Have you ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding?
Picture the grandpa (much younger and skinnier) but, instead of proving everything is Greek replace that with Albanian; that’s our host Erion.
Everything is Albanian … apparently even me (who knew?).
In every country we’ve traveled to so far I’ve been asked if I were a variety of ethnicities … Indian (definitely not tan enough), Afghani (I get it, I have dark features), Egyptian (again not tan enough), and now I’m constantly being asked if I’m Albanian.
After learning my last name he really took an interest and it was all over once I said I’m Sicilian and Calabrace on my fathers side and on my moms side a mix of central European. Now he was completely convinced. He went through the history of how Albanians have fled to those exact locations and therefore I am without a doubt Albanian.
He’s not the only one either, almost every coffee bar I’ve been to this month I’ve been asked if I’m Albanian. When I say no I’m Italian they immediately respond “so you’re Albanian”.
Our host has told the church congregation I am Albanian.
We have laughed with his family about how I’m Albanian.
He even told the inmates at the men’s prison I’m Albanian!
Which brings me to marriage proposal number one of the week.
For prison ministry we each sat at a table with 3 or 4 of the inmates to play cards and talk with them. One of the men in particular kept smiling at me asking a variety of questions. Eventually the language barrier caught up and Erion came over to help translate. He began to laugh and I understood when he jokingly told the man “actually she is Albanian”. After we laughed some more he told me the guy was saying
“if I were Albanian he would hunt me down and make me his bride”.
… oh that’s romantic, I think?
Thankfully since I am not Albanian he won’t do such a thing because “culturally we wouldn’t understand each other”. One of those cultural misunderstanding being the difference between a love engagement and engagement by kidnapping which is what he was presenting (phew, that was a close one).
Little did I know that would not be my only marriage proposal of the week.
Our ministry this month was to build relationships and we often ended our evenings at one of our new friends coffee bars. This past Saturday my teammate Linsey and I went to support his big night with live music. One of our other new friends came with us as well since we had just finished dinner at his restaurant. We sat there and joked about the marriage proposal from prison which turned into us telling them about all of the crazy proposals we’ve heard of throughout the past 5 months. When we got to India and told them goats were often traded for a woman’s hand in marriage, our one friend who owns the bar laughed and said “I will make you a better deal, I will give you 30 chairs for your hand in marriage!”.
Clearly a joke, we were all hysterical.
Until, our friend who owns the restaurant chimed in and said “well you are Albanian but, have a US Passport I will sign my restaurant over to you for your hand in marriage”.
Umm… are we still joking?
Then Linsey plays into the conversation negotiating the terms of my hand in marriage.
I turned to her and said “are you trying to sell me right now?!”.
She laughed saying she was helping me out here and that she was going to get mango lemonades out of the deal.
So apparently my loving teammate and sister in Christ believes I am worth biding off for some mango lemonade . . . and it turns out I am a catch in Albania.
