One Down, Three to Go

Woohoo, I have my Albanian police check! One down, three to go. My former director (of the school I taught in) took my scanned passport & parents full names (that's all he needed...??) along to the scruffy little office, paid over the money & a week later they have it. And it cost about a tenth of what the international police checks website over here was going to charge. Yay!

I must say I rather enjoyed the moment when a former Albanian colleague sent me an email saying her husband had 'contacts' in the government if I wanted him to 'fix it' for me.....Ah, I felt briefly nostalgic for that Albanian way of life which relies not only, negatively, on corruption & bribes, but also is fundamentally built on relationships, networks & who you know who can sort something for you.  It made me smile.

Speaking of Albania, we have an Albanian friend staying with us for three weeks, while she finishes her PhD.  She is pregnant & is trying desperately to finish by the end of October. As a result of her arrival I have been neurotically cleaning the house. Albanians are obsessed with cleaning their homes. The day she arrived she offered to help  me with cleaning. She looked around & said "It's fine, but if you would like me to help you do a really good clean, we could put our trainers on & spend Saturday doing that'. Not my idea of a fun weekend, but clearly my idea of cleaning is not hers either.... You can take a girl out of Albania, but you can't take Albania out of the girl obviously........ I had cleaned the house from top to bottom the day she arrived. I felt a bit deflated.All that effort to waste! I clean it once a week, not everyday. I remembered how I used to move the mop round the flat to make it look like I had cleaned in between my Albanian cleaners 2 weekly THREE hour visits.

Today she came home & saw some rubber gloves on the stairs & wagged her finger at me & said "Have you been cleaning the house without me?" I confessed I had been.

Tomorrow is Saturday. I'm hoping for a lie in, but maybe I'll offer to polish the door handles, to appease her. Or maybe it's just that she's pregnant & it's the Albanian form of nesting kicking in.  In which case I should let her embrace it & get on with it. After all I'm not pregnant....or Albanian.