On Friday, Oct. 7, we checked out of the hotel where we had stayed for almost two weeks and met our work counterparts and people from our resource families. I have two work assignments, so I met my counterpart from one of them. He’s Fisnik Xhelili, a co-founder of the Center for Equal Opportunities “Ladybug.”
The group works against sex discrimination. Some folks might find it odd for men to be involved in that, but I think there’s no reason we shouldn’t be. And the group appears to be fighting sex discrimination both ways. Here’s an article by the group’s president, Rita Behadini, about discrimination against men. (For the benefit of readers who don’t read Albanian, Google Translate isn’t perfect, but will let you get the gist of it.)
My other assignment is at the Language Center at South East European University. About all I know about that assignment is from the brief description on their application of why they want to work with the Peace Corps. They had a volunteer work there from 2007 to 2009 and had a good experience.
Also on Friday, I moved in to my new apartment. As a precaution against COVID-19, we aren’t sharing living quarters with host families. I live upstairs from my “resource family,” which I think is a good arrangement. I’ve spent a bit of time with a young man from the family who speaks fluent English and also knows Japanese, which he learned by taking classes online. That’s pretty remarkable.
There are several cats living outside the apartment. Two of the kittens have sat on my lap so far. Also, a black cat came running up to me for pets at the university. (I walked around the campus to learn a bit about it before meeting my counterpart there.)
The apartment is nice. Furnishings are decent. It comes with a refrigerator that’s a good size for one person. It has a 40-liter freezer and a 187-liter fresh food space. For the benefit of my American readers, it’s about 56 inches tall, 21 inches wide and 22 inches from front to back. It also came with a hotplate, but no pots and pans. On Saturday, I got some kitchen basics as well as a set of sheets and a pillow.
I made sure to stock up on groceries on Saturday since almost all stores are closed on Sundays because of a recent labor law that restricts Sunday opening hours. Also, the Peace Corps urged us to stock up on canned goods just in case we test positive for COVID-19. We have to test every Monday as well as on Friday mornings before we go to Skopje for our weekly in-person “Hub Days.” Thankfully, we are able to self-administer the rapid antigen tests and email the results to the medical team. But if I do test positive, I will have to stay home for five days, so it makes sense to have plenty of canned food.