Monday, November 03, 2008

Yes, it's been over a month, again, since my last post. I have been busy, honest! Emily and I have been taking Albanian classes full-time (5 days a week, 5 hours per day) for the past eight weeks or so, just long enough to know how tough a language Albanian actually is.

Twice a week we've gone to an introductory Italian class at NVCC. Since neither of us needs the credits and neither wants the stress, we're auditing the course. So, two nights a week we spend two and a half hours learning Italian. Compared to Albanian, Italian is incredibly easy: far fewer irregularities and NO cases! I had forgotten how much of my high school Latin was memorization of tables.

For most of the first eight weeks, Emily was on the morning shift and I was on the afternoon shift. As of today, we switched. As a result, I had trouble getting to sleep last night and then woke up around five o'clock this morning. After trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep for a bit, I got up around 5:30, a full hour before I had planned. Yuck. I was awake for my class, but by noon was beginning to get tired. Now I am quite tired, but know that I can't take a nap. Naps tend to make things worse for me: I get up from a nap groggier and later have trouble getting to sleep. Thankfully Heroes isn't on tonight, so I can go to bed a little earlier than usual perhaps. I'll be fine once I get used to the schedule. As it is, I came home today, ate lunch, checked email, did my homework quickly, did some laundry, watched a little TV, and am now awaiting Emily's return after her first afternoon class. I think she wants to go shopping, although just why eludes me at the moment.

The Italian class is mostly for fun, since we do intend to travel to Italy while living in Albania. In addition, we hope to visit Greece (at least Korfu, since it's close), Croatia (Dalmatian Coast here I come!), Monte Negro (pretty much sits between Albania and Croatia), Kosovo (as research for a future posting - one of only three places Emily can work with Albanian), Macedonia (ditto), and we are seriously pondering a return trip to Malta. With two R&Rs to London included in the benefits for serving in the undeveloped Albania, we could end up there instead. Right now it's impossible to say. If it sounds like we'd burn a lot of vacation time doing this, we would; on the flip side, Emily took very little vacation during our two years in Monterrey.

I have started a list of places in Albania that I want to visit, largely based on historic sites:

  • Butrint: Unesco World Heritage Site. Wonderful Greek and Roman ruins.
  • Berat & Gjirokastra: Unesco World Heritage Sites. Berat is home to an old citadel. Gjirokastra is often called the "museum town" and is home to a nice castle.
  • Durres. Home to a large amphitheatre.
  • Perhaps some caverns (Balkans are chock-full of them; the term "Karst topography" started with part of what is now Croacia, if I recall my Physical Geography terms correctly)
  • Pretty much any old castles or ruins I can find.
Other activities planned for Albania include 2009's NaNoWriMo. I would have loved to participate this year, but just do not have that kind of time. Next year I will be ready for it. I hope to draw some inspiration from Albania to flesh out some of the many story ideas I've jotted down over the years. Something I hope to start here and complete there is something like Conjuguemos, but for Albanian. It will be a labor of love rather than for money, but good experience I think. I'm planning an initial database, to be followed by a web interface later.

Next posting I will try and get some photos up. One last note: we really wish we could go to the Obama rally in the Manassas area tonight. Unfortunately with our split schedule (AM/PM), it just wasn't an option. We did manage to get our votes in last Thursday, since our absentee ballots were mistakenly sent to our old address. IF they successfully forward, twice, we'll probably see them later this month.