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!

I think I'm finally starting to "get" this place...

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Disclaimer: This post is more about the people, everyday life, culture, etc. of Kosova, since really not a lot has been happening here the last week. Like the title says, I think I'm finally starting to understand what this place is all about (even though there is so much more for me to learn)...

So I realize it’s been almost a week since I’ve typed my last post, but ya know what—I’m doing A LOT better blogging than when I was in Guatemala. That’s probably because I could skype much more often with people. Once again, I’m 7 hours ahead of Wisconsin, so it’s kind of hard… and I STILL don’t have my internet hooked up—more on that later on. So here’s the last 6 day’s recap:

Last weekend was pretty low-key. Friday night all of us teachers hit up the bar scene. Nothing too crazy. I did drink a little too much of this brandy shot. It looked clear, but it totally tasted like tequila. It’s rude in any culture to turn down a shot, so obviously I took it. But then they bought me another one. And another one. I didn’t really drink a lot of beer, but it was mainly the shots that ruined my night. I felt like crap so I just went home to bed at the end of the night. But not before we did some dancing. We found a place with a live band, and they were taking requests, so we kept requesting awesome American songs. I didn’t do much on Saturday, nor Sunday. I was planning on going to this 9/11 benefit concert that the Prishtina Orchestra was having, hosted by the US Embassy. But I started to feel kind of sick on Sunday afternoon. I went in to school at about 6 pm, mainly to watch some NFL football on my computer, but I also did some work. I found a bar/restaurant that had the Pittsburg/Baltimore game on, so I watched that until it was over, then went home. I went to bed early, around 10:30 pm, because, like I said, I was feeling kind of sick. I woke up Monday morning and my throat and nose were killing me. Apparently whatever I have a few other teachers have. I’ve been taking Sudafed and Nyquil, and that seems to help momentarily. But I’m still feeling kind of crappy today. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. I’m just glad it’s not my tummy/guts that are sick, cuz I probably wouldn’t be able to go to school then.

Oh, and I was contemplating on getting up at 2:30 am to watch the Packer/Saints game, but I was just too darn tired. Plus, I told myself when I came here that I was going to have to give up some things in my life that I didn’t want to give up, and watching football on a normal schedule was one of them. Normally, on Sunday’s, if the Packer’s play at noon in Green Bay, I can watch it (either at a bar or online) at 7 pm here, so that’s not bad at all. Today I woke up at 6:15 am and the Raiders/Broncos Monday Night game was still on—it was only in the 3^rd quarter. So weird!

Since last week was the first week of school, everyone was very busy. It was the first week of school, so there wasn’t a lot of free time to do stuff. I’ve been saying a lot that my school is a lot like my school in Guatemala (Interamericano), but let me tell you why it’s very similar to it. First of all, the curriculum at ASK is pretty “relaxed.” Basically, you teach what you want to teach. This can be good and bad at the same time. Sometimes it’s nice to not have restrictions or boundaries on what you teach. But on the other hand, sometimes you want some structure to follow, something to guide you along the way. They gave me this Ontario curriculum map to kind of follow, which was an absolute joke. I just tossed it aside (for the most part) and I’m teaching roughly the same standards as I taught last year, the California state standards. Here’s why I threw it out: it told me to teach WORLD HISTORY from the beginning of mankind (Neanderthals, homo sapiens, etc.) until present day. Are you kidding me? That means I’d have to spend like 1 week on EVERYTHING. WWII in 1 week? Ha! I could teach WWII for an entire semester if I was allowed to. WWII usually takes me about 3-4 weeks. Anyway, I don’t like the standards so I’m just going to do what I think is best for the kids. There are 2 ways of teaching: going in depth on a few topics, or broadly covering a lot of topics. I’m obviously going with the former.

Also, if you want something done to your room, or need something fixed, it takes FOREVER! Once again, mirror image of Guatemala. I’ve just learned to do things myself. However, some things you can’t do yourself, like fix my washer or find a new apartment to live in. I have asked 3 times to get a huge map hung on my brick wall in my room; still no response. Speaking of my apartment… good news tonight! One of the returning teachers, Scott, is moving as soon as possible, and I checked out his apartment, and I want it. It’s very close to school (10 minutes), it has a microwave : - ), and it’s located near a lot of other teacher’s apartments. Plus the washer actually works! Those are the things I’m looking for. Scott said maybe in the next few days he’ll be moved out, so once he’s moved out, I can move in. Yay! As I write this, I’m doing my laundry at Natalie’s, hopefully for the last time. No offense against Natalie at all, cuz she’s been very helpful with my current situation. But it’ll be nice not to have to go somewhere else to do my laundry. I’ll buy Natalie dinner and a bottle of detergent or something like that for her help.

