pst, for everything you've done, thank you

As I boarded the bus with a big group of guys headed to our PST site someone stopped me and told me, "soon you won't know how you ever lived life without those boys". Well I highly doubted that, but alas, here I am, soaking up the few days I have left with the boys who have literally been my entire world for the past two months, wondering how I ever functioned without them.

Check out this view from the Castle of Kruja. This ice cream is the only person that was cooperative in taking pictures with me that day.

For those of you wondering what PST (Pre-Service Training) is like, I'll tell you that it has been absolutely incredible.. with a caveat, and that is: I know I am incredibly lucky. Right now, I am sitting here writing this blog post in my room at my host family's house in a tiny village of 400 families in Albania. I'm listening to the dogs barking in the field behind my house and dreading the moment when I wake up to the roosters about 3 hours too early in the morning. I'm dreading packing up my things and leaving this place that I have come to know and love, but more so, I am dreading leaving behind the people that are my entire world right now.

I told Callum I wanted a picture with my friends and that they should stand right here. This is what I got before he walked away.

Every day, I get up, get ready, eat breakfast, and walk up the driveway to meet the group of boys waiting for me on the other side of the gate. We walk to class and spend the day in a way that makes me ache in the evenings from laughing so hard and so often. Despite days that feel like they were too much fun to be productive, I speak Shqip now. I'm no expert, but I can get by, and to me, that is pretty amazing. Nights during PST have been full of sunset runs, raki's on the patio, and testing out our progress in Shqip with the local people who stop by to say hello. Weekends are spent exploring every inch of the village we have gotten to call home and the fields and hills that surround it. Honestly, I can describe PST as rather uneventful, but highly eventful at the same time, if you choose to see it that way. It is largely repetitive, structured, predictable, what have you. Nothing is ever really different, but I am. In so many ways, and through so many tiny moments, my life is entirely different than what it was when I arrived in my PST site two months ago. Though I can attribute some of this to training and such, what I really attribute this to are the experiences I have had, and the people that I have had them with.

PST in a picture. Shout out to Nick for spending an hour filling a balloon with candy (not as easy as it sounds) only to have it shatter on the field and have to fill it again.

Yesterday, I received an envelope containing my placement for the next two years. Though Peace Corps has a policy that states that I cannot publicly post my location, just know that this place is about as incredible as it gets. I will be working with a municipality in the areas of tourism development, youth development, and EU relations. I can't express to you how excited I am to get started, but I also can't express to you the incredible mix of emotions that I experienced when I received that envelope. Why? Because that envelope took me one step closer to walking away from my first home and my first family here in Albania. In a mere 10 days, I will be boarding a bus to my home for the next two years.

So, with all of that being said about my experience in PST and what I will be doing in the coming weeks and year, I want to leave you with some of my favorite memories from these past two months. For those of you who know me and my lack of ability to be sappy, you won't be surprised. For everyone else, have fun.

Cole, demonstrating how we all feel in language class.

During orientation in Tirana, I was sitting at dinner one night when dessert came out accompanied by the tiniest forks I have ever seen. Being that I happened to be sitting next to several people that I did not know, I was finding every possible excuse to say words and fill silence, so I spent probably 15 minutes talking about how adorable the forks were. A friend of mine joked from across the table that my PST sitemates should give me a bag of tiny forks for my upcoming birthday, to which another volunteer joked that whoever was in my site was going to have a task planning my birthday party, only to realize that he was, in fact, my sitemate. I dubbed him the head of my birthday committee, and that, my friends, is how I met Nick.

In lieu of being sappy though, I'll just leave you with some of my favorite memories from PST in the form of sarcastic "thank you" lines. Please proceed as Jimmy Fallon would.

Nick, demonstrating how we all faced anxiety of site placement head on.

• Thank you PST, for educating me on the real difference between mountains and hills.

• Thank you Cole, for educating us on Albanian insults.

• Thank you Callum, for teaching me that it is possible (and fashionable) to fit a glasses case in your back pocket.

• Thank you Callum, for also teaching me that it is even better if you add an empty juice can to the other pocket in lieu of finding a trash can.

• Thank you Cole, for teaching me the proper face (featuring tongue and concentration) for learning how to dance.

• Thank you Sitemates, for letting me fall in a river, but acting like you felt bad about it.

• Thank you Nick, for knowing me so well that we look embarrassingly compatible when playing language games.

• Thank you Cole, for making sure that I was not the only one with a wipeout count during PST.

• Thank you Nick, for being my only fellow master.

• Thank you PST Site, for teaching us how to have fun with rocks (or rather, entertain yourself with very little resources).

• Thank you Callum, for amazing me in class every day by always, somehow, without trying or noticing himself, drinking exactly 100 mL of water at a time. Just... how though?

• Thank you Cole, for making sure that we knew the Shqip words for scorpion, wizard, teleport, dragon, etc.

• Thank you Nick, for the unspoken agreement that we always share water. (Also, why and when did that start?)

• Thank you Sitemates, for never letting me get lost.

• Thank you Callum, for teaching me that I don't have enough balance to keep myself out of ditches when pushed.

• Thank you Nick, for always knowing what I'm thinking and why I am annoyed.

• Thank you Cole, for also reading Harry Potter and making me feel like less of a 10 year old.

• Thank you Callum, for breaking your bed and entertaining the entire village for a solid week.

• Thank you Nick, for letting us all know about the night Xhamile fell in the mountains.

• Thank you Cole, for actually knowing what happened. (Get it together, Nick.)

• Thank you Callum, for waking up late and showing up with an entire bag of Belinos.

• Thank you Sitemates, for having the best WhatsApp subjects.

• Thank you Callum, for challenging us all to jump in the rain. (See video below.. very important.)

• Finally... Thank you Nick, for eating my cucumbers.

For those of you who made it through this extensive post that is about as cohesive as my scattered life is right now, I hope that it has given you a bit of a glimpse into what PST has done for and with me. Emotions are running high, my cake intake has skyrocketed, and I can never tell if I am waking up at 4 in the morning because I'm stressed about the impending life change, or if my bladder is finally giving out. Regardless though, this life is worth every second, and those moments at 4 AM give me extra moments to take it all in.