Halloween!

Whoo! Halloween party! This weekend the bulk of the volunteers descended on Elbasan, in central Albanian for a costumes required night of Americana overseas and it was great.

Three of the other Georgia group and I were orginally going to go as a group costume but inspiration deserted us and I wound up going as a cow and that was mostly out of last minute desperation. I'm pretty proud of how I pulled it off though: I found myself at the bazaar on Friday afternoon, a little panicked, and I found a massive stuffed animal at one of the children's stalls. After haggling a bit in my broken Albanian I carried the 4 foot stuffed cow through the streets of Durres, back to my apartment and then gutted it on my balcony. Stuffed animals in the developing world are filled with styrofoam instead of the cotton fluff state-side plush toys are made up which makes them slightly less squishy and infinitely more messy when opened. Hopefully none of my neighbors saw me do this, I can only imagine what they would thing if they saw me cutting the head off a stuffed cow and then trying it on. (Halloween does exist here but is not widely celebrated, I tried explaining to a few people at the bazaar what the event was about but I gave up.)

The party was great although I got wine all over my costume in the first 5 minutes. I want to clear that up though for those who saw the pictures on facebook: Becky got her corkscrew stuck in a bottle, I rescued it - you might say I am a hero.

There was a costume contest (my mutilated stuffed animal, still leaking styrofoam bits didn't win) and a bake off to accompany the festivities. I'm not a baker but was happy to participate as a judge. It was good to see everybody, all the Georgia volunteers are doing fine settling into their sites. Albania has an advantage over Georgia in that it's a much smaller country so the volunteers can get together more easily and often. It's not quite the bar hopping fun I had last year in Adams Morgan in D.C. but it was pretty good for a Peace Corps budget.