Dear Albania,

I think it’s cool and I’m duly impressed that you speak fluent Italian. But I know that you know that I do not.

Do I look like the hundreds of medical tourists from Italy, who despite their heavily bandaged, once-Roman noses, manage to evoke effortless refinement and personal style? I do not. I am an American. The stains on my t-shirt come from food that dripped from my grimy fingers before I wiped them on my pants. I wear socks with sandals. I have, at least once, appeared in a coffee shop in pajamas. If I had a car, I would eat in it… exclusively.

Dear Albania,

I am making my best effort to learn your rich and beautiful language. But I am an American. I did not grow up covertly boosting my TV signal to pick up Romantic programs from the unattainable country of dreams across the Adriatic Sea. I grew up watching Bozo the Clown. In English. The first chance I had to hear another language was in the 9th grade. And it was French. And I hate French.

Dear Albania,

As I might have mentioned, I’m doing the best I can to communicate with you. But I know that if I hesitate for one second, or if I ask you to repeat a single word, you will immediately switch, without warning, to fluent Italian. This practice brings me no end of grief. For me to have half a chance of finishing our conversation, or any hope of one day attaining Albanian fluency, I’m going to need you to speak to me in Albanian.

Dear Albania,

No worries, I already know that even when I ask you politely and clearly, as a favor, if you could please, for heaven’s sake, finish our conversation in the language in which we started it, you will respond to me with a kind look, a deferential Albanian head wobble, and a loudly enunciated “SI!”