We had language in the morning, which crawled by at a very slow pace, and then we finally had our Sports Day in the early afternoon. Here in Albania, the most popular sport by far is football or as we call it in the United States, soccer.
Albania has a number of professional teams, and most cities and towns have their own amateur leagues. As an alternative to football, we wanted to introduce a new sport to the students that both girls and boys could enjoy. Football is a pretty male-dominated sport. Men young and old gather around the television set to watch the competitive matches and teams of students play in formal and informal leagues.
While other sports are co-ed like volleyball and basketball , only boys can be seen running around the football field. So as an alternative to football, we wanted to introduce a new sport to the students that both girls and boys could enjoy. We chose Ultimate Frisbee because it was easy to learn and because it was distinctly American, which is how we found ourselves with a few handfuls of frisbees on a beautiful April afternoon.
The Hub sessions today were a pretty good distraction from the main event. Here in Albania, Youth Councils are groups of young people usually students in high school or university or professionals just starting out in their field who organize community service activities and act as a voice for youth in their local government.
All the municipalities across Albania are encouraged to develop their own Youth Council, which is a fantastic opportunity to engage with students and help them to improve their leadership and project management skills. So I tried to focus on other things while doing my best to ignore the elephant in the room. But as we sat down in the Hub, things became very real very quickly. I started off the morning by sleeping in until 8: Then I lazed around the house playing cards, eating breakfast, cleaning my room, and playing on my phone until I finally got dressed and went out for a walk with my host family.
