One of The Best Thanksgivings Ever

Celebrating Thanksgiving has been a beloved tradition for PC in Macedonia, with a big Thanksgiving dinner for all the staff, current volunteers, trainees and their host families. It was a real festive occasion; there were probably about 200 people in attendance (with about 70 volunteers & trainees currently serving in Macedonia). It was held at a nice restaurant in Veles, all the families and volunteers brought food. Peace Corps provided the turkeys (15 total, shipped over from the US). My host mom made mashed potatoes (purée kompiree), baked tikva (pumpkins) and a kind of cornbread. She wouldn’t allow me to help with the cooking. However, I did help with the decorating and setting up at the restaurant. We took pumpkins from my family’s garden for decoration, as well as dry leaves and flowers.
First our country director got up and said a few words. Then my friend Erika and I gave brief speeches about what Thanksgiving is and the history behind it. Erika gave hers in Albanian and mine was in Macedonian. We both read our speeches that were written with the help from our language teachers. It was the first time that I had heard Albanian spoken, Erika did an amazing job, the language is very melodic, it reminded me a little of French! When I gave my speech, I was nervous, but it went well and I was glad I did it. Then Sara W. (another trainee) gave a short, touching and humorous speech about things we are grateful for, including the hospitality of our host families, the assistance from the PC staff, as well as the support and love from our families and friends back in the US…oh yeah, and letters & packages from them too!
Then the dinner began, which was buffet style. One of the restaurant staff carved the turkeys. There was an incredible amount of food there; the table was packed and the dishes were almost overlapping each other, so there was plenty of food for everyone. Both Macedonian and American food were present (some people got creative with making things like stuffing and apple pie with the ingredients that were available). The only common staple missing were cranberries (not available here). There was also raijka (“rock-eeah”), liquor made from grapes, and plenty of “sok” (sodas).
The program continued after dinner with a group of us trainees leading a rendition of “America, the Beautiful”, and trainees from Negotino giving a short skit of a typical Thanksgiving day in the states (including pie-making and football watching). Then the group from Chaska led the traditional Macedonian dance “The Oro” (which is A LOT like Greek dancing; a little like line dancing, but slower, holding hands, stepping and leg swinging in unison). This was one of my favorite moments of the evening. There were perhaps 150 people, Macedonians and Albanians, Volunteers and Staff, young and old, people of all ages, backgrounds, ethnicities, skin color, languages and gender smiling and laughing over a universal custom: dancing and making merry.
After returning home, I shared the photos and stories with my host grandmother (There was a limited number of people allowed to attend). Then my host brother and two of his friends/cousins arrived. One of them brought out an accordion and the party continued in the small living room with dancing and music! I laughed, danced and, of course, took photographs. Overall, it was a fantastic evening.
This has had to be one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve ever had. The only thing I would’ve changed is to have had my family back home in the US to share it with!

A little more about Macedonian culture & some other websites...

Macedonian Culture

Promaya: a draft. There is a prevalent belief in this culture that sitting in a draft will get you sick.

Over indulgence of children, yet physical discipline, like slapping is tolerated.

Students are responsible for their education, not parents or the teachers. The teacher’s responsibility is to cover the curriculum (which has been mandated by the government).

Preferring never to be alone

Wearing or using each other’s clothes and possessions (between family members)

Always offering food or drink to everyone present

Freely commenting on each other’s personal appearance

Viewing older people as family leaders

Giving an odd number of flowers except for occasions of mourning

Wearing black clothes for one year after the death of a close family member

Asking pointed questions about how much money someone makes, how much personal property/possessions cost.

Hospitality:
Guests are treated like royalty here. My family treats me like a guest. They insist that I not lift a finger to help around the house (although I try at times), my host mom does my laundry. Food is a big deal here. My host family is constantly shoving food at me, even after I have said several times that I am full. If I am not paying attention, they will give me a larger portion of food than I can physically eat. They are confused by the fact that I don’t eat bread (because apparently everyone in Macedonia eats bread). If I don’t eat enough food to their liking, they think that I didn’t like it, that their must be something wrong with it.

