This week we had our practicum – all the Community Development trainees spent the week visiting different government offices in Elbasan to gain a better understanding of the government structure, learn what progress has been made economically during the past few years, and to hear about where the opportunities lie for us as volunteers to contribute. Fortunately for me, being in Elbasan gave me the ability to meet some of my future colleagues, and I was able to spend some time in the Economic Development office where I will be based. I also visited the Tax Department and the Office of Social Services. Although I can understand more Albanian every day, it is still very difficult to be in a work environment and not be able to understand the conversation. As challenging as learning the ropes of a new job is, the added language barrier makes it that much more important that we pay close attention to the surroundings and also to body language.
Each volunteer gets assigned an Albanian counterpart that we work with on projects over the two years. My counterpart is one of the Peace Corps Albanian teachers – so I am lucky to already know him and to be able to spend time with him in these final few weeks before swearing in (May 28 – the big day). He has agreed to only speak English to me when absolutely necessary, to help me reach my goal of becoming completely fluent in Albanian. Speaking English at this point hinders the learning, even though sometimes it takes me 5 minutes to speak a sentence that in English would take me 5 seconds…
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