Let me tell you a little bit about the school I teach at. Our school has 2 locations. One is up on a big hill on the east side of town—that’s known as the “Ed Center” and it consists of kindergarten through 3^rd grade (I think). Then there’s the main school, in downtown Prishtina, that’s 4^th through 12^th grade. Most of the grades in K-9^th only have about 2 sections per grade, so only about 30-50 students per grade. But then, for some reason, our school gets a ton of students in grades 10 through 12. So each of those grades has about 80 students. There is a limit of 25 kids per class, which is ok, but still more than I would like, considering most of these kids have problems with their English. Well, on the first day of school, I had 37 students in one of my classes, and my other 3 classes only had between 8 and 12. Finally, over a week into school, I think we’re pretty close to evening out each class. I have roughly 20 kids per class, which is just fine with me.

My classroom is about average size. I’ll get pictures up on facebook soon, once I fully decorate it. Like I said, I’m still waiting on a big map to get up. Plus, the school promised up projectors, but no one seems to know where they are. They ordered them from a different country, and the company says they sent them out like 2 weeks ago, but no one knows where they are. That’s a problem that needs to be addressed immediately, in my opinion. Anyway, soon I should have a projector, which will make my life 53 times easier. I hate using chalk on the board or reading everyday out of the book. Without visuals, there’s only so much you can do in History class. I like visual aids, and I’m pretty sure 10^th graders do too, so those projectors can’t come soon enough.

But anyway, my biggest class is about 24, and my smallest class is about 16. For some reason they also have me teaching Marketing this year, which really blows, cuz I don’t know anything about Marketing. I told them this, but they told me just to do whatever I can with it. So I apologize in advance to all of my Marketing students. I’ve just been going with the book so far, which I know is the wrong way to do things, but that’s what happens when you give me a class that I’m not qualified to teach (Marketing is in the business field, not Social Studies field) or a class that I have ZERO passion for. It’s been ok so far though. The kids seem to think that I know what I’m talking about, so that’s all that matters. I have mostly juniors and seniors in that class, so it’s a little more rowdy than my other classes, but not too bad. All of my other 4 classes are World History, for 10^th graders. So far they’ve been wonderful! I hate to say this, but I think these kids might be more well behaved than my Guatemala kids. But we’ll see… there’s still a lot of time left in the school year.

My classroom can get really REALLY hot though, too. There are no windows in it, which is good and bad. There is no airflow in there. So in the wintertime I guess it gets SUPER cold, but I’m ok with that, since I sweat my balls off when I teach anyway. Seriously, I’ve gone through so many shirts in the past week. Today I ran out of white under shirts, so I had to wear just a button-up shirt. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot in my room today. Well, it was hot, but not unbearable. Recently it’s been in the 90’s here. WAY hotter than I want it to be. Especially since nothing has air-conditioning. I can’t wait for it to cool down. The mornings are wonderful. Usually when I walk to school is my favorite part of the day. You’d think it’d be when I’m walking home, since I have nothing else to do, but it’s not because after I walk home, with my backpack on, I am a complete sweaty mess. I usually come home and find my apartment sizzling, somewhere in the 80s. Today when I came home it was 86’ in there, but it said it was 98’ outside. Aye Chihuahua! Anyway, my walks to school are the best. There is no one walking on the streets in the morning. This culture seems to be a bunch of late risers. When I come home from school there are hundreds of people and cars around, but hardly any in the morning. Even on weeknights, if you are on the streets walking around at like 10 or 11 pm, you will be amazed many people are out and about, having dinner, a coffee, walking around in their small groups, or just hanging out on park benches. It’s something I’m not used to.

Finally, the last part about my school I need to tell you about is lunch. We have 2 lunch periods, each being about 45 minutes each. Usually I just go to a restaurant nearby and get a meal for about 5 euro (roughly $7). I need to start bringing my own lunch, since I’m going out to eat way too much. The reason I go there is mainly for the free Wi-Fi. But our school lunch room is actually a club. Not just any club, but pretty much the nicest, most exclusive club in the entire city. It’s called Duplex, and our school rents it out to some people every night. All around this club/lunch room, you see advertisements for liquor and beer, and the bar is even set up there during school (they just cover it up with white sheets). We all say we’re going to go there someday, but I don’t think I want to, since I’ve heard they let our students in there, and that would just not be fun to run into my students at a place like that. I see my students often walking around town enough—I don’t need to see them when they’re drunk. 

