Day 10: Lazy Saturday/Family Day

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Many of the students were invited to villages to visit families today. They were so excited. Many of them have connected fairly quickly with the Kosovars and have built lasting friendships. They all came back with lots of stories about their conversations, experiences with food and flia, gifts the family gave them. Some played paintball, some visited people around Suhareke, and others went swimming.

For me, it's a lazy day. The 1 1/2 week group arrived today. Jeremy and Berat went to get them. Rozafa experienced many quiet moments this morning and afternoon because it was just me and the Foresters here. Morgan and I watched a few Friends blooper videos and the "Morning Song" from Friends. I washed a few clothes. Now, here in Kosovo we get to wash things by hand. We've definitely had to be conscious of where Jeremy is on his clothes situation because it takes a while for things to dry, especially shorts. It's not like I can just hang them outside. Well, Jenna did do that. She put rope out the window and draped them alongside the wall of Rozafa. In our room, we have rope and clothes pins. The rope is tied to the window and a chair held down by our carry own bags. If we have a good breeze they definitely dry a little faster. Morgan, Evan and I went and got some more minutes for our phones and picked up some ear plugs for them because we have yet another graduation party here tonight.

The new group got here around lunch time and we went to Pizza Express- aka- Egzona and got our chicken burgers. They love us because we come about once a day. The waiter is at the university studying English and loves to wait on us because we help him with his English. The new group got to experience the food and town for the first time. We took them on a little tour of the town and told them the stories of the memorials and where things were. It is extremely hot here today, 37+ degrees. We've been sweating all day since there isn't AC here, so of course we had to go to OXXO at the end of our tour for some ice cream. They had my favorite kind!!! Then we gave the new teammates the run down of what we have been doing. During all the walking and talking, I got to know the leaders (Meg-mom, Sharon-mom, and Lori) and a little bit and I'm trying to remember the names of the students.

We ordered pizza from Edona for dinner and then let the newbies go to bed since they hadn't slept in a while. You could see how exhausted they were. A few of the runners went running in the park. Some little boys were playing soccer and enjoyed saying hello to us as we ran. When finished with the run, we play a few rounds of Monopoly Deal, ate watermelon, and hung out. Aryn, Jared, Valerie, and I were the main ones eating the watermelon. We laughed so hard at times Aryn had watermelon juice coming out her nose. A few of our sons have started to take over our room at night because it's the best place to get wifi out of any of the rooms since our room is directly above the router only two floors up. They surf the web, upload pictures, play games, and are currently making a website "Where's Ben?". The graduation party was more of an older persons party. They were quiet for the most part and we were thankful for that. However, many of us woke up during the middle of the night because of dogs barking. The night before it was horns honking. Sleep here is not the best. The beds are not as soft as some would like and the noise distracts others. If the above two do not harm sleeping, the sun rising at 4 something causes many to rise earlier than desired.

As you can see, it was a pretty lazy day.

The newbies and their first time at OXXO.