Fun, Fun, Fun

"And we'll have fun, fun. fun 'til her daddy takes the t-bird away." Ok, so I don't really have a t-bird and my dad isn't here to stop my fun. Just kidding, Dad! :) You wouldn't do that anyway. So in light of those circumstances, we had ourselves a good ol' time with a visitor from down under.

Let me back track a week. Last Saturday we met our new friend Nicola. She found me on a site called couchsurfing.com which is specifically for the purpose of finding people to stay with while traveling. You literally surf their couch. Hee hee! So she asked if she could stay with us while passing through Tirana. We said sure! It's always fun to have extra English speakers around. It makes our lives more entertaining and it's quite amusing to hear other English comments on daily life around here.

So we met Nic in the city center and went back to our apartment. That first day we didn't do anything too awfully exciting around town for two reason. First, it was raining (of course!). This must be like monsoon season around here or something. December has been soooo rainy! Aaaaahhhh!!!! But I digress....Reason number two was that Nic was tired from all of her traveling. She's been traveling for four months and has three more to go, but the last few days had been continuous traveling with only overnight stops. She was looking forward to spending two nights in the same place. Well, the two nights turned into four because we all had so much fun. :)

That first day we took Nic out for a quick lunch of sufllaqe because we wanted her to have something authentically Albanian. She liked it. :) Then we spent the rest of the afternoon watching a James Bond movie, Golden Eye, that was on TV. Then we went down to Pastor's apartment and had game night. We ate tons of snacks--trail mix and mandarins--and chocolate (because it wouldn't be game night without chocolate), and then ordered pizza. We taught Nic how to play Ticket To Ride and just had a fun night. We didn't stop the games until 12:40am.

Sunday we took her to the Christmas Bazaar held at the Sheraton hotel here in Tirana. It's put on by the international community here so it's not really something Albanian, but they did have some students singing Christmas songs. It turns out they were students from our friend Lori's school so we listened to that with her for awhile, then browsed the tables, bought small orange chocolate torts to sample, and sat down at a cafe to introduce Nic to the goodness that is salep. I mentioned this drink in an earlier entry and I really do love it!

After that we went to Sky tower for an afternoon dessert and tea, but mostly to enjoy the views of the city during the day. You can really see all of the city from there and it's quite enjoyable. I'm still amazed that it's free to go up there. It's one of those places that if it were in the States, you'd have to make a reservation and/or pay a cover charge before going.

We stayed there for about an hour before heading back to our place to get ready to go to the Opera. As I've mentioned, Agron's niece is an opera singer who sings in operas in Albania, Italy, and France. She got extra tickets for Agron and he gave them to us. So Pastor, Emily, Nic and I ended up sitting in the front row! I kid you not--the front row! We ended up enjoying the show immensely. It was like a three in one opera. That's how Agron translated the title for us. lol The actual title is Il Trittico (The Triptych) by Giacomo Puccini and, as most operas are, was in Italian. The only translation there was in Albanian. Pastor knew this, so before we went, we read an online synopsis so we would understand it better.

It was three shorter shows combined to make one long performance (4 hours with intermissions between shows). The first show was called "Tabarro" and was lovers on a ship that was docked and being loaded. Basically, two guys love the same girl and one guy kills the other. It ends with the killer guy making the girl look at her dead lover. It was good.

The second one was much more slow moving. Entitled Suo Angelica, it was set at a 17th century convent and was about a nun named Sister Angelica. Agron's neice, Eva, played this role. So she was the star of this show. And star she was! It was a slower opera, much more somber than the first, but it was a perfect show for Eva's voice! Wow, can she sing! So clear and brilliant! Nothing screechy or sounding like real effort to reach a note. She sang smoothly and effortlessly and it was a joy to listen. The story goes something like this: Sister Angelica is a very fervent nun, she never has any visitors, she is very private and no one knows what caused her to take the vows. It's kind of the big secret around the convent. One day, very suddenly, her aunt comes to visit her. Angelica knows what's coming--news of the son she'd given birth to seven years earlier. It turns out the boy had died and Angelica is overwhelmed with grief. She commits suicide but she realizes the error of her ways just as she finds that heaven is closed to her, but then a miracle happens (thanks to the virgin Mary in the show, of course) and then she's let in with a welcome from a chorus of angels.

