Visiting Kochani

On Tuesday Nov. 15th we met our counterparts in Veles. My counterpart’s name is Ljubica (“Loobeetsa”); she is a teacher with 15 years experience and does not hesitate to speak her mind. The good thing is that she has some previous experience with the “Pees Korpz” and Ljubica seems to be very receptive to working and team teaching with me, for which I’m grateful for. I quickly got on her good side; she was especially pleased to learn that I like coffee with sugar.

I must mention here that smoking cigarettes is extremely prevalent. The entire school staff smoke, including the headmaster and the teachers lounge is like a chimney. Second-hand smoke is an inevitable health hazard in this country (with upper respiratory infections being the most common health issue).

On Wednesday I met Ljubica at the hotel and then we caught a bus to Kochani (for about $4 one-way). Everyone has told me that Kochani is a very pretty city, and they were right. In a little less than 2 hours we arrived. First we went to the school where I’ll be working, and I met most of the staff. It was a whirlwind of names and faces. My three days visiting Kochani were full of meeting people, being stuffed full of more tasty, fattening Macedonian meals, visiting numerous classrooms, introducing myself to students and touring the small city. It was also nice to meet the currently serving volunteers in and near Kochani. Unfortunately one of them is COS'ing (Close of Service) and will have left by the time I move there. However she was a wealth of great info and advice. I now know where to buy tofu and dried fruit, eat great pizza, get cheap CD’s and DVD’s as well as visit the local mosque and buy a guitar!

I am ready for my training to be over, but I still have one more month to go. I will be glad to finally move to my city and have my own apartment. Training is hard for many reasons, but one of them is living with a host family and not having that much privacy or independence. I love my family, I know they mean well, but they treat me like a little kid, they even put (too much) sugar in my coffee for me, as if I was incapable of doing it myself! I know it is just a cultural thing. Learning the language is tough too. I think I'll do better when I work with a private tutor. Talking with the other volunteers after returning to site visit makes me realize we are all kind of burned out from training and language lessons. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one.

Oh, and I just bought a copy of the first Harry Potter book in Macedonian! I’m going to try to read it too, but it’ll be slow going for now. Hopefully it will be a good motivator to keep at my language learning!

P.S. Some people have asked about Thanksgiving...obviously it is not celebrated here, but the Peace Corps is going to have a HUGE Thanksgiving dinner for us (15 turkeys have been shipped over from the states) and we will also have entertainment. All of the PC staff and volunteers will be there, including our host families. They project 200 people will attend.