Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

Sorry folks. I know it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. But I did skype with some of you in the meantime, so that’s gotta count for something, right?

Ok, here’s the past 2 week recap: 2 weekends ago we went to this town in southern Kosova called Prizren (Prizreni in Albanian—a lot of the cities here have 2 names, one in Albanian, one in Serbian I think. I’m trying to start calling them by their Albanian name, but sometimes it’s hard. For example, Kosova isn’t Kosovo—Kosovo is what the Serbs call it. But here, all the locals say Kosova, so I’m trying to say that too. There are many other examples of this around the country here). Prizren has a lot of Turkish influence, therefore there are many mosques there. Like A LOT! You’ll have to see the pictures I have on facebook soon (I hope). I organized this trip with the school. I asked our principal if he could get us a school van and a driver. All we had to do was pay for gas and the meals of the driver. All in all, in the end it costed us about 5 euro each (we gave him a nice tip, since he did a great job).

The main attraction I wanted to see in Prizren was the mosques. I find religion very interesting, and I had never been inside of one, so I really wanted to see one here. We left Prishtina at 7 am, arrived in Prizren around 9 am or so. Had coffee (people ALWAYS have coffee here. It’s so popular just to stop somewhere and have coffee). Then we started exploring the town. We went to this placed called the League of Albanians. It is the place where all the most powerful Albanian people met, like a hundred years ago, to decide what Albania should do, and they decided to declare their independence. I might be wrong on some of that story, but that’s all I remember. So anyway, that was just a building or 2, with some artifacts and stuff inside. Then we hiked up this nearby mountain/hill where there was a “castle” on top. It wasn’t really a castle anymore—it was basically just a huge wall. Like a defensive wall. That’s exactly what it was used for, for the past hundreds of years. It was a good lookout spot. It was also a good place to defend, since it was uphill. So we got some nice pictures of the town up there.

Apparently this fortification was built many many years ago. The exact century is unknown, because I believe the Romans built it, but then it decayed and eroded away over time. Then the Turks used it, and I think eventually the Albanians used it too. It’s very common (not just here, but in all of Europe) to build over things. If buildings fall over, break, burn, or have only a foundation left, future civilizations will often use the bricks and whatever is left of the structure for a building.

By the way, 11 of us teachers went. Scott, Ben, Allison, Joe, Courtney, Mark, Fllanza, Diane, Kristen, Natalie, and myself. Most of us are new teachers, except Fllanza and Scott. Then we had lunch. We also drank out water out of this fountain in the middle of the city. Legend says that if you drink the water there, you will marry and girl from Prizren. However, I didn’t have much luck while I was there. Maybe someday I’ll find one.

Then we decided to check out some other places, like this old Haman, which means “bath house.” It was basically just a huge stone building with many different, small rooms with places to sit and bathe. Back in the “old days” people used to do this. Obviously it was not used anymore, but it was still neat to see. It reminded of some old Roman or Greek place, where all the men would sit around and discuss politics or something like that. I think this building we were in was like 500 years old. It’s strange being around things that are so old. In the US nothing is older than like 100-200 years. Here, everything has been around forever, since people have been here for such a long time.

Finally, we sat around the rest of the evening, eating some more, have a few more drinks. I think I have to copy my fellow teacher Ben and say my new favorite thing is just to sit at a café, drinking a beer and watching people walk by during the evening. It’s so relaxing (and sooo European-like too). We decided we were going to hike up the castle again to see the sunset. It was only like a 20 minute walk, so not too long. But as we were about to go up, we noticed the big mosque in town had its doors open. It was perfect timing. We had been walking around all day to find a mosque to go into and finally we had found one. So we went in, and it was beautiful inside. Of course all the girls had to cover up their heads with these towel-like things provided, and if any of the girls were wearing shorts, they had to put one of those towel things on their legs too. It was kinda funny. Islam is such a male-dominated religion (obviously). It was basically just one big room inside. We had to take our shoes off, too, since that’s an Islamic belief too. The carpet inside was really soft and comfortable.  There were many different colors inside—it was much more colorful than most Catholic churches I’ve been in. There were many Koran’s (Islamic book of worship—basically their “Bible”). Anyway, this was probably the highlight of my trip to Prizren. Like I said, religion relaly interests me, so it was neat to go into my first mosque.

Sunset was beautiful from the top of the mountain/castle/big wall. Near the hiking trail there was an area of town that seemed to be just destroyed. There also was a lot of razor wire around. We eventually found out that this part of town used to be Serbian. During the war back in ’99 and during some riots in ’04, this part of town was destroyed by the Albanians/Kosovars, mainly because it was settled by Serbians. It’s so strange to think that war was taking place here only 12 years ago. I’ll tell many stories of how the Serbs hate the Albanians and how the Albanians hate the Serbs. Once again, Kosovars (people from Kosova) are considered Albanians. I feel that the war in ’99 was pretty much 100% Serbia’s fault, but people need to realize that both sides were doing bad things to each other. Serbs were killing Albanians. Albanians were rebelling and killing/persecuting Serbs. It was a bad time for everyone. I’m not trying to defend anyone here, cuz war is hell, but I just want you all to know that both sides did bad things, even though it was mainly Serbia that caused the war.

Anyway, that Sunday was a relaxing day. I went to school and got some work done. I’ve recently realized that Sundays are PERFECT days for me to work on school stuff, since there are NO sports on during Sunday afternoons. NFL games begin at 7 pm, so I usually have all day to do whatever I want. It’s a good time to work at school, so that’s what i’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. I was talking with my brother Matt online this day, and we both decided to buy the NFL.com Game Pass, where you can get all the NFL games online for free. Granted, it’s like $200-something, but at the same time, it’s nice to know that I can always watch the Packer game whenever I want to. However, on this day, my power went out. Not once, but twice. 11 am until like 2, then 7 pm, which was RIGHT when the Packer game was about to start. So I quickly ran down to a restaurant with Wi-fi (everyplace here seems to have Wi-fi so that’s great) and started watching the game online. Allison, one of my fellow teachers, texted me and told me the Packer game is on at the bar she was at. The bar is called Paddy O’Briens, but we all just call it the Irish Pub.

So I ran down there to watch the game. I found a guy from WI (Milwaukee) named Drew. He works for KFOR, a military organization here. He said he was just about to leave and watch the rest of the game up at his house, and invited me along. Now, normally I’m not one for going to random peoples’ houses on the first night I meet them, but hey, this guy was from WI, he seemed normal, and above all else, he had the Packer game on! So I went. He had a really nice place, with a huge wall-mounted flat screen tv. So Drew, his friend Joe (from Texas) and I just sat around, watching the Packers kick the crap out of Carolina. Drew seems like a really down to Earth guy, and I’ve hung out with him a few times since this night.

Nothing really happened at school that week. Just same ol, same ol. We have been going to this “Team Trivia” thing at the local Irish Pub here (called Paddy O’brien’s). Our first time we got 4^th (a few weeks ago), but this Thursday we ended up getting 1^st place (no surprise—we have a team full of teachers, which, in case you didn’t know, is the smartest profession in the world). So we won a bottle of whisky, which we only drank half of it. The other half is sitting here in my apartment, waiting to be drunken (or drank… not sure which is the correct form there). Anyway, it’s Bushmills, and I’ve never heard of that brand, plus I hate whisky, so I don’t think I’ll be drinking it anytime soon. I’ll update you guys more on the next 2 weekends, but for now it’s bedtime. This weekend a bunch of us are planning on going to this awesome looking lake, Lake Ohrid, in Macedonia, so I will try to get all caught up before then. Talk to you all later!