The third one was the best because it was the funniest. It was called Gianni Schicchi. It's about this old guy named Buoso Donati who has died. His family is pretending to grieve while they are really looking for his will to see what they each get. The nephew finds it and agrees to let them see it on the condition that they allow him to marry the neighbor, Gianni Schicchi's daughter. They agree. The will states that all the rich dead man's possessions are to be given to convents and monasteries. No one likes this. Plans change when Gianni comes in and has the bright idea that one of them should pretend to be Buoso Donati, then call the notary in, change the will, and all get the inheritance. This seems well and good to everyone since those in the room are the only ones who know he's dead. Gianni takes the place of Donati in the bed, the notary is called in, and Gianni proceeds to leave everything to himself! After the notary leaves, the relatives are furious so they steal what they can and run off. But Gianni, seeing the nephew and his daughter together, gives them the property. It was hilarious and was very well done. We all enjoyed this one a lot and couldn't stop laughing!

That was a fun night. The only two bad parts were that before hand, the four of us (Pastor included) were going to go for dinner at the crepe place Aida had taken us to a few weeks ago. But when we got there, it was closed! So we opted for a sufllaqe again since we all like it. :) And afterwards, we were going to go to Behari to get ice cream, but it was closed too! Some luck! So we ended up just going home. But it was still a fun night.

Monday was a holiday here (the small Bajram celebration) but didn't really seem any different than a normal day except that there was no school. We all slept in and then started watching movies on TV. Around 3:30 or 4 we decided we should take a walk and at least get some fresh air. We decided to walk to the French pastry shop in the block area. We got treats and tea and had a few laughs. On the way back, we decided a movie marathon was in order so we bought some snacks and wine and rented four movies. We watched three of them (because one that they gave us was not what we wanted) and then we watched two of my movies. We were up til 3am but it was a blast! Nic was so relieved to just be enjoying some down time relaxing and so were Emily and I.

Tuesday Emily and I cancelled our classes because for the last two Mondays there have not been classes due to holidays. We need our groups to stay at the same level and the Tuesday classes were starting to get ahead. We cancelled that day to keep everyone at the same place. It worked out nicely because it gave Nic another day to relax and time to figure out when and where her bus was leaving the next morning. I made chili for dinner that night and we just stayed inside because it was cold. We also taught Nic how to play Settlers Of Catan. :)

Wednesday morning Emily made pancakes for breakfast, we hopped on the bus, and bid our new traveling friend adieu. It was fun having her around but Emily and I needed to get some work done, so before our classes that day, we did some prep work and then got back into our regular routine.

I told you I had interesting stories to share. ;) I'm not a liar. lol I did take an extra day writing this though, so I broke a promise. Sorry. I was exhausted yesterday and crazy busy and honestly just didn't have time to do this.

Activity night last night was really fun! The pictures went over really well and some of the kids really colored them beautifully! Then again, there is an angel with blue hair and orange wings and a Mary with blue hair. lol But they tried their best to make them beautiful so I put them all up on the wall. We added some homemade tinsel to the tree and made a red and white paper chain that was long enough to stretch around the whole room! And Agron bought some balloons that turned out to be birthday ballons so we put them up anyway since Christmas celebrations are kind of a birthday party for Jesus. :) This morning as Emily and I were finishing putting up the paper chain, Agron told us with a huge smile, "Our church center has never looked so beautiful." Well that just warmed my heart! It made me feel so good about what we're doing. And then, church was so full today we had 4 people sharing 3 seats in two different rows. :) Many of the kids came before Christmas practice so it was really nice to be in a full decorated church. :)

