Hat (!!!) and missionary lunch

As I indicated in my last post, pretty much uneventful until school starts: hitting the gym regularly and just as regularly waking up a bit sore – Juxhino says it will get better. We’ll see. It is amusing that when I’m resting between sets, one or two of the guys will check to see how I’m holding up – I feel like the gym mascot to the possibility of eternal conditioning! Eating better, no more fire alarms in the kitchen. Busy on the ELTA presentation for the October conference, lesson preps, meetings with students on theses, newspaper planning, language studies, etc. But the big news from Albania is (wait for it) my summer hat finally got here from the states!

Celebrating the hat!

I know. I totally get it – a hat is big news?? Well my munchkins, after a while what’s big news, what’s exciting, is all relative – even a seemingly small insignificant moment. And this was a relatively exciting, big news experience. My dear Guatemala friends, Clint and Jen, gave me a great hat when we parted – me for home and the Peace Corps and them, after the school year, for a new teaching gig in Thailand. I had looked all over for one last fall when mine was dying. Trucked that thing from SLC to Philadelphia to New York, air to Vienna, and after a groggy arrival in Albania I realized I didn’t have it!! Sorry Clint, sorry Jen – it killed me! Bummer – but be comforted knowing somewhere, someone is stylin'.

Prowling the Guatemala City markets -- and the short-lived success, followed by the stages dealing with grief and loss.

Another four months of looking here with no more success than I had in Guatemala City, I finally located one on-line. But the shipping for the hat was more than what the thing cost!!

Anyway, Alexis ordered it, but we missed the connection when Yen flew out to Istanbul to meet up with Nelson and me a few weeks ago. Well, the hat got here yesterday!! I checked in with Ymer on some PC business and he said the hat had finally arrived!! So with my PC buds, Jessica and Mitesh, we braved an Elbasan summer rain and marched directly to Ymer’s office. Now, I had never realized what a minimalist my daughter Alexis was. Check out the labeling – just the basics, and in pen!! Amazing – for something so important to my emotional well-being.

But it got the job done and hat is here – film at eleven – but, evidently too big for the blog but you can access on my Facebook, which I understand is open to God, Country, and Peace Corps:  https://www.facebook.com/william.k.martin.7

So cool. “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.” As you may surmise, I slept in my clothes and hat, shown here when Ada and Pier dropped by my Coffee-House office today.

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The day before Megi and I had lunch with the Mormon missionaries here in Elbasan. Now over the months I’ve bumped into these kids from time to time – posted their pics on earlier blog entries. Alexis and Abby impressed upon me how much they would enjoy a lunch. It was a lot of fun – a couple from Utah, one from Arizona, and another from Illinois. We had a great visit at the Coral Fish and, again, my culinary friend Denis took care of everything.

With Megi, Denis, and my always enthusiastic (especially when well-fed) Latter-day Saint missionary friends

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So, busy with the typical, and counting off the weeks until the university starts back up. Later. XO