Busy Day

We’re done! Today was the conclusion of our formal training here in Albania and we are all THRILLED to be finished with it. After 4 months, 3 countries, 2 pre-service trainings and a hell of a lot of languages we are finally going to get to start work.

I got up this morning because Peace Corps requires a narrative final self-assessment and I, with my usual flair for forethought, had put it off until the day it was due. I spent a couple hours writing it before turning up only slightly late at our first session of the day about transitioning to Albanian society.

In my defense there were two perfectly good reasons for the procrastination! First, the night before was spent out late, yes, but we were at the country director’s home for dinner and to play with his trampoline (not in that order); I fell asleep right after getting home. Second, all of us had a little trouble with a certain question our training director put on the self-assessment: “Explain your commitment to completing the full term of your service in the Peace Corps.” SERIOUSLY? I am sincerely curious to know, after what we’ve been through (see above…), how we could further prove our commitment to Peace Corps. We had a pretty good laugh comparing answers though.

After our last training seminar we milled around PCHQ for a while because today was also the date of our final language assessments (duh dum dum!) The Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) is the standard for all of Peace Corps and rates the PCV’s in one of 10 levels. The scale is Novice Low, Novice Mid, Novice High, Intermediate Low, Mid and High, Advanced Low, Mid, High and Superior. The level normally required to move from Trainee to Volunteer is Intermediate Low; because our language training was a scantly 4 weeks we were only required to reach Novice High but a lot of us were sweating even that. 4 weeks is a pretty short time to become functional in a language.

I walked out of my LPI with a score of Inter-Low; being considered having enough Shqip (Albanian) to survive and start work in my site. I believe all the transferees passed and most did very, very well. None of us is quite sure what to ascribe this to; Georgian is certainly a harder language and it helped to be in that mindset when we arrived. To be perfectly fair as well, the staff knew we were crunched for time and might have been a little generous with the grading…
But, whatever the cosmic fluke that caused it, the important thing is we all passed! My elation at my score didn’t last very long. My day wasn’t done and I was headed to go do something I envisioned being nearly as painful as my LPI.

If you’ve never gone to see a dentist in the developing world, let me tell you: the first time is scary. Now, it was a dentist used by Peace Corps and other American expatriates and I had heard good things so intellectually I knew it probably wasn’t going to be that bad. No one likes going to the dentist though and if you throw in the uncertainty of doing it in a developing country, where you see a fair amount of disturbing things on a daily basis, and maybe you can imagine the long walk I took from PCHQ (with my translator) to the dentist’s office.
It turned out to be fine and I got what I needed fixed. The visit ended up being mostly painless and the dentist’s office would probably put most exam rooms in the U.S. to shame (expats pay well) so there wasn’t any problem. It wound up being a good reminder to me about competencies abroad.

After a surprising pleasant visit to the dentist I met up with the rest of the group and some staff to have a last coffee. Hill, the country director, handed out the volunteer pins. The pin is something each post gives out to volunteers, usually the U.S. flag crossed over the host country flag with the Peace Corps logo, and they signify that we’re serving with that post. The pins mean we’re PCV’s and mine means a lot to me. We still have our Georgia pins but we’ll carry our Albanian ones too now and hopefully two will be our limit for now.