Christmas practice went well and Emily has done an awesome job teaching them their lines and the songs. They are also getting pretty good at singing one verse of Silent Night in German. I did a lot of echoing with them to help learn it. lol I've got the music all figured out: I'm going to play Silent Night and Joy To The World, but then for O Little Town of Bethlehem and Away In A Manger I'm just going to play the melody because we split the kids half and half. Then for the two hymns where the congregation joins in, Oh Come, All Ye Faithful and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, we'll use the computer program that plays the hymn because for the last verse of each, I will join in and play the descant part on my flute. Tomorrow is our final big rehearsal to test out the costumes (We have Mary and Joseph and the rest are divided into shepherds and angels. Think pageant style.) and work out the final kinks.

On an unrelated note, I have made one more Christmas in Albania observation. Here in Tirana, I would say that at least 90%, maybe even at least 95% of all the Christmas lights I've seen displayed or for sale are blinking or moving lights. Just as the colors and patterns or designs painted on building here, I guess they like their Christmas lights to be extra stimulating, too.

The great cookie bake with the MMM group was today at our apartment. We had 5 girls that came! Woo hoo! Neda had some problems though, but we're working through those. Thankfully the other girls are much more mature and handled it well. But overall everyone had fun. The cut out cookie dough I made yesterday wasn't chilled enough to roll last night. So instead of frosting them, the girls rolled out the dough and cut out the cookies and sprinkled them with powdered sugar. Well, we thought it was powdered sugar at least. Emily bought it and checked out one of the little packets. It was indeed powdered sugar. However, the rest of the packets she bought, which were right behind the one she checked that was on the shelf, turned out to be baking soda. Hahaha! It tasted gross! So I got the idea to make a little assembly line to save the cookies. Some girls used water and paper towels to wipe off the cookies and the other girls took the damp cookies and sprinkled regular sugar on them. It worked and they tasted just fine. Too funny though!

Then we made the kind of cookies where you take a bite sized piece of candy bar and put it inside the dough. Well, the dough wasn't cold enough to form a ball with and we didn't have extra time to wait so we just stuck the candy bar in the middle and baked them. They tasted awesome! But the girls hadn't quite put enough flour in the dough so they spread out a lot but luckily I noticed before the first batch was burned so we just baked them for a minute less than the recipe said. It worked perfectly. They look like a mess but they really do taste awesome!

After that we made chocolate dipped pretzels. But the only chocolate squares we could find were ones that Laura's parents had sent last year and were unsweetened. So once they were on aluminum foil to cool we sprinkled sugar on those too. Now they taste just fine. :) I figured at home people dump sprinkles or colored sugar on things like that for fun so why not use what we have here to do the same. So, since regular sugar is pretty much it, that's what we used. The girls had a lot of fun and are so excited to get their plates of cookies tomorrow. It's nice to be able to have this small group time with them. We really feel like we're getting to know them!

I had fun too, but I'm exhausted! Emily and I just relaxed tonight after cleaning up. We ate some cookies and Em made some dip for the pretzels so we munched on that while we played two games of Ticket To Ride. Then she worked on some last minute things for the costumes, I started writing this, and it's already 11:20pm! I can't believe it. And I still haven't started writing my tests yet. Oh boy. Tomorrow is going to be jam packed. I'm seeing a late night in my future tomorrow....Good thing I can sleep in on Monday! :)

We're having a good time here and now that we've baked Christmas cookies it's really starting to feel more like Christmas. :) I'm actually getting excited about the Christmas program and I'm really excited about having a break to travel, relax, and do some planning. The first day of our break, Monday the 23rd, I've already decided I'm going to make it a pajama day and spend the whole day in comfy clothes, relaxing by watching movies, reading, playing games, listening to Christmas music and surfing the internet all day. You know, just relaxing stuff. A real, true, day off to do nothing in particular. :) I can't wait! Til then, it's going to be a week of fun, fun, fun as we get ready for everything .