Start Here

(I won't tell you what to do, but it looks way nicer if you read it in browser.)

Let’s clear the air. Shqip is pronounced exactly like sheep, and it means Albanian in Albanian. Go figure. We’ll come back to this, don’t worry.

And with that, hello! If you’re reading this, it means I specifically sent it to you (or it has been passed through the grapevine, as things often are). How are you? How have you been? To those of you whom I haven’t connected with recently, I hope we can soon. Life has gotten in the way of replying to many emails and messages, I’m afraid. But if you’re reading this, know that I value you immensely (and that I want to know what’s been going on!).

As you likely know, I am spending the next year in Kosovo on a Fulbright grant. I have been placed in the capital of Pristina, where I’ll serve as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA), and I’ll be working at a couple of places within the city. I would share more of this with you, and I promise I will, but pretty much everything is still up in the air. (For starters, I was meant to start working a few days ago, but my boss decided to push the first day of classes by an entire week. Time, I’m learning, moves very differently here.).

When I applied for the Fulbright, I proposed keeping a newsletter for a couple of reasons.

1. I enjoy writing, but I never write anything that centers me, almost in principal. I like fiction. I like playing pretend. It’s not that I don’t value nonfiction—I do, immensely, especially when it is literary or narrative—but nonfiction feels rigid to me. No, that’s not it. It is set. It is supposed to be the truth. Nonfiction feels like I’m telling you what to think and how to feel. Of course, there are artists who do this intentionally and who do it pretty dang poetically. Perhaps I doubt that my voice can uphold a work, can hold attention, well enough for you to take it as legitimate. Well enough to be worth your time. (Yes, the can of worms is staying on the shelf. Everybody can let out that sigh of relief.) That said, I’d be kidding myself if I tried to claim there wasn’t bias in fiction. Bias is everywhere, baby! But there’s also an immense amount of truth within fiction. The very best of it has taught me more than many “real” things have. So, I decided, instead of trying to argue my way through contradictions, between true and false, I’m going to do the scary thing and talk about myself as a way to share this once in a lifetime experience. Which brings me to my second point.

2. People, and I’ll lump myself into this group, know so little about Kosovo. I may know slightly more than the average person, but there is such an lack of knowledge, and I’ll go so far as to say care, about the Balkans, and this country, in the U.S. (cut to the woman at United Airlines trying to convince me that Pristina was in Poland). This newsletter was a core part of my application because it didn’t feel right to move to a place, to share my culture and history with its people, and not make active efforts to share theirs with my people back home. I can’t bring you with me (but wouldn’t that be fun?) but I can do my very best to show you the Kosovo I meet and allow you to consider her for all that she is.

So, a newsletter! In the vein of shared learning, it is my hope to enable the commenting feature so that you all may ask questions if they come to you. What is the food like? How does a Kosovan classroom differ from an American one? What is something that is totally different than you expected? I struggle with technology so if you don’t see this commenting option right away, I’m working on it. Also, of course, it goes without saying that you never have to comment! Just you being here, and reading my silly words, is more than enough :)

---

I am sure, by now, you’re itching to know why I have chosen this punny, somewhat ridiculous name for this newsletter. Tritely, this is so ridiculous. That fact that I am in Kosovo is absurd. This was some far away, improbable thing for ages, yet here I sit, in the first apartment I’ve ever leased, across the world, alone. Nothing about this feels even a little bit real. I felt this newsletter deserved a title just as wacky as the situation I have gotten myself into.

It isn’t that I feel untethered from reality, though. In fact, I feel far more connected to my version of normal than I anticipated. I do, however, feel in parallel to reality. Like, I’m looking at all of you real people through a window that could probably use a cleaning. Your lives are moving as planned, and mine is moving too, just in a direction that seems like it might take me to Mars and back. And Mars is probably great, don’t get me wrong. But maybe I’m just too far away to be certain that going to Mars is going to matter.

So, cliché as it is, this all feels like a dream. And sure, it’s great. I’m getting paid to live abroad, to travel, to eat good food, to go beyond. But by dream, I don’t mean one where you’re drinking good wine and watching the sunset with someone you love. By dream, I mean, what the fuck is happening? It’s one of the ones where you have five eyes and are simultaneously on the moon but also in the Civil War. Today, I stare out of my apartment window and can’t imagine getting used to this view (granted, I’ve been in the apartment for five days, but who would I be without a little melodrama).

Regardless, I’m dreaming. I must be. Come good or bad—and it will certainly be both—this next year will be as weird and unpredictable as any dream. But, I remind myself, it should be. I am literally in Kosovo. Nearly every single aspect of what I do in a day has changed. The sounds I hear as I fall asleep, and wake up, and walk around this strange city are from a completely different soundtrack than the one I’m used to. That doesn’t mean it’s not still music.

Sometimes you learn things in your dreams. I’ll share a particularly poignant one from when I was eight. I was a bright pink flamingo and the world was on fire, yet the whole thing was also a metaphor for being nervous about making new friends. In real life, I had just changed schools and had, for the past few days, sat on the bench alone during recess. But in the dream I was surrounded by a horde of animals, all different, electric against an apocalyptic city that beckoned You’re running out of time. Make a choice. Every creature around me wanted to be my friend, regardless of which side of the river they were on—the river, of course, being the metaphoric representation between old and new. Between comfort, and risk. I didn’t want to sit on the bench forever. I was eight. I wanted to play four square! But making new friends was hard and scary. I had friends from my old school. Why did I need to put myself out there and make new ones?

Maybe the best part of dreaming is the rare moment you surprise yourself. As the world collapsed and the sole bridge over the river began to buckle, me and my stark pink wings ran across, and chose to do it anyway. When I woke up, I went to school and tried my best to make new friends. And, when I ultimately left that school, and the next, and the next, I’ve done the same.

Fiction, I said, can be sneakily truthful. And though the line between fact and fiction is blurred, that dream was as real to me as homeroom or lunch or the feeling of being scared, or hopeful, or proud. There is a great big world to be a part of when you submit to chance.

So, in this new chapter, I’m counting sheep. I want to fall asleep. I want to give in to the dream. It’s worked before, hasn’t it? It’s how I’ve met and come to cherish all of you.

Therefore, Counting Shqip, I hope, will be about dreams. You do crazy things in dreams. Things you wouldn’t dare do in real life. But this time, maybe I will. I’m still the pink flamingo.

Thank you for being here. I hope you stick around.

With gratitude,

Catherine

P.S. Apparently, when you subscribed, Substack asked if you wanted to give me money? Please, do not give me money. Do not think about giving me money. Faleminderit shumë xx