Update from Albania

(L to R, Servet, Teuta, Ms. Ibrihimi, Ibrihimi)

Since my husband has not posted in quite some time, I thought I would do a short post letting you all know we're still alive and kicking. Since Dave's adventures in trying to find corn, we have been quite busy. Shortly after, I went with our driver Servet and his wife Teuta to the same place Dave went to find corn, Ibrahimi's house. This time, we went for figs - up the mountain from Ibrahimi's house is a state-owned park which was closed to the public during Communist times. It has wonderful fig trees, which Servet and I both climbed to pick figs. I also came home with grapes from their vines (and which Ibrahimi uses to make his own raki - I declined the raki), homemade bread, and of course lots of figs. We now have jam and fig preserves thanks to Dave. I took a picture of Servet, Teuta, Ibrahimi and his wife (whose name I never did learn to pronounce), and will get Dave to post it later.

Shortly after the fig adventure, Taylor returned from the U.S. after being gone the entire summer. I had never been away from her for two months - we are so glad that she is home. To celebrate, we took a one-week trip to the Marche region of Italy. We took the ferry from Durres to Bari, but we chose the absolute wrong time to travel. It was the end of August, so all of the Albanians (and some Italians) who had come over for summer vacation were returning home. So, the ferry was packed with people, cars, trucks, and given the lack of organization at the Albanian port, we did not depart until almost 2:00 a.m. (missed our scheduled departure time of 11:00 p.m. by 3 hours). Anyway, we made it to Bari and had an uneventful drive to our lovely villa on the side of a mountain near Monte San Martino. My sweet husband has pictures from all of our adventures in Italy, and will post them along with, I am sure, much historical discussion about the towns we saw.

We had some car troubles along the way - some minor and some major. On Wednesday, we went out to begin our daily travels and the car would not start. After a call to Lucia (our young host), she called her father who arrived about an hour later with a mechanic. He was not the smartest guy in the world, which we realized when he was climbing out from under the car and hit his head on the bottom of the door, which he had left open, necessitating a trip to the hospital. Lucia's father took him to the hospital, fetched another mechanic, who was able to crank the car. We followed him to the shop and he replaced some sort of sensor. 40 euro later, we were on our way. Unfortunately, this did not end the car troubles.

Later in the trip, while on the side of a mountain of course, the car began acting strange and we could not tell whether it was a brake problem or a changing gears problem. While heading back to Bari on the autostrada at about 70 mph, it became clear that it was a brake problem. The automatic braking system malfunctioned, that is it kicked in on its on and would not let go. So, we burned lots of rubber off the tires and skidded to a stop, and I managed to get us to the side of the highway without wrecking. I was shaking so badly that Dave drove from that point until we reached the outskirts of Bari. Luckily for Dave, on the autostrada, most drivers obey the rules, so his lack of peripheral vision was not a problem. We made it home without any other car incidents, and Dave, I am sure, will have a long post about how to get a car repaired in Albania. Like almost everything here, it requires a lot of time and much coffee.

As for Taylor, she started school on September 8, and she is doing well. She began a new school, the Memorial International School of Tirana, otherwise known as the Turkish school. She is the first American embassy kid to go to this school, so it is quite an adventure. All classes are taught in English, and the school has Albanians, Turks, Jordanians, Egyptians, and many other nationalities - but no other Americans that we know of. So far, her best friend is an Egyptian girl named Pinar, who is Muslim and is currently fasting throughout the day because of Ramadan. Taylor is struggling with the idea of eating lunch while Pinar eats nothing until sundown. She is enjoying her classes, and is also taking Albanian language.

We have been here for 5 1/2 months with no visitors, but at the end of the month, we will have two visitors at once. First, Chelsi West is the new Fulbright scholar from Mississippi who will be arriving in Albania on September 25. We have invited her to stay in our home until she gets settled and finds an apartment of her own. Although we do not know Chelsi, Dave's daughter Valena knows her from Millsaps. We are excited that she is coming and that we will provide a connection to Mississippi while she is here. Shortly after her arrival, Judge Barbour is coming to visit. He is vacationing in Turkey and will be stopping by here on his way back to the states. I asked him if I could put him to work while he was here, and he has graciously agreed. So, he will be visiting with Albanian law students, judges, prosecutors and others. The Ambassador has also agreed to host a lunch while he is here, which will include the Minister of Justice, the Deputy Chair of the High Council of Justice, a number of district and appellate judges, and others. We plan to show him as much of Tirana and the surrounding area as we can during his short stay with us.

I will write more later - I'm off to the first of 4 meetings/events scheduled for today. I am staying very busy and still enjoying what I do on a daily basis. To all of you who read this, post a comment now and then and let us hear from you.