Bread... Finally!

I finally get to eat bread. To you this might not mean anything, or rather it might be plain confusing, but to me it is really important. It wasn’t the first few days. Actually, it was quite a relief to have a break from bread. Yes- the bread is amazing and homemade and super fresh, but I still don’t like eating 8 huge dense slices a day. However, by the 7th day of Passover, I was craving 8 slices a day, and now I’m really excited to eat bread tomorrow morning. To celebrate that I can eat bread, my family made me a huge burek. It was so nice of them, and of course, delicious.

The rest of the day was just a productive. Diamante had come to help us and she was truly invaluable. Within 1 minute of suggesting that we talk to the mayor she had whipped out one of her three phones, found him and made a meeting for 10 minutes later. 10 minutes later we met the mayor and bounced our environmental awareness project day off him. He loved it. I then asked him if he thought educating people about throwing trash in the river would be good or offensive, as it is a widely accepted and propagated activity. He thought it was good and necessary as it’s causing a big sanitary problem. Lastly, we asked if he had any suggestions. He did. He suggested we get the women to start putting the household trash in one area. The mayor thought this would be an excellent way to start training people for the time when our village could afford trash collection. When we asked how to gather up the women of the village, he pulled out his cell and called Natasha.

Natasha is a health care worker at the local health center which we heretofore believed was closed. It’s not. We went to the health care center and waited. She finally appeared but unfortunately, Diamante had already started her private interviews and wasn’t there. We marched her over to the care and with the help of Diamante got a meeting for next Tuesday with her and as many women as she could round up by then. She thought between 15-20 was feasible.

Kristine felt better and had returned to our village, so we updated her on our project and then power walked the 3.75 miles to Belsh. The road is beautiful, hilly and filled with unexpected lakes, distant mountains, terraced hills and goats. This sounds like the start of a cheesy romance novel, but it’s actually the truth. I’m really glad I didn’t take my camera because I would have never, never made it to Belsh. But I did. Kacey and I made it in exactly 1 hour. Sweaty and thirsty, I decided we had to find an ice cream shop immediately (big surprise). We found a great gelato place that was only 10 leke per scoop. I had banana, chocolate- which tasted like banana in a good way- and vanilla. You guessed it- we took the furgon back.

Tomorrow is Rina’s birthday. I’m going to get her something in Elbasan but I’m not sure what. I hope I can find something in my budget that she likes. I think after I get home we are having a party to celebrate her 17th… thank goodness I can eat bread! I would be pretty pissed to give up birthday cake twice this week.