So last night I slept for 11 hours and could have kept on sleeping if it hadn't been for the 8am breakfast call (hard boiled eggs, weird tasting fast milk, flavorless corn flakes, bananas, and toast). All the girls are awake right now but the boys sleep on (no flavorless corn flakes for them!)
let me back track to where I left off. After my last post (not counting my brief one last night) we all went out to dinner with Egli (pronounced Egg-Lee) at a nicer restaruant. After a meal of Albanian Beer, Lamb, Tortellini, stuffed pork, and lots of great greek salads (there were 8 of us and we ate full meals for under $10 a person!!) At dinner the conversation was great. As typical Kings students we talked about everything from race relations in the US, the current and future state of the economy, the exciting meal, God's working in the country and shared more stories from our childhoods. I went to the restroom and had to wait while a 5 y/o Albanian girl went ahead of me. All of a sudden her mother came running in and pulled the little girl out of the bathroom before the little girl had pulled her pants all the way up. I was hoping it wasn't because I was an American and when i walked in to the restroom I'd realized what had happened. At this nice ethnic Albanian resturaunt, the little girl had peed on the flood in the middle of the restroom !!
anyways. After dinner we had Akulore (that amazing creamy gelato) and headed home to finish final preparations on our presentations.
The next morning we had our morning devotions at Breakfast and then sat in the Christian Center's garden (where we are staying) and each gave 2 minute summaries of our presentations so that when we presented them to the Albanian students we could tie them all together. Amid a flurry of ironing button down shirts, we all got showered and ready and printed off the days presentations (Corbin's, Wyatt's, Becky's, Jill's). Let me take a brief moment to explain the shower situation here.
The shower head sticks out from the wall directly above the toilet and across from the sink and mirrors. After we are finish avoiding falling in the toilet and watching ourselves in the mirror while we shower, we have to squeegy the water down a drain in the middle of the roon. it is bizarre but functionable.
We took three taksi's (the albanian spelling) to the UNYT (University of New York Tirana-the private university we work with that is connected with New York's City College). Wyatt's presentation went really well. The girls that presented opposite him were Avva and and Ortensia. Two beautiful and sweet Albanian girls. The all pretty much agreed that human life ought to be protected however, the girls didn't quite agree that abortion ought to be outlawed because of the exceptions to the rule (cases of rape and incestial rape). Albanians have very high views of the family. Then Becky gave her brilliant presentation on human trafficking and the Albanians presented as well. There was a lot of agreement here about the issue but disagreement about if demand for it was decreasing or not. The discussion ended up into the legalization of prostitution which turned into very interesting discussion among us kings people after (i'll come back to that later). The Albanians didn't havea problem with prostitution, simply forced prositution. And all of the Kings People argued that all prostitution was wrong. Then Jill got up and gave her presentation on what type of education creates a good citizen. She focused a lot on the structure of education and gave a very practical (and applicable) answer to the question. Her albaian counterparts answered it by first defineing a good citizen and then just kind of saying that education is important. So we all agreed (again) on the big issues and it looked like there wouldn't be much interesting discussion on these presentations because both sides had done such a thurough job of presenting their information and ideas. Then Corbin raised his hand and asked a question.
"Does the Albanian Government want to educate you students to be easily manipulated by them?" some of the albanian students balked. the presenters said a little about how all education is a form of manipulation and the best type is the kind that is open about it self. "Don't you want your children to be manipulated into knowing right from wrong?" jill asked. Then Arsona (a very sharp albanian student who spend 3 or 4 years as a hs student in the us).
"What are you saying?" she angrily asked Dr. Corbin. he went on to explain that while public education, particularly in the universities, in the United States is seen as the best in the world, many of the students in the best universities aren't American. The American public school's don't competantly educate the american students. Jill chimed in and shared the US's math and science test scores compared to Chinese and European. The Albanian students didn't quite understand. We tried to explain to them that the American Government doesn't do a very good job anymore of education its people because its easier to politically manipulate them (we weren't saying that it was an intentional act of the gov't to keep us stupid...but we had all chosen Kings because we sought a complete and thourough education that the US public education system wasn't providing. Burk and I shared what we had learned after reading "Oraters and Philosophers; the history of liberal education" in Dr. Jackson's Research Writing class. That education had shifted from the ancient educational goal of teaching students a full liberal arts education (trivium and quadrivium liberal arts) to teaching them only how to be mediocre at a job. The goal of education shifted from understand life and beauty and highminded ideals in practical ways to understanding how to get a job. The albanians didn't really know how to respond to this and we ran out of time. After that we walked to the Campus Crusade Center (called IJR for some Albanian reason) for a college campus crusade meeting. After a mix of english and albanian worship songs, Dr Corbin briefly shared about how christian students need to be involved in politics and in their community. then the staff of our team (aleta, jill anna and dr corbin) went to dinner with the crusade staff and the rest of us met up with the albanian students that had presented that afternoon (avva, andre, orensia, ect). we ate at Manhattan Pizza because it was hte only place open. Good discussion there as well.
I'll have to finish this later because I'm off to the UNYT with Elijah to work on our next presentations for Monday. We are joinging with 2 of the albanian studets to give a joint presentation on "What is the good life". should be interesting!!
sister-i love you deeply and cannot wait to hear your news! miss you but i'll see you soon!!!
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