Well, it's been a few weeks since my first blog (we lost wifi access for about two weeks), and suddenly the weather has taken a turn for the...cold. I was out on a run this morning and felt some drops on my head, thinking it was rain, and then looked at my black shirt to see clear evidence of winter's arrival - the first snow. Granted, I probably did not need that to prove the point, since the lack of heating in my home here makes it feel like winter every night. Thankfully, I have a plenty of blankets to pile on my bed to mitigate, but we'll see what happens when it starts to get 'really' cold. Rumors abound that we're going to get heaters from Peace Corps, but until then I will need to reinforce the blanket fortress...
Aside from the weather, we've been in the heart of our pre-service training, starting to pick up the pace a bit with the language classes along with extra technical training sessions. We've had two "Hub Days" in the city of Kumanovo so far. These are the training days we have every two weeks where all the volunteers in the different training communities travel to Kumanovo for a variety of sessions on medical, cross-cultural, and technical topics. More than anything, I've enjoyed this time to catch up with all the volunteers I don't get to see in my community of Kratovo. We seem to have a pretty tight group overall and I think that will come in handy once we all head out to our permanent sites on November 24th. Speaking of which, we have about 8 or 9 days (not sure which day exactly) until we find out where we are going...
As of last weekend, we were permitted to start traveling outside of our training communities (for day trips), but I haven't yet taken advantage of it. Partly the weather was awful last weekend, but I also had an opportunity to get out to my host family's vineyard to pick apples, pears, and lots of grapes. Despite a fairly chilly and intermittently rainy day, I was really happy to finally get out and do something 'cultural' and make some kind of useful contribution. About mid-way through the day, several friends of my host parents stopped by and we had some walnuts and a little rakija (plum or grape brandy). Most of the grapes we picked will be used to make wine or rakija...which I think will come in handy for the cold winter here. Most recently (yesterday) in Kratovo, my friend Mary visited the town from Romanovce, and we managed to get a two hour free tour of some of the historical sites from a man na
med Stevche who owns the Rock Art Centre in town. We also met a amateur kickboxer, had Turkish coffee while we were на гости, and had the opportunity to grind up some fresh spearmint (and have a mandatory rakija break) in an old museum with artifacts dating back at least a couple hundred years, probably a lot more for some. All in all, it was a pretty awesome day.
In the next few weeks, starting Saturday, I'll get a chance to visit Skopje for the first time as part of a Peace Corps "Field Day". We'll met the vast majority of all the volunteers here in Macedonia, and hopefully have a chance to buy some cheap second-hand stuff off the volunteers who are finishing up their service in the next month. Until then, enjoy the photos, and see the link below for more:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150318428404117.340246.525244116&type=1&l=cee38aa771
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