Rexhep Mala Shkolla

This, Rexhep Mala school, is the small, two-story school where we are receiving a fine tutelage in Shqip from our esteemed LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator), Florim. He’s a good teacher despite being somewhat easily distracted, especially about the topics of hip-hop, Alaska, and explanations of grammar I keep bullying him into giving us. The kids are still studying here and we’ve chatted with them a bit on our breaks. They’re very friendly and even invited us to play volleyball with them today. Unfortunately, we weren’t finished studying.

Bonus photo of Leila’s past tense/infinitive Shqip cheat sheet, which we were kind of bummed to find out was a jumbled mix of standard Albanian and the Kosovo dialect. Learning a new language is tough. Learning a language and its somewhat insular dialect at the same time requires many, many macchiatos and quite a few charts such as these.