SPSS, SPSS, SPSS and Pllajnik

Lately life has been moving rather quickly and I hate that it’s going at such a fast pace. We finally were able to speak to Dr. Myers and Lyndsey about our work so far and they were pleased with what we have done during our time here. We have been working really hard but I wish we had more time to travel. Last week Max and I created the variables needed to input the data from the first phase surveys into SPSS. This week we have been inputting the data from the surveys into SPSS, so we have usable data to present at the symposium on August 12th at RIT. I think the most interesting part of all the research is the on field work and actually seeing the surveys in action. We are able to see how people react to the questions and how friendly people are around the country of Kosovo. The data is interesting to see because one is able to compare the lifestyle of one person to another person who live in completely different areas of Prishtina. I just want to mention how glad I am for the opportunity to work on research under the CENR once again. Overall, it is great to see how much progress the CENR energy efficiency research has made since the last time I was in Kosovo.

Luckily, we had the opportunity to travel to the Dragash municipality yesterday and it was one of the best trips I have ever had in my life. Max, Nart, Blerina, Enis (AUK Security Guard) and I all traveled to the most southern region of Kosovo to a small village. Along the way we even stopped at this stream with mini waterfalls along the way and it was a nice scenic view. The village was called Pllajnik and it was somewhat difficult reach but was well worth it. The people were friendly, made us feel at home and helped us out. While there, the NINA surveys were being implemented and overall the village didn’t have a problem answering the questions of the survey. We spent a few hours in the village gathering data but we also were able to speak about politics and the current situation in Kosovo with Nart.

We spoke about Kosovo and what exactly is needed for it to make progress as a country. I met Nart last year when I was in Kosovo because we had class together so it was good to catch up. So during our small breaks we had in the village Max, Nart and I mostly spoke about Kosovo and the current situations within it. While visiting our last home of the day the family decided to cook us a meal even though we tried to say no, thank you. The meal they cooked was amazing and included all sorts of stuff from homemade bread and homemade yogurt to homemade cheese and salami. The meal hit the spot especially cause none of us had eaten all day. The atmosphere was also great because the whole family was at home and it sort of reminded me of my home. The trip was great and I was glad we actually had the chance to visit the Sharr mountains that I read so much about. Overall, we have been working hard but we also have been learning a great amount about different regions in Kosovo. I will be posting a video about what we saw along the way down to Pllajnik and what we experienced while in the Sharr mountains soon.

Thanks for reading,

Miguel

Sharr Mountain Trip

3rd Weekend + The Sharr Mountains

Less than a week left in Kosovo, can’t believe it’s already coming to an end. After the first week it had felt like we had been here for a month and now it feels like we’ve only been here a week. It’s really strange but that’s honestly how it feels. Time is relative I suppose…

The weekend did not really go as we planned. We didn’t go to Mitrovica or Macedonia, but had a relaxing, work-free couple of days in Prishtina. We spent some quality time with people that we have really grown to care about here, and sometimes that’s much more important than exploring new lands. We found a Chinese food restaurant, which actually had real good food, and did some planning on how we would most efficiently utilize our last week in Kosovo. After having a conference call with Professor Myers, we were able to clarify some objectives for our remaining time here. One was to sit in on NINA interviews in villages in the Sharr Mountains for a day, another was to help the students here with making the two skeletons for the other surveys, and lastly to enter as many household surveys into SPSS as we could in our free time. We need to enter enough surveys to be able to have some usable data to present during our research symposium at RIT on August 12th. Overall, we have a lot to do in little time.

Monday, we entered about a quarter of the surveys we need to reach our goal, which we were pretty happy about. Yesterday, we were able to make it down to Dragash, a region in the Sharr Mountains. The region was very beautiful and again, was much different than the rest of the country. There was a whole lot more vegetation than anywhere in the country, great flowing streams, and big green rolling mountains as far as the eye could see. Small villages were perched among the mountains, isolated from each other and the modern life of Kosovo, almost as if they were within a completely different country.

