is best to do. So how does a person following Christ relate to persons begging?

I'm sure there will be many more situations in which the answers are clear but they still makes one feel badly or in which there are clearly only bad answers.

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January 23, 2014

A Few More Facts and an Addition

Time Zones

Some of you may be wondering about a few facts about Albania, such as how many hours different is it from the US Eastern Time Zone. Well, the Central European Time Zone, which Albania is in, is UT + 1 hr. And the US Eastern Standard Time Zone is UT - 5hr. So altogether, CET = EST + 6 hrs. So yesterday when some of our children were talking about school being delayed two hours, it seemed a bit strange to us since we were already at 4 p.m. in the afternoon.

[Added on Jan. 25] I forgot to define UT. UT stands for Universal Time and is the time it is on the 0^o longitude line which goes through Greenwich, England. This time zone goes approximately from 7.5^o E longitude to 7.5^o W longitude. From there each time zone is centered on some multiple of 15^o going W or E since the Earth rotates on its axis 15^o every hour.

Locations

We are still trying to get our minds around the location of Albania, and I must confess my ignorance. Until this morning, I thought Montenegro was to the east of Albania, but "no" it is to the northwest. On the map note that the Adriatic Sea is to the west of Albania, and then clockwise there is Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, and finally Greece (southeast). And if we remember any geography, we might know that Albania is to the east (across the Adriatic Sea) from the "heel: of the "boot" of Italy.

On the map are arrows pointing to  Lezhë and to Tiranë (or Tirana), the capital of Albania. There is a bigger map available.

Map of Albania  (UN; modified 24-Jan-14; Richard L. Bowman)

To see a map of Albania in its place geographically in Europe, check out the Google maps site. Zoom out or in with the wheel on your mouse to get the picture you need.

Currency

Just in case you wondered, I may not always be the most current in clothes and other styles, but I do know the currency of Albania is the Lek. It is approximately equal to one cent US. So the 2000 Lek note shown below is worth approximately $20 USD.

2000 Lek Note  (24-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Addition to Yesterday's Post

I had a photo of Elsie and Mr. Dini Shahini at LAC yesterday, but since I forgot to include it then, here it is now. He has been a most helpful friend and a person who remembers our son and daughter-in-law, Todd and Maria, from when they lived here in 1998 for about half a year. Mr. Shahini is defacto head of LAC while his wife, Mrs. Klemetina Shahini, is in the USA on behalf of LAC.

I hope to get more local photos today, but we also need to get our apartment more organized and buy some more food. This evening we have a dinner with the staff of LAC since there are several new teachers here for this next quarter.

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January 23, 2014

First Visit to the Lezha Academic Center

Yesterday was another rainy day, but it was not too rainy in the morning. Here with the clouds as a backdrop is the view from the balcony of our apartment. This is definitely beginning to feel like a home we know. OK, do not take us too many blocks away, or we will get lost as we did in the rain last evening around 5 p.m.

Looking from Our Balcony in Lezhë  (22-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

In the morning, Rafael took us around to see some sights and shops in the city. Along the way, we passed the tomb of George Kastrioti Skanderbeg (1405-1468).. He is the national hero renowned for convincing the Albanian tribes to unite and throw out the Turkish invaders and thus forming the basis for modern Albania. He did this organizing within a church, inside of which he was buried.

Skanderbeg's Tomb--a National Memorial  (22-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Today we walked to the school (Lezha Academic Center) where I will be teaching physics to eleventh and twelfth grade students and Elsie will be tutoring in English for the third quarter of the 2013-14 school year. It took us about 11 minutes to walk to the school, and this was very nicely doable!.

L. A. C.  is actually located in a rented building down a short alley. In the photo below, the front of the building is to the left.

Tomorrow is another day to live, learn and love. Thank you, God!

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January 22, 2014

Meeting People, Catching up on Sleep, Learning the City

Today was all of these for us--people, sleep and walking and shopping. We even got lost one time. And did I mention coming home to our apartment soaked from rainwater--rain and the water running off of building awnings, etc.

But first I must begin with flying to Albania. God gave us a great time getting to Dulles with Dennis and Alice. Alice had packed a lunch for all of us to eat on the way to the airport, and we have never gotten to Dulles so fast (and not because of Dennis' fast driving!) We had one and a half hours of relaxing at the airport before being called to board. That was good for us. Here we were on the plane and waiting for the plane to begin moving.

