A lot happens during PST

A lot happens during PST (Pre-Service Training) that it is difficult to write about a “typical day”. However, during the week there is almost always language class for 3 to 4 hours a day and twice a week I have my student teaching in Veles (now always at 8am). At the end of training we will be tested on our Macedonian and are supposed to achieve an intermediate level. If we don’t pass the test then we will have a tutor once we go to our sites and have to re-take the test again later. They say that PST is the most stressful time of the PC experience, which I agree with, but I am also a little concerned about when we get plopped down at our sites and we won’t other trainees around to talk to, hang out or get support from. PST is for preparing us for that time. Fortunately we all will have a counterpart, which is a HCN (Host-country National) that will help us and work with us during our assignments at site. "Swearing in" is a big deal. For us, it is on December 16th. There will be a big ceremony and all the important people of Macedonia will be there, including the country president, the US ambassador (who will swear us in) and the mayor of Veles. All of our host families and counterparts will be there, as well as all of the PC staff. At that point we are official Peace Corps Volunteers. Immediately after Swearing in we will go to our sites. I forgot to mention that unfortunately one in our group has left us. Mike, from San Francisco, had to ET (Early Terminate) a couple weeks ago. He had to go back due to family obligations at home. While we are sad that Mike had to go (and most of us didn’t get a chance to say goodbye) it is a general consensus that it is better that he left now than later, after getting to site and being more invested in the community and work. Now our MAC 10 group has 32 trainees. Also, I must say that Macedonian kitchens are ‘magical’ places. The food here is very greasy and starchy, almost always cooked in vegetable oil. A big part of the diet is meat and vegetables. There is some fish, a lot of peppers, salt and sugar. I love the mountain tea here as well as the Mousaka, which I’ve had back home at the Greek restaurant I used to work at, although it is a bit different (cooked vegetables and meat). Also, something unique to this country is ajvar, which is like pureed peppers with tasty spices and then often laden on the plain bread and cheese that is like feta sprinkled on top. It is not too difficult to find a village baba (grandma) or mom stirring up a big vat of ajvar, or carefully peeling each individual pepper, a mound of discarded peels next to them. The other thing that makes them magical is that they frequently do not refridgerate their cooked food. They will store the dishes inside the oven (that is turned off) or in the cupboard and the food will not spoil. My personal theory is that there is too much sugar/oil/fat for it to go bad within a couple of days (because it usually gets eaten up within 2 or 3 days at most). The other volunteers prior to us told us this would happen and no one has gotten sick from the food yet due to this strange habit (it’s not that they don’t HAVE refridgerators, although they are considerably smaller than what we have in the states. Things like yogurt, wine, and milk are usually stored there). Also I should add that a lot of the women here, at least in the villages, make a lot of their own juices, jam and can a lot of fruit. Paulina, my host mom makes a mean apricot juice that is very sweet. Last weekend I went with my fellow village volunteers to another town, Sveti Nikole (Saint Nickolas). We saw a beautiful orthodox church and for the first time, I got to go inside a Macedonian church. It was fantastic, between 500-700 years old. It reminded me a lot of churches in South America, as well as in Greece; lots of frescos, paintings and icons of the saints. This town of approx 10 to 15,000 wasn’t even mentioned in my guide book. Our group from our village hung out with the five other volunteers in Sveti Nikole, they showed us around. There was a little park and plaza, a hill with a large cross on top and a nice view of the town. The previous Saturday the Sveti Nickole group had visited us in our village. We took them on a little hike up the side of the mountain where there’s a great view of Veles, then we went to each of our homes and “negosti’d”, getting stuffed on coffee, “sok” (juice or soda) chocolate sticks, slices of cheese and meat, as well as “slatko” or sickly sweet homemade deserts.
We had just had our site assessment interviews where we met with the program managers and gave some input into what we wanted in terms of our future site and program for the next 2 years. I inquired about the position working with Roma kids near Skopje, but they disappointed me by really talking it down. I let it be known that I was most interested in being in a city the size of Veles (30,000) or bigger and that I wanted to work with Roma kids, either as a primary or secondary assignment. Having previously only been to Veles and my little nearby village I worried about what kind of town I was going to end up in. Rumor had it that our group (Mac 10) was going to be primarily placed in small villages. Once seeing Sveti Nickole, a community smaller than what I would prefer, I realized that even if I got a town this small, I could probably handle it. It didn’t even feel that small. There were the standard things, a post office, market, plaza, coffee shops and restaurants as well as a movie theater (that functions once a week). So it gave me peace of mind about my placement.