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Running as fast as we can, holding onto one another’s hand…
My morning running routine has become a habit for me. After not running for a week due to being sick, I resumed my morning run and it felt great. When I returned home and began getting ready for work, everything just seemed right.
We’ve got this crazy idea to do a marathon in Athens this November. Currently, around 10 volunteers are training. I’m impressed. Some people are already in good shape. Some people are in bad shape. Some people, like myself, are somewhere in between. I have either 13 or 15 weeks to get myself in good enough condition to run for 26.2 miles. That just sounds silly. I am only up to doing an hour and 15 minutes for my long run. I got a ways to go.
Even if I am not prepared enough to race, I am pretty sure that all the running won’t hurt. It feels good to be running again. It completely wears me out (partly due to lack of protein in my diet which I am working on) which is good come pushim (rest, or nap) time in the afternoon. Not only is a nap always good, in a world with A/C, a nap helps pass the heat of the afternoon. Have I mentioned it’s hot here? :)
Well, I gotta run. Ha! I’m so funny. Is that a pun? I don’t like puns. Oops.

Mail call…
I’d like to send a little shout-out to all my people who have sent me some good old fashion snail mail.
Jessica.
Meena.
Mona.
Amy.
Good job ladies.
Every time I get mail, it’s been the highlight of my day and sometimes it can turn a bad day good. The cards and postcards are proudly displayed on the headboard of my bed/couch. Thank you very much.

James vs. Stomach…
In the first major battle of the many to come during my time here, Stomach was decidedly victorious over James. However, I have returned to health. I’d like to say that it won’t happen again but the problem is that I know what happened. I was fine Sunday, feeling a little yucky Monday morning, and flat out sick Monday evening. Possible culprits abound. There’s always the water, either tap or bottled. The issue might be something I ate. Perhaps bad water was used in the preparation of some bad food for the double whammy. Whatever it was, it has passed and I am glad for that.
I was very impressed with the level of concern expressed by everyone. Katie stopped by and kept me company for a spell. My counter-part stopped by to check on me since I didn’t feel well enough to go to work. My host family checked in on me five times. They even offered to take me to the hospital. I was given two packs of crackers and three cans of Sprite.

Wi-fi is wonderful…
I found a place where I can use high speed wireless internet. The catch? It’s in Tirana. I have to travel three hours to get to it. The one good thing is that it doesn’t cost anything, though the drinks are overpriced. No worries. I can take a couple hours to drink a good Frappe (iced coffee drink that has gotten me through the summer so far). The coolest thing about the wi-fi is getting to use my laptop. I was able to upload lots of photos. Now all I have to do is further organize them and add captions.
While in Tirana (I was there for warden training, more on that later), we also found our way to the mall. Ok, it’s not really a mall but it’ll do. The most important feature is EuroMax, which is an actual grocery store. It almost like home. They had different departments, fancy cheeses and breads, kitchen wares, clothing, some office supplies, and good selection of food. The highlight was the chickpeas/garbanzo which will be used in the food processor Katie and I bought together. Hey we’re volunteers. We can’t afford to buy $23 food processors all the time. I also bought some very overpriced, and not so tasty peanut butter. Another highlight was finding granola bars. Oh and I really enjoyed the samples of breads at the bakery section. It felt almost like being home. Granted it’s got nothing on Costco samples, I’ll still take it.

Coloring 101…
Good thing I learned how to color well. Sidenote, my coloring skills greatly improved in college. That sounds awesome. And to think I was at Ball State for only 6 years. A lot of people go to school for 7 years (yeah, they’re called doctors – Tommy Boy). Actually I am very grateful to the Site Analysis Maps we had to do in second year studio. Not only do I possess some mad coloring skills but I also learned some graphic hierarchy. Granted at the time I thought it was stupid to make us do stuff by hand when a computer would have been better and faster. I mean come on, what workplace wouldn’t have a computer to use? Oh right. Albania.
Illustrating pollution hot spots on the city map was my first bit of actual work. I suppose it’s fitting that this was also my first dose of work related frustration. We took a map printed using a plotter (large format printer) from AutoCAD and we were going to color the polluted parts. Then an NGO (non-governmental organization) was going to take our hand colored map and put into AutoCAD. I thought, “Hey, here’s a great opportunity for me to use my actual skill set. I can do all this in AutoCAD. It will be faster, more accurate, and just plain ol’ better. Plus we will be able to do it ourselves and not rely on some outside organization.” If only it was that easy.
We ask the director of the Urban dept. if it was possible to use the plotter. He never answered the question. We were simply told to do as planned.
So, I spent an hour and a half coloring brown circles around the old battery plant. Next I moved onto the coloring the main road through town because of the vehicular pollution. My favorite part was indicating where the open sewage lines were and where they drained directly into the river. I did do a nice job of blending my colors and conveying the idea of the concentrated pollution in the river compared to the general inflows of sewage or industrial waste. Yummy. I did all this with crappy colored pencils. Yeah we’re not working with Berol pencils here.
I was pretty frustrated by all this. The morning had started off so well. I had a good run, I received some actual mail from the States. The whole map thing kinda ruined it. When I went home for lunch, I had received another piece of mail, which helped my mood immensely. I ate my lunch, had a good nap, and returned to work ready for an exercise in futility. Nah, it wasn’t a futile exercise just frustrating. As I get more established, hopefully I will be able to do more than just color.