Easy Update

I’ve definitely been neglecting this space aside from using it as an easy way to quickly plaster poorly explained photographs of my adventures. I’ll do my best to make this post worthwhile, and I suppose I better start with Albania. Almost three (time moves so freaking fast) weeks ago we took a 6 hour bus ride from our town in north eastern Greece to the small town Erseke in central Albania, buried in the mountains.

There is another Torchbearers school there, which was started two years ago out of a building used to house refugees during the crisis in Kosovo. They use it for kids camps during the summer now as well. The school is on the outskirts of the town, and the towns church is about a ten minute walk to the other side. We arrived in the afternoon, and had a small orientation deal and a short worship service before we went to the church to get assigned to families from the church there who would be hosting us for the week.

I was in a house with Scott where the parents knew no English and our only route through to Albanian house life was via their 24 year old special needs son Guerte. The parents names were Jimali and Moza, and they had another son, Gene, who was 20, though he wasn’t around much. The first night was sweet, we spent the whole time making wild gestures and devouring sausage, feta and trying to swallow some form of feta-water-sour-cream-death concoction. The theme for the entire week though was definitely bread - I averaged a loaf or so a day. Albanian food in general is quite tasty, with a dash of weirdness here and there.

The picture I showed last week of the meal with the family in the background was one of the better meals we had. The lima bean soup was a dipping pool for baked peppers, freshly fried nan-ish bread with cheese, and normal bread. I enjoyed it thoroughly. For breakfast every morning we would usually have steamed milk with an inordinate amount of sugar, unlimited bread with a bowl of jam each, sausage, feta and eggs. Most meals were accompanied by feta and bread, and drink was usually juice. We ate in the living room (the families would sleep on the pull out couches as well) and meals were always with either father or son, or by ourselves. We never saw Moza eat, and we were not allowed to help out with any form of chore whatsoever. Also, TV’s in Albanians homes are left on all the time, no matter who’s over or what’s happening. I hate Albanian TV with a passion – a kid could produce better blindfolded.

The room we slept in was removed from the rest of the house and was as far removed from the saving graces of central heating as Albanian streets are from trash disposal. Sleep was a precious thing during the week, and despite the fact that we would go to bed around 9:30 every night, we would rarely have a full nights sleep come cold morning.

We’d have to be at the school by 9am for our first lecture with the students there, and we’d generally have three a day. We worked through Isaiah with a lady living in the UAE whose son and daughter were attending the schools. The lectures were generally quite good, although her own stories and such tended to steal meaning from what she was saying, which wasn’t helped by the translation of everything into Albanian.

There were only 14 students, plus a number of year-round staff at the school, and we all intermingled quite well. There was another Dan at the school there (19, and the son of the speaker) and he’s been the first person I’ve met since I’ve been gone seriously into photography. He shoots entirely film cause he hasn’t been able to get a proper digital yet (he’s been working/studying at the school since August), but we still had many a thing to talk about, and his mom had brought with her some photography magazines for him that he let me borrow.

In between lectures we’d go to the schools to hang out with the kids there, do trash pickup around the town, or go on our outreach dealos. Our group was responsible for going to a poorer mountain town to hand out Operation Christmas Child boxes and play and sing with the kids there. We went twice up into the mountains about an hours (very) bumpy drive to Leskovik on the Tuesday. We handed out the boxes in the Elementary school there, which was hordes of fun. We spent the rest of the day playing games and singing with them, and going on boy adventures through broken buildings and such.

Albania itself is covered in bunkers that were put in place when Communism was the ruling authority to help defend if the Greeks or Americans ever decided to invade. We went for a hike on the first day to some of the larger ones, and all along the way there were fragments of discarded gas masks and boots. Sweet stuff.

Albania is far more photogenic than its southern neighbour, mostly due to the wealth of random trash, dilapidated buildings, and interesting people pinned against a mountainous background. The larger cities I’m sure are not nearly as interesting, but the two towns we visited presented plenty of opportunities.

In further regard to my picture taking, I’m only now understanding how to fully harness the exposure on my camera to bring out solid tones and keep my highlights controlled. There’s also a lot more art to good landscape shots than I thought, and I’m having a sweet time as usual trying stuff out.

We got back two weeks ago tomorrow. The week two weeks ago was filled with sun and rain, fun and games, a really long hike up the mountain on the Wednesday, and a couple guest lecturers. Last week was almost entirely sun filled, and we’ve had a great speaker from Thessalonica who will be here next week too. I just got back from an overnight hike on the mountain with a bunch of people which was quite a bit of fun. We had a two hour sleeping bag war on a grassy plain at sunset on Mount Olympus. It was glorious.

I’ve built a number of rock towers on our beach now, and our small wall should evolve into a long barrier by the end of the program.

Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll have another one up this week to fill in the blanks as this post is full on facts and low on feel.