Normalized Life

I think one of the reasons that my posts have slowed down is that life Albania has slowly become more normal and routine. Therefore, I don’t consider a lot of it blog worthy anymore. Back in the States, I never felt it necessary to tweet or blog about my everyday life because to most people it would be boring. While my life here in Albania is by no means boring it has become routine and normal for me.

My most recent rountine has been on Sundays to get get coffee with my friend Nardi, play FIFA 2012, break for lunch, and then meet again for coffee in the afternoon. It’s not very exciting but it makes for a pretty good Sunday. Especially since I am slowly improving my FIFA skills.

My most recent project development, has been with the volunteer group that some friends are interested in starting. We have had some difficult getting off the group but I am hopeful. At our last meeting we spent two hours talking about the name of our group instead of the direction we want to take. I prepared a worksheet on how to write a vision and mission statement and how to derive goals and objects from them, thinking that it might have been helpful to guide the discussion. Since I don’t think anybody in the group had seen such material before, I might try a more simpler approach next time and create a handout that just focuses on writing a vision statement.

The adage “Try, Try, Try Again” has been a common theme for working in Albania. Sometimes it can be difficult approaching problems from my perspective because those around me are approaching them differently. It is necessary to step back, analyze the situation and change my approach to achieve a higher level of success. This is an unending process of fine tuning my approach to life in Albania.

I saw this video of Rick Steve’s talking about traveling and it really struck home with me so I thought I would share.