One more thing I have to add about the culture here that I’ve noticed. The whole issue of “space” is completely different here. Sometimes I’ll be at a store and people will literally be touching my arm with their arm while standing in line (they do form lines here, so that’s better than Guatemala at least…). And because of the water issues, which I’ve previously discussed, not a lot of people here shower on a regular basis. Somedays, my classroom can just STINK of B.O. (body oder). It’s horrible. As you walk on the streets, and you pass people, you can definitely tell who showers and who doesn’t. There are a handful of homeless people here as well. Just today I passed a guy that I pass everyday, in the same spot. Except today, for some odd reason, he was burning a big pile of cardboard right on the sidewalk. Very strange, considering it wasn’t really cold at all, and it was 7 am.

The unemployment rate here is somewhere in the 40-45% I’ve been told. It’s terrible. No one has jobs. I don’t know how these people survive. Basically, if you have an education, you can find a job, but most people are uneducated, so they walk around selling cigarettes a restaurants, wash your windows while at a stoplight, set up a small table on the sidewalk and try to sell odds and ends, or just plain sit there on the sidewalk looking as poor as they can and beg for money. Apparently it’s illegal here to give kids money, since most of the time they are told to do this by adults, and the adults just collect the money and don’t give the kids anything. Sometimes we’ll be eating at a restaurant and some little kids will come up to us, hugging us, kissing us on the cheeks, and begging us for money. We’ve been told just to ignore then, and it’s hard to do, but if it’s illegal to give money to beggars, you have to ignore them.

The people here are very young too. The average age is much lower than most in the world. Most of the people you see here are kids of the people that moved away during the war in the 1990s. A lot of parents stayed in Albania, Macedonia, etc, and their kids came back. So it’s pretty cool to constantly be around people my age. I might add, the women aren’t too bad to look at either… ; - )

This weekend I’m arranging a school van to take a small group of us to a city in the south called Prizren. I don’t know much about it, but apparently it’s one of the nicer cities in this country. Very historic, and they have a lot of Islamic mosques, so we’re just going for the day on Saturday. Should be a blast (as long as we don’t step on any landmines… jajajajajaja!)! I’ll probably write again in another week. Oh, my internet… the guy was supposed to come Saturday morning, but I was just too tired I guess, so I never heard him come at 9 am. I went back and set up another appoint for this Friday, but now if I’m planning on moving in the next few days, I might have to wait another week to get my internet installed, since I won’t be in the same place. Things are getting better everyday though. And even though I might talk bad about this place, it’s been a great experience so far. Without my fellow teachers, I’d probably go crazy. But I have a feeling that is what all international schools are like. This is my 2^nd one, and so far that’s been the trend, so we’ll see… bye bye bye everyone!

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Ok, update on the power/water situation from Monday. I woke up again on Tuesday morning, and of course, my power AND water were off. Fortunately when I returned home at 5 pm, they were back on. That’s going to be something I’m going to have a difficult time getting used to…

Anyway! Tuesday was the first REAL day of classes, since Monday was just a half, partial day. I saw all of my classes on Tuesday, and let me tell you, I am excited!

The kids were so great to be around! Like I said, I just seem to forget about everything when I get back into the classroom. They were very respectful and nice to me. Granted, it’s the first week, but today was a great day for me too. There are still some major problems at our school with organization (for example, one of my classes has 37 kids in it yesterday, when 25 is supposed to be the maximum, but they got it all figured out today). I signed up for internet last night, and the guy will be coming on Saturday to hook it up, so I’ll have my own internet (fingers crossed) AND cable tv! I’ll get like 84 channels. It’s like 30 euro per month, but that’s not too bad I guess. Roughly $45 US dollars. Ah well. I don’t pay for much here besides food, so I can splurge a little bit. I guess ASK pays for my utilities, including water and heat (not a difficult task to do however, when the water and heat are only on half o the time… hahahaha!)

Anyway, the last 2 days have been very stressful, yet I’m happy to be back in the classroom. A lot of the other teachers have been feeling like me—overwhelmed, mainly because our school has been so unorganized with all the classes and schedules and things like that. Hopefully next week things will start to calm down. Once again, it reminds me a lot of my school in Guatemala—without the kids, I wouldn’t be here.

But anyway, that’s all the updates I have for now. I’m REALLY excited about the Packer game tomorrow night, or should I say, Friday  morning at 3 am. I might get up a little early to see the score, or see if I can connect to the internet and somehow watch it. You all will have to cheer extra hard for me. As for this weekend… no major plans. Saturday morning cable guy is coming. That’s about it. Sunday evening I plan on watching some football, starting at 7 pm (noon CST). Hopefully once I get my internet hooked up, I’ll be able to blog more, and skype with a few of you. Until then, talk to you all soon, and GO PACKERS!

PS—Oh, I forgot to mention that my biggest problem this year is probably going to be getting my student’s names right. They are CA-RAZY names! I think I’ve only heard of one or 2 of them, and there are sounds that I can’t even pronounce cuz they’re not in the English language. I’ll update you more on the names another time. J