Looking out of the Boeing 767 Window, Dulles Airport, Washington, DC, USA  (20-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Elsie Doing Some Serious Waiting, Dulles Airport, Washington, DC, USA  (20-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

The flight from Dulles (Washington, DC, USA) to Vienna, Austria, was on a Boeing 767 that was almost half empty, but more than eight hours in a plane is still a bit hard for us at our stage of life--with some aches and pains at 65 and 70 years of age.

Below is our flight path on a monitor on the seat back in front of us on the plane. Note that on a sphere, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line but an arc of a "great circle."

And as a physicist (and a photographer), I found the shape of the wing from our perspective inside of the plane to be interesting.

After more than four hours of waiting at the Vienna airport (the delay was scheduled), we were on a full Fokker 100 plane to Tirana, Albania. There were no empty seats, at least not in economy class.

First Sighting of Albanian Soil  (21-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

The in the Mother Theresa airport (she was from Albania), we saw our first Albanian words in Albania. I think it was trying to sell some kind of cell-phone coverage. Can anyone translate this for us?

First Albanian Words Seen in Albania  (21-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

We are definitely getting settled in here in Albania and enjoying it. I'll write more tomorrow about our day to day.

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January 19, 2014

Getting Ready: Enjoying Snow and Family

Our ticketed airline itinerary has us leaving Dulles International Airport (Washington, DC, USA) at 5:50 p.m. on Monday, January 20, for  Lezhë, Albania. Elsie's sister and brother-in-law, Alice and Dennis Brubaker are planning on picking Elsie and I (and our suitcases) up at noon for the drive to Dulles. While in Albania I will be teaching physics to high school students at Lezha Academic Center. We will also be learning to know the church and people in Lezhë.

All of this reminds us of our home in Belize City, Belize, Central America, right after we were married. We lived there for nearly three years--1970-73. In September 2012, we were able to go back and reconnect with Belize--its people, places, and culture--for 12 days. That was a wonderful time as we were hosted by our friends Betty and Roger Taylor. Below is a photo of us in 2012 by one of our favorite spots, the lighthouse in Belize City.

Elsie and I at Our Favorite Spot in Belize City, Belize--the Light House  (22-Sep-12; © Richard L. Bowman)

And here is an old photo of our home at 33 Mahogany St, Belize City, as seen in the middle of our time there--probably around 1971 or 72.

Back to getting ready to go to Albania, one thing I wished for this past week, but did n ot expect to see, was some more snow. But God answered my wish with about a half inch of snow on Wednesday evening. So I had to take a picture of some dried, dead herbs on o ur deck.

Evening Snow on Dead Herbs, Harrisonburg, VA, USA  (15-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

On Friday evening, our daughter and son-in-law (Jennifer and Matt Sauder) and their three children came from Pennsylvania, USA, to join us in getting packed and ready to fly to Albania. On Saturday morning we were joined by our other daughter and son-in-law (Heidi and Holden Byler) and their daughter. Having four of our grandchildren around was a special treat, for sure. Here they are on Saturday morning playing with magnets on our refrigerator door.

 

Grandkids Playing with Magnets, Harrisonburg, VA, USA  (18-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

And we were in for another surprise, it snowed one inch over Friday night. Below is a photo of several birds eating at our feeder with snow on the ground. Most of it was gone by the end of Saturday. I really do enjoy photographing birds and other animals and other aspects of God's natural wor4ld. So check back at the photo blogs listed above to see what we have found in Albania.

 

Birds Eating at Our Feeder with Snow on the Ground, Harrisonburg, VA, USA  (18-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

Here is a photo of the back of our home in Harrisonburg, VA, USA, on Saturday afternoon showing our deck and the bird feeders we have.

 

Snow on Our Deck, Harrisonburg, VA, USA  (18-Jan-14; © Richard L. Bowman)

 I wonder what our home will be like in Lezhë. We are eager to find out and to discover the life of the city during the two weeks we will be there before spring classes begin at Lezha Academic Center. We pray that God will clearly walk beside us during this time of living in Albania.

--©2014, Richard L. Bowman

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Created and maintained by Richard L. Bowman; last modified: 29-Jan-14.
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