I was sitting in my hotel room in Cotulla, TX, attempting to nap after working nearly 24 hours straight when my boss called me on my personal phone, my first thought, "uh-oh, what now?!" I answered the phone with a cautious "hello" and learned that I would be leaving for Albania (like the country in Europe?) for a core handling job. I flew home from Texas, was in Colorado for literally 14 hours and then began the 24 hour journey here; Denver to Washington Dulles, Dulles to Vienna, Vienna to Tirana. Whew! I had never been to Europe and I must say I prefer traveling south, the jet lag killed me!
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
