Update..

Hi everyone,

I figured since I am on break from work, and really have no current important responsibilities right now I figured I should give a much needed update about how everything in Macedonia is going. I will give tyou the short form first. Good. 

Moving on, I am enjoying my time with my new host family and have developed my Makedonski quite a bit and am learning more and more every day. I have a stable tutor, Maya, who was a Language Facilitator previously, before she fell in love  and married one of the PCV’s Natty who also resides in Sveti Nikole. I am now able to understand most of my host family’s jokes and am able to joke around with them.  Sometimes I don’t feel like I do enough to help out in the house but I try to help out. 

I honestly don’t feel like I do much in general and this isn’t any different than my lazy life at home, however the students are on winter break and once January 20^th comes back around I will be working at the school again. I have a bunch of beginning ideas of what I would like to do, so hopefully at least one takes hold and is something the community, or the school, will want to work on with me. I know there is a previously existing Adult English class that Natty is leaving behind that he wants me to do, but honestly I feel a lot more comfortable working with children and don’t really have a lot of knowledge about working with adults. Though maybe if I take a look at the books, it will be something I can take hold of as well. 

Living with the host family is getting more comfortable as well. The host mother is off work right now as well because she is a teacher in the local village school. Host father works odd hours: sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes in the night. He works security at the forest in town and sits in an office watching video cameras. In the summers he helps build houses. My host brother spend a bit longer here recently since they had Christmas and other family bonding times, but went back to the capital city Skopje a couple days ago. He works animation for a Macedonian tv show, that is basically a political parody. I don’t quite understand it, but maybe over time I will understand why it is funny.

SO what do I do with all of my free time? I spend a lot of it on the computer, talking with my host family, and drinking wine with my sitemates Lizzy and Dan. Otherwise, I tend to just walk around and enjoy my town and talk to all the kids that say hi to me, whether they are my students or not. It is a very interesting concept really, I think my new name is Hello. 

What are some interesting things I have done? Well Christmas here is on the 7^th of January, so the day before Christmas eve there is a holiday that is supposedly designed for the men of Macedonia. Lizzy invited me to come over to her apartment and hang out and then maybe go to the event. Basically there is a bonfire and the men drink, dance, and sing songs, and eat. As I was walking to Lizzy’s apartment, I passed about 4 different fires of the sort. People also shoot BB guns in the air and set noisemaker fireworks. So I went to her apartment and we didn’t really know if we wanted to go to this mans event for the fact that it was a little weird to have two American girls and a bunch of drunken men, so we observed from lizzy’s room. Then they saw us. Lizzy’s landlord came and yelled ‘Ide Ide Lizzy’ meaning come come and then came to her door and started knocking. So we ended up going outside, eating, drinking some hot rakija and having fun. There were women there and delicious food, and singing and a great time. It was probably one of the best days I’ve had so far in Macedonia.

Pics thanks to Lizzy

Also, I posted a new address to the left of the blog, if you look. I can now get mail to my house rather than to the Peace Corps office in Skopje. It is much, much, much more convenient and I would love to receive cards/letters. Seriously, they make me ridiculously happy and I read them over and over and over. This being said, I only have maybe three letters and reading those three over and over again at this point I almost have them memorized. 

-Emma