Oh Zot!

So it's my third (almost fourth) week here in Albanian, and I'm having trouble coming up with something to write. Not that I have nothing to talk about. In fact, my problem lies in the opposite direction entirely. I've observed many aspects of society in my short time here ( I've crashed a wedding, taken a tour of a Orthodox Cathedral, seen tons of dolls used to ward of the eye evil hanging off the sides of buildings, even learned some traditional dances) and whenever I sit down to type something everything pops up at once. After much hair pulling, I finally decided to write a bit about how my language classes are going.

During a typical week I have at least four classes on Shqip. For three of those classes I and my sitemates head to a classroom in the high school in Kuqan. The fourth class is in Elbasan and that is where sitemates are broken up and people from different sites are split into groups of about eight. Those classes take place at different locations in Elbasan ( three are held in a high school, one is held in our hub space, and the last is held in the training office). The classes in the villages are taught by two teachers who rotate depending on the day. The sessions in Elbasan are co-taught by two teachers. Each session is about four hours so.

Well that was a bit more technical than I meant it to be so now on to something a little more interesting. I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of Shqip I've managed to acquire so far. Sure I can't hold a conversation on anything all that meaningful yet, but I can buy stuff in a shop, get a ride from one city to another, order food in a restaurant, among other things. I've been able to read quite a few things inside and outside of class because I can get the meanings through context even if I don't know exactly what I'm reading. I do have some problems with pronouncing new words because I'm not sure where the syllables break up. My teacher has told me just to slow down when reading because I've been pronouncing most of the letters surprisingly well. I still have some problems with listening because most people speak very quickly, and because I can't see the words on paper to help with context, I have some trouble understanding long spoken sentences. Outside of the fact that my vocabulary is fairly limited at this point, my other big problem is conjugating verbs. Shqip has three types of verbs and each is conjugated slightly differently depending on the case and the tense. When I start busting out my Shqip my conjugations are always off but most people get what I'm trying to say.

Lately, I've been thinking of was to increase my fluency, and I've come up with a few things I'm gonna try. First and foremost, I'm going to make sure I set aside at least thirty minutes a day to do my homework and go over what I learned in class. I've been really about about working outside of class and I need to stop that now before it bites me in the ass.  I'm also going to make myself learn five new words everyday, not including stuff in my classes. I feel like this is a pretty achievable goal especially since I hear tons of new words and phrases each day. I'm also thinking of picking up a newspaper every time I'm in Elbasan. Seems like a really good way to work on my reading skills that's much cheaper than buying books. Last but not least I'm going to start a reading trade with my host mother, Marsela, tonight. I'm really excited about this because she has old textbooks from when she was in university, so I'm not going to be starting out reading children's books. I know that sounds kinda of weird, but the way I see it I'm going to be reading aloud to work on my pronunciation, and I'll gain new ( and useful) vocabulary from the more advanced books. During my sessions with Marsela, I going to help her work through the exercises she skipped in her books during her English classes.