Volunteering:
This concept hasn't really caught on in this culture. People often don't understand why someone would want to volunteer. Sometimes people are suspicious as to why we PC Volunteers come to their country, occasionally they suspect we are spies for the US government. Sometimes I am asked for the real reason why I am in Macedonia. I've written an essay about this and will post it here very soon.

WEBSITES:
Sometime soon I will create links for the following websites, however I don't have much time to figure out how to do so...until that time, here they are:

Other BLOGS from PCV's/PCT's in Macedonia:

http://sararish.blogspot.com
http://lizabbett.blogspot.com/
http://www.adamanddanielle.com/
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/darcieswein/macedonia-pst/1099750560/tpod.html

Info about Macedonia:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/europe
http://www.macedonia.org/
http://faq.macedonia.org/

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.

Before the Rain

I just watched the movie “Before the Rain” directed by Milcho Manchevski, a Macedonian film, 1994, which won tons of awards including a Academy Award nomination in ‘95 for Best Foreign Language Film.

I was really impressed. This is a movie more Americans need to see. Keeping in mind that it has an "R" rating, and is pretty graphic at times, it is thought provoking and very well done. It may be hard to find, but I encourage you to see it if you can. “Scarecrow video” in Seattle specializes in movies like this.

Of course I am feeling pretty naïve at this point about all of the politics and history involved in this region of former Yugoslavia. Pretty naïve indeed. We are encouraged not to talk about politics, at least until we have been here longer, have a better grasp of the language and are more familiar with the situation.

The tension between Albanians and Macedonians is omnipresent. There is a monument in the middle of my village to a single Macedonian soldier that was killed by an Albanian in the recent (2001) conflict. When I learned that, I got a little more insight into why there is a lot of anger and tension against Albanians.

There are no easy answers, there are no winners. Healing and closure feel like a long ways away.
Like right now, the fact that Macedonia is struggling with the current situation in Kosovo, which I don’t even really know much about other than the fact that Americans are strongly encouraged not to go there right now, and this country is also still bickering with Greece over their official name…Greece has issues with them using the name of Macedonia so, to placate their NATO neighbor, the country name is currently “Former Yugoslavic Republic of Macedonia”.

Of course I am forming my own opinions…however, I will not try to sway you, the reader, at this time. With the Peace Corps encouragement…I am still very much an observer, quietly listening and learning more about the history and politics before I tiptoe into politically heated debates and discussion.

In the meantime, go check out the movie “Before the Rain”…

P.S. There is a sequel as well, “Dust” (2001)

My future home in Macedonia...

Thursday I got out of the house for the first time so that I could go to the meeting to learn about site announcements. They took us trainees in one at a time. Todd got Negotino, Marita and Shauna are both near Lake Ohrid, probably the most beautiful region of the country, Lindsay is in the large city of Kumanovo and I am in the city of Kochani.

Overall, I am happy with my site, although I think I would’ve liked a larger city. Kochani is approx 33,000 and the school I’ll be working at also has some Roma kids, so I’m glad about that. There is also another current PCV in this town, Marilyn, who is working with an NGO to help the Roma population, which I’m excited about. I’m also not that far from Stip, which is where Rachel, a Mac 8 who’s extended for a third year, lives and teaches at a high school.

My guide book says there’s not much about the town of Kochani, but a couple things of interest to me is that there are some hot springs nearby, as well as some ancient roman ruins and is near to the ancient Roman Road “Diagonal way” which connected Stobi to Bulgaria.

Also I've been told that this is a beautiful part of the country and that there are some nice hikes in the area. It is roughly 2 hours away from the capital of Skopje.

Next week we will all be meet our counterparts and visit our future sites for 3 days.

“There is not much in the town itself as, until communist industrialization, it had mostly been a farming settlement since the time of Aleksander III of Macedon. Around 330 BC, Aleksandar brought back rice from India, which was planted in these fertile fields. The ancient paddy fields are still worked today, many by hand, and they provide most of Macedonia’s rice.”

--The Bradt Guide to Macedonia by Thammy Evans.

