It was nearly one year ago exactly that I first traveled out of the U.S. to Argentina and I am reminded daily that comparisons are odious, but I cannot stop making them. When I started this job someone told me "enjoy visiting all the assholes of America/the world." I laughed them off, and still do. But I think what they were really trying to tell me was that no matter where you go in the world, oilfield towns all bear a startling resemblance to one another. The town of Fier, Albania where we are currently working bears an uncanny resemblance to the town of Neuquen in Argentina where I spent a month and a half this winter. Comparisons are odious.
Albanian is a very foreign language for me. It is not a romance language so my rudimentary understanding of Spanish is no help at all! So far the only word I can remember how to say is "thank you" and that took about 3 days of practice to master! Italian functions pretty well as a second language and I am quickly figuring out what phrases/words are similar in Italian and Spanish. And there are quite a few people who speak a little English. I am struck, here, with the realization that English is a lazy, sloppy, un-beautiful language. We have no accents on syllables and the structure of our sentences is so bizarre. However, I am slowly mastering the art of non verbal communication and learning to love the challenge of communicating with only a few words in common. El mundo es muy linda; the world is so beautiful.
Comparisons are odious; the culture here is saturated with age and history, wrapped in technology, tetering between communism and capitalism, at the same time vibrant and muted; comparisons are odious. We visited the ancient ruins of Apollonia and I saw my first olive trees and my first really old artifacts and structures. I found myself wandering through an orthodox monastery, realizing just how old Europe is. I think we get brainwashed in the U.S. (and probably other countries as well) with the importance of our own history. But we are such a young country. Wandering these ruins, I was saturated with the age of the country, the multiple cultures and occupations, the ancient/new history of it all. It was an eye opening experience I struggle to put into words.
We spent yesterday at the beach in Vlore, on the Adriatic Sea. It was one of those days where I wanted to pinch myself repeatedly because it seemed too beautiful to be reality. The beach was a little cove surrounded by limestone cliffs dropping into crystal clear water. We climbed and jumped off of cliffs, swam around in the calm water and I explored the geology a little. One of the first papers I ever wrote about geology was about the tufa towers at Mono Lake in California. I remember reading that in Greece and other countries tufa was a common building material. On our first night here we walked into an underground restaurant with walls made entirely of tufa, I was SO excited. Swimming in the Adriatic there were fresh water springs bubbling up, deliciously cold, and many meters below my feet, living tufa being formed. In that moment I was first a geologist, second everything else!
More to come later. Here are a few pictures!
Love,
Pinky
