the tales of sweet summer sweat

I want to start this post by telling you that I had a beautifully written introduction when I wrote this original post yesterday. However, due to unforeseen personal issues that I would rather not get into with a button called "Delete", that introduction, as well as the rest of my beautifully written blog post, are now lost to the world, but it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine. I'm too hot for my body to produce tears anyway, because all water apparently must leak out of my pores. That being said, I would be lying if I told you that the summer heat has somehow boiled up some meaningful experiences, life lessons, or opportunities for reflection. What I can do though, is tell you a little bit about what has been going on in my life. So here is my summer, beginning to end.

Though I love Corovode with my whole heart, I am thankful for the moments when bus schedules don't keep me from friends and thankful for people that make life worth jumping for joy.

I keep telling people that it is completely insane to me that I willingly go jump in the river. I have never been very outdoorsy. Though I love exploring and adventure, I also find comfort and happiness in the fact that a shower and fragrant soaps await me at the end of the day. I have always lived by a rule that if I can't see my feet, something is wrong. That being said, the stifling heat of the past months of my life have been challenging. The hours I've wasted away watching as tiny fish test whether my toes are fit for eating, the freckles I've gained sitting on mossy rocks, letting water rush around my legs as my shoulders slowly bake in the sun, the sand that I've shaken and scrubbed, but still persists as though integral to the very structure of the canvas on my backpack, all of them prove that I am not who I once was. All of them prove that happiness, life, and comfort, are not always served in the same way, that the roads are not all the same. They prove that if we are willing, or perhaps forced, to walk down routes and roads unknown, happiness will come as long as happiness is the goal.

Authentic proof that we gravitate toward people who are similar to our fathers.

Speaking of heat, I recently went camping in the mountains for 4 days, as my sweaty, heat-exhausted self was told that it gets colder than winter there at night. I am here to tell you that this was a downright lie. It was chilly at best, and I am mad about it. However, what an adventure it turned out to be, so please join me in reminiscing. Here we go. Day 0, 7:30 pm: Finalized my plans to board the 7 o'clock bus and found out where said bus was located. Day 1, 6:00 am: Hitched a ride with friend's nephew because apparently if you don't reserve a seat on a bus to the mountain, you can't just board a bus to the mountain. Day 1, 7:00 am: Still waiting for others to get in the car that was scheduled to leave at 6:00 am as being on time is not a concept that exists in Albania. Day 1, 7:45 am: First child pukes in car. Day 1, 8:20 am: Second child pukes in car. Day 1, 9:15 am: Tire falls off car at base of mountain and takes with it all the bolts that hold tires onto cars. Day 1, 10:30 am: Hitched a ride with friend up the mountain after a nice breakfast at the hotel conveniently located next to the site of the tire incident. Day 1, 1:00 pm: Niku broke the elastic string holding my tent pole together. Day 1, 2:45 pm: After many unsuccessful attempts and various unhelpful and discarded items, we fixed the pole using a particularly long piece of grass and tape from a bag I happened to have broken and taped back together the day before. Day 1, 8:00 pm: Where are the showers.....?? Nope. Are there only holes for toilets or....?? Yep.

Feat. Mohri's water-filled, grass-mended tent on Mt. Tomorri.

Day 2: Was woken by a sheep attempting to enter my tent. Basically walked around and drank coffee the rest of the day. Day 3, 9:00 am: Hitched a ride to the top of the mountain with a friend who was day tripping from Gramsh. Day 3, 3:00 pm: It rained. Unfortunately the grass-mended tent was not, in fact, watertight. Also unfortunately, despite a valiant effort, the massive heavy rain that created what resembled a bathtub inside the tent, was not, in fact, heavy enough to substitute for a shower. Day 4: Hitched ride with friend in the back seat of a truck surrounded by many a bag of many a roasted sheep. What a ride. Honestly though, those four days will go down as one of my top five favorite experiences in my time in Albania. It was an incredible window into tradition and community, an opportunity for me to test my survival and innovation skills, as well as a chance for me to test my limits of cleanliness and sanity.

