Random Facets

Sorry It's been so long between posts, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks.

People send a lot more time outdoors here than people do in America.

When playing chess, pieces do not take each other; the eat each other.

If you don't ask for a glass you'll probably end up getting a brightly colored bendy straw with your coke.

In some areas of the country more people speak Greek than Shqip. Most places where this occurs are in the border areas, but it does occur in a few towns that are very far from the border too.

August in Albania is wedding season because that is when many Albanians return from Italy to spend time with their families. From what I've heard just about all businesses in Italy give their employees a month off at this time. I'm not really sure about that, but I've yet to met an Italian and ask them about it.

Albanians love American pop music but because most of them don't have time or tools to access any other forms of American music they tend find other American music kind of strange if it's stuff that is very far from pop music.

The range of American movies shown on TV channels here is quite strange. The movies range from Alvin and the Chipmuks to The Shadow to The Blindside to Tropic Thunder. Mixed in with these are a ton of crime and action films. They also get movies coming over from Greece, Italy and other European countries but they don't seem to be as popular...at least not in my house.

That being said there seems to be a great appreciation for films about Albania. Just about every night there are films telling the stories of Albanian partisans who fought the Nazis or dramas set during the communist era. I haven't seen any Albanian films about the post communist era though, and I would really like to find some.

The status of schools and schooling ranges drastically across the country. Some schools barely function and have major infrastructure problems whereas others are very modern.

While the country in general needs major improvements when it comes to waste disposal, there are more than a handful of areas where modern systems have been set up. Citizens of places like Korce and Ersake love to boast about how clean their cities are.

Using double negatives is grammatically correct in Shqip, which throws a lot of English speakers for the loop when learning the language and also causes much grief for those Albanians who are learning English.

While I haven't done an extensive search for them no one I've ever talked to has seen a red potato here.

Local elections were held this past Sunday and got me thinking about why we always have elections during the week. Does anyone really know why? It hasn't ever made much sense to me.

While I don't think they occur that frequently in big cities, it seems like short rolling black outs are fairly common in villages and small towns. The power went out 3-4 times yesterday for a total of about 3 hours or so. Today it went out for maybe twenty minutes. It's not an everyday or even weekly thing but it seems to happen at least a few times a month.