It has suddenly come up that I need to return to the US for medical reasons. Nothing life threatening, I’ll have a simple surgery and the PC is sending me to Washington DC this summer for a month to six weeks. It isn’t that uncommon that a volunteer needs to be “medically evacuated” from their country, and apparently I am the next lucky candidate! Assuming that everything goes as planned, I should be returning to Macedonia later on this summer (I’ve been telling people August). Unfortunately this means I will most likely miss the English summer camp that I’ve been working on for the last several months (however, they can still really use your financial support and I have some students who will attend).
Anyway, health is a higher priority, so I am fortunate that the PC is taking care of me. I will be staying at a hotel in Washington DC. Once I check in and have a room number, I can have mail sent to me. Let me know if you’d like the address and/or phone number.
Thanks for all of your prayers, moral support, kind words, good energy and thoughts. I am very honored to serve and represent our country with the Peace Corps and appreciate all of the encouragement and support I’ve gotten from everyone.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Saturday, June 03, 2006
First National Essay Contest
Since January of this year I've been working on a project with a couple other volunteers. We were coordinators for the First National Essay Contest in Macedonia. This was part of this years events to honor the Peace Corps 45 year anniversary. So, the topic was about volunteering:
"What does the word 'volunteer' mean to you and what is the importance of volunteering? What have you done in the past as a volunteer? What volunteering opportunities do you see in your future?
Students grades 7-12 all over the country participated, and the essays were written in English. There were workshops on writing and about volunteering, since it is not a very familiar concept in this culture. We had a good turn out, considering this was our first year.
We had judges who picked 5 regional winners. Two of my students at my school were regional winners and they got certificates. I was very proud of them and so were their English teachers that I teach with.
Then we had a National Awards Ceremony on June 2nd. This was a big day. We had 3 National Winners that were invited to the awards ceremony at the Peace Corps office in Skopje. The US Ambassador, Gillian Milovanovic was there to present the awards. We had prizes donated and our winners got a very nice brand new mobile phone, a 2 night stay at a classy hotel at Lake Ohrid, a very nice English-Macedonian dictionary, a World Almanac and a framed certificate.
A few local Macedonian newspapers wrote about the Awards Ceremony and Essay Contest and we even made the US embassy (in Skopje)'s website!
http://skopje.usembassy.gov/outstanding_essays.html
This was a lot of hard work that really paid off. We hope that this will become an annual event!
US Ambassador Gillian Milovanovic with the three essay contest winners.
"What does the word 'volunteer' mean to you and what is the importance of volunteering? What have you done in the past as a volunteer? What volunteering opportunities do you see in your future?
Students grades 7-12 all over the country participated, and the essays were written in English. There were workshops on writing and about volunteering, since it is not a very familiar concept in this culture. We had a good turn out, considering this was our first year.
We had judges who picked 5 regional winners. Two of my students at my school were regional winners and they got certificates. I was very proud of them and so were their English teachers that I teach with.
Then we had a National Awards Ceremony on June 2nd. This was a big day. We had 3 National Winners that were invited to the awards ceremony at the Peace Corps office in Skopje. The US Ambassador, Gillian Milovanovic was there to present the awards. We had prizes donated and our winners got a very nice brand new mobile phone, a 2 night stay at a classy hotel at Lake Ohrid, a very nice English-Macedonian dictionary, a World Almanac and a framed certificate.
A few local Macedonian newspapers wrote about the Awards Ceremony and Essay Contest and we even made the US embassy (in Skopje)'s website!
http://skopje.usembassy.gov/outstanding_essays.html
This was a lot of hard work that really paid off. We hope that this will become an annual event!
US Ambassador Gillian Milovanovic with the three essay contest winners.
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