Monday, November 24, 2008

My Hands are like Ice Pops!

My back yard...view from my kitchen window.

This week it got really cold!  We had very little power (outages from 9 am to 6 pm), but lots of rain! I am really glad that I have my wood stove to keep me warm.  Sometimes I think that (with out heat) it is warmer outside of my house than inside!  Looking forward to my trip home to American, where there is central heat!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

My wood stove


Who ever thought that a girl from Texas would have to learn about installing and maintaining a wood stove!  Well because of the cold winters here without heat in the homes, we are forced to use other means to keep our little bodies warm in the winter.  

Several heat producing options are available to volunteers.  We can use electric heaters, but they use a lot of electricity, and therefore are very expensive.  Plus when we are without electricity, which is frequently in the winter, they only serve as towel racks and dust collectors.  Another option is the gas heater, which is fine, if you don't mind death by asphyxiation on carbon monoxide fumes!  That may be a little dramatic, but the small of the gas tends to be responsible for many headaches!

So the best option, for me, is the wood burning stove.  Problem is that my house was not set up for the appliance.  You have to have a hole to the outside for the smoke to ventilate, you have to have the pipes to connect the stove to the outside, you have to have several cubic meters of wood to burn throughout the winter, and you have to have the stove... none of which I had before a week ago!

So I began my quest to acquire all of the necessities for wood stove construction.

I found a wood stove, that was used, but I really like it and it is kind of cute, not like some of the other stoves that I looked at.  I had some of our guys friends carry it up the three flights of stairs to my apartment.  The girls were on hand to supervise.  Next, I had to arrange for a hole to be blasted out of the side of my wall.  This was to the displeasure of landlord, Pirro.  I am not sure that he had full confidence in my General Contracting abilities.  With the help of some friends from work, I arranged to have some workers come and make the hole.

They arrived on time, equipment in hand.  I had bought the pipes by this time, so that they could accurately cut a precise hole.  I left the room as they began to drill, because the noise from the electric jack hammer was too loud, and there was a lot of dust from the concrete explosion. (luckily I had moved all my furniture and covered it with a sheet)  When I returned to admire the work, I was less than thrilled to see that a huge hole, at least double the size of the 12cm pipes was their best work.  In typical albanian fashion, they left with promises to return the next day to then patch the hole, and applying what I know about Albanian's and promises to work, I knew I may not see these men for a while!

Sure enough days went by, huge hole remaining the new center piece of my wall.  I stuffed it with plastics bags, to keep the birds out, but as luck would have it, the temps dropped and the cold weather blew in, dislodging the bags from their proper place.  Big Mess!

Days later the men arrived and to my surprise, patched the hole with meticulous detail, fitting the pipes seamlessly through to the outside.  I had my wood delivered a few days before and spend some hours hauling it up three flights of stairs.  Now that the stove was ready, I was excited to see how this thing performed!  I wanted to see if all my efforts were worth the wait!

I found that fires are not that easy to light.  It is not as simple as just holding the match to the wood as i had hoped.  I put all my girls scout training to action, and built my little fire pyramid, and then stuffed it with paper and small wood.  When that effort failed, I abandoned my GS teachings and bought fire starter from the supermarket!  With their help I had a fire raging in no time.   I burned my first fire for about 2 hours that night, and was totally disheartened by the lack of heat it produced!  Not willing to raise the white flag without  a fight, I called in the troops the following morning!

Marisa came to the house at 10am the next morning, determined to get the house as warm as an oven.  I was the perfect day for a fire, dreary and wet outside, and we were also facing another day of 9-6 power outages!  We got the fire going after a few tries, and loaded it up with wood.  Together we decided that as soon as we could no longer see our breath, that the stove was beginning to prove its worth.   Over the next 4 hours, and several Phase 10 card games later, the room did heat up, in fact it was so warm that we were able to sit without blankets for the first time that week!  Very pleased with our work, we were eager to share the warmth with our friends that were coming to visit for the weekend.  All were very impressed and appreciated the warm room we had prepared!

So, now that it is all said and done, I am proud of my new purchase, and look forward to defrosting next to my stove all winter long! 


Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Mom goes Home; A summery of her visit

Many of you know that my mom came to Albania for a month long visit.  I think that she got a pretty good taste of the life of a volunteer.  She was so good about email updates of the things that we did during her time her that I have been a little lazy!  So, time to get back to it.  Here is a summary of the things that we did during her visit.

We made a trip to Bogove, a town only about an hour and a half bus trip from Berat. The town is the water source for the whole Berat region.  There is water flows crystal clear out of the mountain.  My mom and I are pictured at the waterfall, where the fresh water first pools before cascading down to the river and out to the town.  We hiked in to this serene little picnic spot and then met some of my Albanian friends for some lamb back in the town.  They also offered to give us a ride home in their private car, which is a much better alternative to the bus!
You may have heard me mention the garden that our youth group is creating at the local mental facility.  During the time that my mom was here, we funded our project and began some of the initial gardening and and preparation.  Since mom was here, she offered her assistance.  This is a group shot after our firsts days work, in the soon to be, Garden of Hope.
Several cities in Albania are home to ancient castles.  I think that my mom saw a hearty helping of them during her visit.  We saw the really well maintained castle in Gjirokastra, the ruins of the oldest inhabited castle in all of Europe, which is in Berat, and then the castle in Shkoder, which mostly offers a nice birds eye view of the city below.  This is us inside the castle of Shkoder.
Our weather was really perfect during the whole trip.  Days were in the 70's, sometimes even 80's, and the nights were pleasantly fresh.  Nothing sleeping with a hot water bottle couldn't cure.  This is us at the beach, and if we had our swimsuits, we would have been hard pressed to stay out of the water!

All in all it was a great trip.  It was really fun having my mom around in a otherwise sort of lonely place.  I am glad to say that she made it back safe and sound after her 22 hour trip to the USA.  I have been back to life as "usual" here in Berat.  Keeping busy working on a tourism project and still entertaining guest that come in to see our wonderful city!  Looking forward to my trip home in only a few weeks!