Today I slept in and allowed my mind some morning dream time. This is the first day I haven’t had to prepare something for school in a long time. I didn’t quite know how to handle the freedom that has accompanied graduation. I am sure I will get used to it.
I have been given the task of designing and building a gazebo here at the school. I decided to spend some time working out a design today. After measuring the concrete pad which the structure will act as shade for, I walked to my favorite little bar cafe to sketch out some ideas. While I was there a few people deployed a chess set at a table near mine. I went to the index of my Albanian Phrasebook to find something, and on the second to the last page was a section on Chess, right after a section on Swimming.
I have found it interesting that while the television and the internet are available here, neither of those two forms of distraction have replaced futboll, dominoes, chess or just hanging out in groups of three to five people. Maybe that sign of “progress” is on the way, but it doesn’t seem to be. The Albanians I interact with are happiest with a small cup of coffee in one hand and a friend close enough to touch on the elbow or knee at the other.
After spending a few hours at this cafe, having two coffee drinks for a total cost of just under two dollars, I decided to see if a nearby road led where I thought it might. I was hoping to end up at a lumber yard near the Jamiya where my bus terminates every day. It was a longer road than I anticipated, but it did lead exactly where I had hoped that it would. On the way I passed a sickle-toting herdsman with his cattle. The roads here handle all forms of traffic; from vehicle and human, to sheep, goats and cows.
After about a forty minute walk, I finally arrived at the lumber yard. I needed to measure the lumber here to find out what was available to build my gazebo project with. The United States is one of the few places in the world which uses inches and feet when describing the dimensions of things like wood. Here is a funny digression:
I met a man on an airplane who had been in Bali for a time. A family there had given him a plot of land. This man designed his dream bungalow, and began construction on it for a short time before he was called away to the States. He had left his plan-set behind, and construction had continued in his absence over the next several months. When he returned, he was surprised to find that everything had been built to roughly three times as big as he had intended. His bungalow had become a mansion. He had designed in feet what the natives had built in meters.
My favorite discovery at the lumber yard was the ready availability of rough-hewn, white-wood slabs. There is the potential to make some nice table-tops or some really nice bench seats from the materials I found. The blue paint on the ends of these boards makes me think of William Wallace.
Won’t you come and build with me?
albaniacalling 