pillows, pepper, and pretty stuff

Please enjoy this photo of me cheesing because my new apartment has been Peace Corps approved. Feat. Niku who both found the apartment and did all of the talking for me so I could wander and gawk in peace.

As was probably abundantly clear if you keep up with my blog posts, I am not-so-patiently awaiting my moving date. In the last week, I have sat and stared both a bit too long and a bit too longingly at my perfectly wrapped pillows. I have started to load my suitcases a bit too preemptively, and subsequently gone on various valiant quests in search of things like bobby pins, allergy medication, and chapstick, which ultimately leads me to wonder what my past self was thinking, packing away all of the things I use on a daily basis like I'm doing the final grab of the essentials as I walk out the door, the things I will have needed 7 seconds ago, but can go without until I start my unpacking process with those final essentials just 20 minutes later, because, of course, my lips are dry. Don't you worry though, I know exactly where my chapstick is: bottom of my suitcase, in a bag with my bobby pins, under a giant stack of all of my winter clothes. Why? Because if I sit around and look at my pillows again with nothing else to do but wonder what they will feel like during my first-ever nap in my own apartment, with my own pillowcases and my own sheets, I am convinced that my eyes will develop some kind of incredible laser powers in an attempt to free my pillows, and I can't risk any kind of destructive power being near my precious pillows.

Don't you worry, I am still obsessed with sunsets.

So that being said, the other day, in my crazed search of things to pack, I stumbled upon all of the kitchen stuff that my sitemate for 4 days left for me. I found cayenne pepper, a little baby maple syrup, and a one of those 9X13 glass dishes that change lives. Amazing. So I ran on up the mountain, and asked Niku's mom if I could make some brownies. She said, "You can cook whenever you want!", a statement made in a moment of seeing the excitement in my soul from the prospect of brownies, also a statement she probably didn't fully expect the seriousness in which I would receive. So I've made brownies twice, spicy jambalaya twice, monster cookies, and dutch babies. I don't want to be dramatic, but it's been three days since brownies #1.

I'm almost out of maple syrup, and just putting that in writing makes me tear up.

Speaking of food, the other day Niku told me not to eat dinner on Saturday because "one of the sheep kicked mom, so we are having a sheep feast". Cool. So I left the house on Saturday and told my host family not to wait up for me, because I was going to have a sheep feast. Unfortunately, after a massive thunderstorm that has nothing to do with this story except for the fact that it happened on Saturday, we found out that the sheep feast had been postponed. We then found out that the light in the kitchen was strobing, which was very fun for about 3 minutes. So, we resorted to eating our fasule by candlelight. Then, on the moonlit stroll home, Niku pushed me down the mountain into a pile of mud. That's a lie, I fell down into the mud on my own, but in all fairness, Niku did tell me that I needed to walk in a different spot, and when I put my foot on that spot, my whole body followed me into that spot. Also a lie that this happened after the candlelit dinner. It definitely happened over 2 weeks ago, but I forgot about it until now, and it felt like a great ending to the story about the lack of a sheep feast situation, which ended rather more abruptly than I was expecting.

Fasule by candlelight, not strobe light.

Other updates you might be excited about include:

• I am 60 pages into Infinite Jest, and no, I can't tell you what it's about yet.

• I am still 4 paragraphs into Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Shqip.

• I found out that getting a tourist visa to visit the United States is so annoying, lengthy, expensive, and difficult, that I, a native English-speaker, with a modest bit of capital, albeit mostly in Target gift cards, and a volunteer who has seriously nothing but time and mind-power to dedicate to this task, gave up.

• I found out that a friend of mine owns the old communist dictator's summer vacation villa, and he wants to turn it into a hostel, so that's basically my whole heart and soul focus right now.

• This morning I opened the blinds of the window next to my desk. It is a view of another wall that creates a bit of a cubby, but at least I got natural sunlight. I also, however, heard a strange noise around 9:45 this morning and looked over to see an old man peeing in my cubby view.

Saw this the other day, and it really spoke to me.

With that, I'll leave you with something I've noticed about life and the people here in Albania. Walking down the street, it isn't strange to see people just holding leaves, flowers, or fruits. If you walk with people, you'll notice that every time you pass by a tree, a bush, what have you, they will grab at it, usually without even looking at it or skipping a beat, but instead just seemingly mindlessly. I can't give you an explanation as to why people just walk around with these things, and trust me, I have asked many times. However, what I can tell you from my perspective is that people here see the good things that I don't. They notice the bunches of berries, and they will stop to pick every single one of them. (Trust me on this one. The other day, I went on what is usually a 20 minute hike to see the Pirogoshi Tunnels, and it turned into an hour and a half because the wild blackberries were everywhere, and Niku and Mitti were so excited, not to eat them, but to load my hands up with every single berry in sight. I will admit though that the hike was also prolonged because the car broke down and we had to walk back to town on foot, but hey, at least we had sustenance, especially since they spotted a fig tree along the road.)

Featuring the child who has all of my gum and Bob Ross Happy Little Mints, because I am wrapped around his finger and can't say no, and Niku, playing in the dirt and carrying one less sausage for jumbalaya because he, too, cannot say no.

Anyway, it got me thinking about why I never just pluck flowers out of the ground or particularly fragrant leaves from trees, and I realized that I don't do this for two reasons. First, I have never paid much attention to things like berries because I always was scared to end up in some kind of unfortunate Hunger Games death by berries situation as a result of the outdoor safety ignorance that has come with my upbringing and experiences. Second, I always thought of plucking the flowers as ruining their beauty, causing death of something beautiful. So instead, I allowed the beauty to be swift and pass me by. However, I think that is missing the point of simple beauty. These are the things that are meant to be plucked and tucked behind an ear, the things that are meant to give our lungs something new and lovely to fill themselves with, the things that are meant to give our taste buds something fresh and wild. The point is that often I don't let myself appreciate the simple things that the world has to offer, the things that are so often so carefully placed in my path, just waiting to bring me joy. So I'll leave you with this little piece of advice for a life worth living, don't give yourself excuses to let simple beauty pass you by.