Miguel and I were accompanied by Blerina, another student named Nart, and the driver, Enis, who also works as a mechanic, security guard, and steel cutter (very cool guy). Eventually, the wide, paved road that we were traveling on turned into a narrow, dirt road, and things got a bit more exciting. Apparently, no one really knew exactly where we were going so we’d stop at each village, most Albanian but some Serbian, along the road and ask where Pllajnik, our destination village, was. It was pretty obvious that our group surprised and intrigued the inhabitants in each village. We were composed of a middle-aged man in a suit, a good-looking young local woman, a local, but cultured young man, a tan skinned Dominican, and an Irish looking American. I found the situation more humorous than uncomfortable as I’ve been to a few other countries that I’ve been stared  at shamelessly (ie. Bhutan, Thailand, Laos).

Once we got to the target village we walked around searching for people, which at first was a difficult task. People were going about their daily life, doing work that needed to be done, and not many people were enthused about stopping to partake in a twenty minute survey. After a while we were led into a small coffee shop, where a few very friendly men came and completed the survey. One man had 18 family members in his household, which was surprising and at the same time expected for where we were. We had macchiatos and some of the best juice I have ever tasted, freshly made from hand-picked blueberries right outside the village. We noticed in this village that if there was only women home, they would either be not willing to partake in the survey, or else they would only allow Blerina to question them. So Miguel and I spent a lot of time talking to Nart about how it was being a college student in Kosovo, how he felt about the progress of the country (or lack there of), and his future aspirations. All topics very different from the life of an American college student. It truly is amazing how adaptable the spirit of young adults can be. Many of us in America have become so used to the easy lifestyle that we complicate very unimportant issues and take basic needs such as education, human rights, or even a daily food source for granted. Talking to Nart, who grew up in this war-torn country, just made me appreciate how good we have it in America, that’s all.

Still, even though most of these families barely live off what they make, they are generous enough to offer us food and drink when we are the ones taking up their time. One household would not take no for an answer and made a full, homemade, traditional meal for all four of us. Chile and cheese, sausage, eggs, yogurt, peppers, bread, and some other strong cheese were my American interpretations of what I was eating. Hands down the best food I have had here in Kosovo so far. We all had to force as much food as we could into our stomachs since they gave us so much and we did not want to waste anything. We stayed with this family for a while talking and then made our way back to the car, tired and full.

Today we are helping Blerina create the skeleton for the NINA survey, which has more about three times as many variables as the household survey. This will take a while… Other than this, we have to help create the other household survey skeleton, input hundreds of the first type of surveys into SPSS, maybe visit Mitrovica one more time, and celebrate Miguel’s birthday this weekend! Sleep is for the weak…

Hopefully I’ll have time for another blog or two during the next week.

Our Trip To Mitrovica

This is a small video I put together of clips from our trip to Mitrovica.

Take a look:

Miguel

Blla Blla Blla and Dokufest

Overall Dokufest was a good experience aside from the small setbacks. Once again we traveled to Prizren on bus so we could go to the 10th annual Dokufest. Look at the past posts to see what Dokufest is about. It was great to visit Prizren again because it is such a nice city and every city in Kosovo has its own feel. On Saturday night we ended up at this block-party sort of thing but I ended up splitting from the group to meet up with some of my other friends. Nuri and his childhood friend Fatos ended up taking me to Cafe Mullini. To my surprise there was a concert going on and from the outside one could hear the crowd going wild. The band playing was Blla Blla Blla and there music was more than great. Blla Blla Blla is a Albanian-Macedonian band from Skopje, Macedonia and they sure know how to put on a good show. There music from my perspective was a sort of fusion of rock, experimental rock, punk and tiny bit of Jazz. Even though I couldn’t understand the lyrics, I could still listen to how they flowed together and how the crowd sang with the lead singer. For some reason they remind me of System of a Down but overall they are in a category of their own. Seeing Blla Blla Blla jam made the trip to Dokufest more than worth it and I hope to see these guys play in the future.