Sick and Smothered

Let me first preface this by saying that I love my host family and they are sweet people with good intentions.

So I’ve been sick for almost a week. I started feeling crummy last weekend when our group visited the trainees staying in the nearby community of Sveti Nickole (Saint Nickolas). That morning I had woken up to a sore throat. By that evening it turned into a headache as well. I ended up spending the entire day on Sunday in bed.

Superstitions are common in some cultures. In Macedonia, there is a common opinion that sitting in a draft, called “promaya”, will cause you to get sick. My family has a couple of ideas about what caused my illness. Mostly they blame the fact that I’ve been washing my hair in the AM and going out without drying it (an advantage to having short hair). They also blame Sveti Nickole and the fact that I drank cold soda when I was there. (I, of course, believe I got a virus because my immune system was down due to stress and not enough sleep).

By Monday I knew that I had a bad cold. I stayed in bed all day. My family became very concerned and tried to persuade me to call the doctor. I tried to explain (in my broken Macedonian) that I didn’t think it was necessary. I knew that the doctor would tell me to do all the things that I was doing already; resting, drinking liquids, taking aspirin, cough suppressants, etc (which fortunately are supplied in my medical kit). By Monday evening I gave into their insistence and called the Peace Corps medical doctor. I explained my symptoms and what I was doing to get better. She agreed with me and then spoke to my family to calm their nerves. Monday after lunch my family wanted me to stay downstairs with my baba (grandma) because it is warmer down in her room (thanks to a wood-burning stove) and it’s next to the outdoor bathroom. Of course, it’s also where everyone eats their meals, watches TV is and where all the guests “negosti” (visit). I ended up in the bed of my baba’s living room for the next two days. Although I could lie down and rest and I was being pampered like a small child, my family also kept waking me up every couple of hours to see how I was doing. They were frequently offering me coffee, tea, bread, vegetables, meat, and chocolates. I soon developed a runny noise and a bad cough.

Monday night I vomited so on Tuesday I stopped eating all foods and only drank water and tea. At this point my family acted as though I had something life-threatening. I tried to rest while my host dad watched football on TV. I declined all offers of food from them. I told them I just wanted to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep very well with my nose all stopped up and coughing all night. My baba was sick as well, and my host mom had three teeth pulled! (I suspect that once you have a bad tooth in this country, they just yank it out, which would explain why most of the old people don’t have many teeth left!). So here we were all feeling ill.

It was very interesting to me how there seemed to be no concept of what foods are best to feed a person who is sick. I was offered all kinds of foods that I know are not easy to digest. I did request eggs a couple of times, but that was about the only kind of “easily digestable” food I got. My sore throat longed for something cold to help the swelling; a cold drink, an ice cube or ice cream. But I knew I would get none of it. After three days one of my fellow trainees smuggled me a soda when she came to visit me, from my request, it was awesome.

At one point this week I vaguely remember six women entering the room, all sitting down to “negosti” and have tea. I could hear them clucking their tongues as they talked about me, how I was sick and not eating. They again offered me food and tea. I mumbled in Macedonian that I was tired and wanted to sleep. Then I remember one of the women standing over me, saying my name, practically wagging her finger at me, lecturing me in jumbled bunch of words about my being sick, that I should eat. I barely opened my eyes to look at her, I was so tired. Next thing you know my language teacher was above me calling my name. The women were gone. I learned later that she had driven them out. She stayed for a short while, talking with family and with me and I was so happy when she suggested I move back upstairs to my room. On Wednesday I had a house call from a Peace Corps doctor and nurse, which was nice. They were able to confirm that I didn’t have anything more serious than a viral infection, so no antibiotics were necessary. It was then that I learned that there were single-use strip thermometers in the medical kit, as well as some nasal decongestants. I was given some more cough drops and ibuprofen. They also gave my host family some peace of mind as well. I started to feel better mid-week, but it’s been a slow recovery.

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.

More photos!

Photos of my host family (mom, dad & grandma), my language class (fellow Peace Corps Trainees in my village and Language Teacher) and a bunch of us in front of the local church.