Hi everyone,
I had to look up the computer date to see what today is. Time is kind of weird when you're not at home following a schedule of some sort. I've been dying to blog all week-end, since we were travelling and seeing/experiencing new things. Tonight I don't really feel like blogging, but I'm hoping that I'll get into it once I start. (i.e., it'll probably be longer than ever, zzzzz). Do I do this in order that it happened, or backwards, starting with tonight?
Tonight I feel a little discouraged because of some interactions I had with Genci's mother. All is well. No irreparable harm done. I'm just tired of some things. Stupid things, so it feels silly mentioning them. But they weigh on me. It seems like 3/4 of our visit is spent talking about stuff. Getting stuff, taking stuff home with us, buying stuff. She is very focused on us taking things home with us, which of course is exactly what we don't want to do. We try to humor her, and say we will bring home things, and we do bring home some things. But the quantities of things she wants us to bring home just keeps growing and growing. Some stuff she pulls out from various hiding places - some stuff is rather new (bought within the last year or two), some stuff is 30 years old - clothing that Genci used in a different time period, when different things were in fashion, if they actually ever were in fashion anywhere. Ai. It's just stuff. Who cares. But she really cares. So we spend a lot of time talking about it. And she asks me to buy stuff. This would be a normal woman's dream, but anyone who knows me, knows that I hate shopping. Yes, I hate shopping, even for clothes, even for clothes for myself. So... I have agreed to buy shoes for the kids, pants for the kids, a shirt for myself, toys for the kids, and something for the house. Shirts for the kids she bought herself. No problem, right? Well, one of the pairs of shoes I got for Nathan, she wasn't happy with. They were a little too big for him. I knew that, of course, but he really liked & wanted them, & I know he'll quickly grow into them, and he was begging for them. So she wouldn't pay for them. No biggie. I really don't care about money in these amounts. I can pay for them. But that means that I have to go looking again, because she won't be satisfied until she has bought him a pair of shoes. We did find one the next day, so that mission is completed. Today I bought cool books for the kids. The toys the kids wanted had been pre-vetoed as not good enough (hard to explain to the kdis). I'm supposed to find high quality toys in a sea of cheap Chinese toys in the market. Tonight I found some cool books that the kids wanted (yes, they were in Albanian, and yes, they would require our interaction to make them fully useful, but, the kids wanted them and they seemed really cool, and they could improve our Albanian vocabulary.... Nathan's was on 200 science experiments you can do, and Luke's was one of the human body - a 3 dimensional book where different parts of the body are overlayed on top of each other). Instead of her being pleased (and me being able to get something off my shopping to do list), she was upset that they were books, not toys, and that they seemed to be too old for Luke. (The kids was willing to spend his own money on it, he wanted it that much. Yes, it probably is impractical, but...) Anyways. I feel very discouraged. This is so immaterial/unimportant, and yet, here it is. All this focus on the material. And I am supposed to perform these tasks & I keep failing. How can I please her? I don't know. Both the kids noticed that I keep paying for the things that Gjushja asks me to buy because she doesn't like them. I really don't care about the money part of it. We have plenty. It's the failure part of it that is getting to me. The money is the symbol of acceptance/success. She pays if I've gotten something that she feels is worthy. Ay.
So.
This is supposed to be a travel blog.
We did take a trip. It was an interesting trip with good & bad.
I had to get tonight's issues out before I could start, because they are what are on my mind. Why do I let stupid things get to me? It doesn't matter if she likes what I buy. None of this matters. I wish she would just spend time with us & stop focusing on sending stuff home with us. And now I don't even want to spend time there, because I feel resentful. Why doesn't she just go out and buy what she wants to buy herself. She lives here. She knows where things are.
Oh yes. Travel blog.
This is going to be a long post. Did I say that already?
Saturday morning we took a mini-bus to Vlora (about 2 -2 1/2 hours South of here). The mini-buses wait until all their seats are filled up & then they leave. They hold about 8-10 people. The ride wasn't terribly interesting, and the kids slept, so all was well. In Vlora, after grabbing some food & water, we caught a bus to Qeparo. This was a big bus, which means it's even cheaper than the mini-bus, but slower (more stops), and less comfortable. We started out all having our own seats, but at some point, when we had picked up enough people to fill the bus, they picked up 2 more. They assumed that our kids could sit in our laps, and so they did. (This was to be a 3 hour + bus ride). In actuality, Genci chose to stand, so Luke sat in my lap & Nathan next to me. The kids fell asleep, so we didn't have to worry about them getting bored. That was nice. The only means of cooling off the bus was to keep the door open, but there was a woman who was sick who happened to be sitting right beside the door, so they mostly kept it closed (except occasionally when people begged for fresh air to cool them down). In Albania, people thing coldness (cold air or cold cement) and breezes cause most sicknesses, so one wouldn't think of letting a breeze hit a sick person. Besides the heat, though, the ride was amazing.
We spent 3 hours winding our way through spectacular mountains. The steep mountains bordered the coast, and the roads wound back and forth, up and down, the whole ride. It was truly beautiful. I couldn't take any pictures until the last 10 minutes, because I was holding 2 kids the whole ride. But I did enjoy just staring out the window at the view. I decided not to worry about whether or not we would survive the ride. It seemed like we drove way too fast for such a big bus on such curvy roads, but I knew that this wasn't the first time the bus had done this, and I couldn't control it, so I chose not to worry.