Check them out:

Miguel

Our Research Thus Far

Currently we have just finished putting together the variables for the household survey that was implemented in Prishtina. We created around 65 variables for this survey, which will allow us to create descriptive statistics of all 3000 completed surveys. SPSS is the software we are using to create this skeleton that will allow us to enter all the data of the 3000 surveys. Max and I even created a key for the variables codes, which will allow anyone to understand the codes used for the variables. Tomorrow we will input 30 – 40 surveys into SPSS to see if the variables were put in correctly. This will allow us to run some descriptive statistics, frequencies and create some charts. It feels really good to help with the progress of the energy efficiency research I participated in last time I was in Kosovo.

We have also been learning more about the NINA surveys, which will be conducted in two areas in Kosovo one being the Dragash municipality. The survey will be conducted in different villages, which have Albanian and Gorani inhabitants. We will be helping Blerina with the variables for the NINA survey too. This trip has been good in the sense of possible capstone projects especially after we saw the lead tailings in Mitrovica. Mitrovica allowed us to see the lead issue and how this is a tremendous problem in Mitrovica. Traveling through Prishtina, Prizren and Mitrovica has also allowed us to see the problem with poverty and unemployment in Kosovo and what exactly needs to be focused on to fix it. Overall, I feel that Max and I bring completely different skills to the table, which has benefited us as a team. Hopefully we will keep working together on future research projects after we get back to the states.

Best,

Miguel

Doku Film Fest in Prizren and SPSS

Returning from Mitrovica was a relief, as we had received so many warnings about crossing the bridge and whatnot. We made it back to Prishtina unscathed and felt the day trip was a very successful and engaging experience. Since Friday was the last day we would see all of the University of Prishtina students we went out with them to some clubs to have some fun. Also a successful adventure…

The next day we took a bus south to Prizren, where a huge film festival was going on. There were thousands of young people there just walking around enjoying each other’s company, the live music, and the short films and documentaries being played around the city. It took us a bit of time to ask around and find a cheap motel but we finally got to one that  had a room that held six of us for only 5 euros a person. There was a Roma wedding going on at the motel which was very interesting to watch and we almost decided to stay instead of going out to the festival.

When we got to the center of town it was around 10 at night and the place was packed full of people everywhere. Walking around, sitting at cafes, dancing in clubs, dancing in the streets, just young people (many good-looking girls) everywhere. We found an outdoor party going on complete with a professional DJ, lights and all so we hung out and danced there for a while. Miguel split off from me and a few girls to meet up with a couple of other friends and discovered an amazing rock band from Macedonia that I was kind of bummed I missed out on. Although we didn’t watch any films at the festival, we still had a good time in Prizeren and came back to Prishtina ready to work.

Monday we started with our “hands-on” work of entering survey questions into a data compilation system, called SPSS. We had to take each question, about 65 in all, and and turn them all into usable variables that one would be able to make certain large scale, descriptive statistics about and scientific correlations and graphs out of. There are about 3000 surveys that need to be entered into the skeleton that Miguel and I made on Monday and Tuesday, so we had to be very careful about how we did things. We have two different surveys that we need to make skeletons for so that the data can easily be entered by users that may be less knowledgeable about the software. One is a revised energy efficiency survey, which has about 30 more questions than the original one (Around 90 questions). The other survey is a more general questionnaire about some different environmental problems in the Sharr mountains in southern Kosovo. This is being conducted by a group called NINA, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (see http://www.nina.no/ninaenglish/Start.aspx) and it ranges across a few Balkan countries including Macedonia and Albania. Their main goals are to assess the use and management of natural resources in the area and whether the use is sustainable. This will be where most of our time will go in the remaining two weeks we are here in Kosovo, along with teaching other students that live here how to enter the surveys into SPSS.

This weekend we were originally planning to return to Mitrovica to attend a celebratory festival for the success of the Roma relocation, but as tensions have risen in the area we have had to make other plans. It’s very lucky that we made our trip to Mitrovica on Friday, just a few days before the northern area became more dangerous. You can read more about the tensions on BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14303165). We will most likely join the AUK summer group in a trip to Macedonia, just to explore another Balkan country and relax.

More blogs and hopefully more pictures later this week!