Going to the Capital

May 23, 2006

On Thursday I’ll be traveling to Tirana, the Capital of Albania, for a weekend conference and then will be moving on to Lezha for a week-long site visit in what will be my home after just three more weeks. In Tirana I will also meet my counterpart. Contrary to what the title “counterpart” suggests, this is not some Bizarro Beni, just the guy that will be my supervisor at WV once I start work there. Part of our conference in Tirana includes an anniversary celebration at the United States Embassy. We all have high hopes of this including nice food and drinks, but at the very least I plan on stealing toilet paper, towels, and an ashtray.

For the last eight weeks we’ve heard stories and talked about Tirana the way Fievel and the rest of the mice in “An American Tale” talked about coming to America.

“I’ve heard you can get real hamburgers in Tirana.”
“Hamburgers? Man, I was a talking to a guy who told me about a Chinese take-out place, Mexican food, and a place that has American coffee,…..bottomless cup dude.”
“Doritos, Combos, Pringles…I’m getting light-headed”
“Dark Beer.”
“I’m going to get so fat and drunk in that town.”
“Gjithashtu” – me to – “my friend, gjithashtu.”

That was the conversation Dave and I had last night.

As the Pistons have moved on to the Eastern Conference Finals, I have high hopes of finding some place in the capital to watch basketball – there’s got to be some place where the Embassy Marines watch American sports.

In preparation for meeting with my counterpart I’ve been assigned to transcribe my resume into Shqip (Albanian). All the “action verbs” that I had been coached to pepper my resume with – things like: “consulted, researched, analyzed, networked, oversaw” – have lead to some thorny translation issues. After slogging through this for a few days, I’ve given up on trying to write things like: “Researched and analyzed trends in philanthropy.” My resume has been pared down quite a bit, and don’t think my counterpart is going to be very impressed by the Beni he’ll see on paper. Imagine you were a prospective employer and a resume resembling the following slid across your desk:

Ben

Education:
I went to college

Experience:
I had a job before

Skills:
I can throw a Frisbee

I hope Bizarro Beni speaks English.

May 24, 2006

We had our last Shqip, (Albanian), language class today. Nancy gave each of us large wall maps of Albania, the Texan and I are both map nerds and this was very exciting. After nine weeks of language of class I feel confident in my ability to do things like order food at a restaurant and figure out which bus to take. I can have simple interactions with Albanians, but I’m still pretty helpless once we get past “what’s your name” and “what are you doing.” I tried for about an hour to write something reflective and thoughtful about our struggles and eventual successes with the language, and our whole relationship with Nancy. Instead, I opted to write about a few petty characteristics of Shqip that I find to be peculiar.

In Shqip the words “mengjes, dreke, and darke” mean morning, afternoon, and evening respectively. These words are also used for “breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Albanians have no problem with this word-consolidation, I on the other hand find this unusual. I’ve spent entirely too much time in class trying to impress upon Nancy how weird it sounds in English to say things like :“I wake up in the morning and I eat morning” and “I come home in the dinner in time to eat dinner.” These are things that Albanians say to each other every day.

Whoever is responsible for this language was not one to waste words. Now, I realize that I could probably stand to take a page out of the Shqip brevity book, but the language can seem too efficient. Think of words in English used to express any degree of satisfaction. In spoken Shqip people use “mire” (good) almost exclusively, this covers, “great, nice, awesome, cool, outstanding, alright, etc.,” as well as positive characteristics like “pretty, nice, and fun.” In Albania things are just “mire,” I need some more adjectives in my life. If an Albanian asked me about the movies Shawshank Redemption – love it – and Jerry Maguire – overall positive, though nuanced position – I want to make sure that they don’t get the impression these two are both just “mire” to me. But that’s all I’ve got to work with. What if someone wants me to expound on the Weezer albums Pinkerton and The Green Album!!! These can’t be described with the same word!!!

Moving on to a peculiar aspect that I find endearing. Double negatives are common parlance in Shqip. “Jam i lodhur” means I am tired. Now brace yourself, “NUK jam i PAlodhur” translates directly to I am not without tiredness, or I’m not not tired. Unfortunately, this is understood as someone is, in fact, not tired. I just like double negatives, though the hilarity of saying things like “I don’t not eat rice and beans every night, I’m not not kinda afraid of all the stray dogs in this country,” and “I’m not not licking frogs” is lost on any Albanian.

Last is a minor gripe to be sure. This would be how an adjective or any kind of descriptor comes after a noun. I’ve taken German 1 at least a half-dozen times in middle school through college, I’m pretty sure that this is the way it is in that language, and probably in French, Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and any language but English. But I just can’t wrap my brain around things being called “sandwich ham, water with bottle, book long,” and “aspect annoying.”

That’ll do for tonight, off to Tirana tomorrow.