We finally arrived at a little town called Qeparo. I wonder if it's even on the maps. It's a little after Himara (if I ever try to find it on a map, that info will help me). A guy who owns a hotel met us at the bus stop & took us to the hotel. It seemed like we were almost in the middle of nowhere, with a little bit of new development along the water. Our hotel was just a minute's walk from the water, with one building in front of us. That building was perfect for us, since it had 4 workers doing brickwork, which fastinated Nathan. Watching the workers kept him happy while we were settling in. The hotel was very clean & was probably actually someone's house(??), so it was spacious. We only used one bedroom, but we had the run of the place.
The beach was made of white stones, not sand, so it wasn't easy on the feet. But it was pretty and peaceful. There were a couple of local kids there, but we seemed to be the only "tourists" there. We had a very peaceful and pleasant hour or so as we hung out at the beach and waded (me & Luke) or swam (the other 2 boys) in the water. Very peaceful. Evening sun, birds singing. Sparkly water, mountains all around. If you got into the water past your waste, there was soft sand under your feet instead of rocks. That was nice.
After we got cleaned up, we headed over to the main hotel (ours was an extra one since the main one, right on the beach, was full). There weren't any restaurants in town (so we thought), but our hotel serves food to its people, so we headed there for dinner. We got there about 7pm, which is early for them (they sleep during the afternoon and eat around 9pm), but we were hungry and ready to eat. Now, here is where the problem started. Genci felt bad that we were there so early, since this was just a family establishment, and they probably weren't prepared to serve food that early. When the guy was getting us situated at a table (outdoors, looking at the ocean - very peaceful), Genci got up & told him that he didn't need to worry about feeding us - that we could get food at a restaurant. It's no problem, the guy told Genci a couple of times. We took this to mean that it would be no problem, no trouble to make food for us. The guy apparently meant that it is not a problem if we didn't want to eat there. But it took us 2 hours to figure that out. In the meantime, we ordered water and wine. Since we didn't want tap water, they sent 2 of their people via moped to get some water (and wine, since they were going anyways) for us. Yeah, that made us feel like we were putting them out a little, but we didn't want to chance the kids getting sick, and we didn't have enough water with us to last us the night.
So... the wait. The kids were great. They played on some bunkers nearby. Bunkers - I don't know if I've mentioned them. They are igloo shaped cement structures that were built during the communist times - to protect against an enemy invasion. They are everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Really. They were meant for gunmen to be able to hide inside them & shoot invaders. They are spaced periodically along all roads, mountains, coasts, everywhere. Grey, round, little bunkers. We'd been seeing them & counting them during our trip, and now our kids had the chance to explore them. They mostly kept to the top & outside of them, since they were filled with trash & smelled like they'd been used for bathrooms occasionally, but they sparked the kids' imaginations, and gave Genci & I some time alone to enjoy the pleasant evening air by the sea.
When the kids tired of playing, they sat and I made them do their journals. I had hoped their journals would be fun for them, but I have to insist that they do them, or they won't. I love seeing the pictures they draw and reading what they write. They don't like to write about everything they did that day, but rather focus on one thing that they found interesting. They will choose to focus on the mini-bus ride, for example, and leave out the fact that we explored a cool castle. But... it's their journal. I have my blog, which is the opposite extreme, so I can let them be. I do wish they at least mentioned the highlights of the day, but... we'll see. Maybe we can do a summary at the end.
So, anyways, they did their journals. And they started to complain about how long it was taking to get food. We weren't worried. We smelled food. It figured they were just started everything from scratch & were slow. But around 9pm, we noticed that everyone else, including the hotel family, had food except for us. Now, when the help (waitress, owner, etc.) is eating and you're not, something is wrong. I sent Genci to ask. I'm not sure exactly what he said - he's very polite and doesn't like to put people out - but he figured out that they hadn't thought we wanted to eat. And so we left. Quickly. Didn't want to put them out. Damage control. Hungry, complaining kids on our hands, darkness outside, hungry ourselves, no restaurant in town, oooo. We had oatmeal with us, and some bagel chips. We fed the kids snacks while getting oatmeal ready (thank goodness we had the hotel/house to ourselves & could commandeer the microwave and dishes). We explained to them what had happened - miscommunication - and why it's important to make sure that you understand each other, and had to repeat a few times that mommy and daddy were disappointed (oatmeal isn't as good as the food we had been smelling) and hungry too, and that sometimes things like this happen. A good life lesson, I suppose.
But that cemented our desire to get out of this idealic town that was lacking in food options. We had enough food for breakfast the next day, but after that we'd be screwed.
So the next morning (good night's sleep, by the way), we headed to the bus stop to catch the next bus to Saranda (the biggest seaside city in the south). Across from the bus stop, I noticed a tiny restaurant & a little market (mini-convenience type store), so it turns out we were wrong about there being no food in town - but we were already committed to leaving at this point. Luke cried about leaving. He loved the peaceful little pebbly beach and wanted to stay & swim some more. We probably should have listened to him. There was nothing in this town except for clean water, but that was better then Saranda.
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