What do you think about my namesake mountain?

In early August I had a realization that I had spent far too long making excuses to skip a day of running. Exercise has been a cornerstone of my mental and physical health for many years, and something that always, despite the circumstances, I have been able to fit into my day. For a while now, I have been telling myself that it's just too hot, my asthma and allergies are acting up, or just that I'm getting enough exercise just due to my lifestyle and the fact that I live at the top of a mountain. However, it recently occurred to me that these are not things that have ever stopped me before. So, in a lovely display of my stubbornness and sassiness, I went to the doctor to prove that I should have gotten my medicine in a timelier manner, but instead ended up in a lab, having my blood run through all kinds of tests. It turns out that iron is something we need in our blood, and it also turns out that I don't have it. I remember several occasions in the US where I was turned away from blood drives for lack of iron and being told that leafy greens and red wine were remedies to what I thought was just a temporary problem. So I ate a lot of leafy green stuff, drank some wine sometimes, it became routine, and I forgot why it started. Unfortunately I now live in a place where people don't really eat leafy green stuff and red wine isn't something readily available, so slowly but surely, the iron slipped away and took with it my will to run. But hey, now I know, and I am the local red wine connoisseur.

"What should we do with our hands?" A memoir.

Summer brought with it new experiences, took with it many things, and promised joy yet to come as it faded away. Last weekend, I arrived to Tirana for a Peace Corps Conference, and took a test for my language ability. It turns out that I am getting pretty good at Shqip, which is great considering my first and one of my best friends, one of the only people in my town that speaks English, hopped on a bus to leave for college in a far away country that very morning. I have a lot of feelings about her departure that really fill the whole range: pride in what she has accomplished, jealousy that she is just beginning college, the best four years of life, sadness that her absence will be present in my life here, then, of course, panic that my walking dictionary is now off to bigger and better things. That being said, my teacher said reading would help me to improve my vocabulary, so I bought Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Shqip. 6 days and 4 sentences into this journey, and I can tell you that it is going.... yeah, no it's just going. That's all.

As a marginally related aside, I also recently acquired Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and it is going nearly as well as Shqip Harry Potter.

Somewhere back there is the feisty sheep that forced entry on my tent, which I was irritated about until I realized that the sheep were basically all there waitin' to get taken to the slaughter area.

In other news, the end of September will mark the end of my first 6 months at site, which means that I finally get to move out on my own. After 9 months of being a guest, sometimes feeling like an intrusion, 9 months of sleeping on someone else's sheets, 9 months of looking at photos on the walls of people I've never met and place's I've never been, I am counting down the days to freedom like it's some sort of life-altering moment. Perhaps a bit preemptively, I went a little shopping happy this past weekend and rolled up to Corovode with 4 giant bags of things that are mine. There are some things that Albania has not been able to change about me, and perhaps the biggest and most obvious for me has been my independence, my need for control. So for now, for 26 more days, I will sit and stare at the plastic-wrapped pillows like they are some sort of ripening fruit that will be oh so sweet after I make it through the long wait.

Okay so basically there is a week-long festival where people go to the top of Mt. Tomorri, slaughter a sheep, and go to all these traditional holy places for the Bektashi religion. The tradition is that you slaughter a sheep, keep a third for your family, give a third to a neighbor/friend, and give a third to a stranger. This photo is at the top of the mountain where the prophet is buried.. I think, don't quote me on that, or on any of those facts I said, but you get the gist.

So here I am existing in what feels like limbo right now. I am waiting for freedom of living in my own house. I am listening for the first signs that the summer pushim is winding down and the year's working is actually starting. I am planning new lessons for Iva's upcoming English exam, and dreading the moment when she inevitably receives an invitation to immigrate as a result. I am (not so) patiently monitoring the forecast, longing for some relief from the persistent heat. I am existing, and I realize that that is okay, because no matter what I do, I am in Albania. Things happen when they happen, and not a moment sooner. So here I am, just living life.