American Christmas in Macedonia after one month at site

It's been a few weeks since my last posting, so I figure it was time for an update. The month of December has been an eventful one, though my work at the municipality has been relatively slow. Many people at the office are busy trying to finish their end-of-year requirements (like accounting audits) but for me, definitely not busy yet. As we were repeatedly told throughout PST, the first couple of months are often slow, and also I think being placed in a small village without previous work with Peace Corps volunteers could be a factor. It will take them sometime to figure out what it is I can do, while it will take me time to get better at the language (particularly the dialect) and figure out how I can make my own contribution. It's not like I haven't been sitting around doing nothing, though. I've been in contact with another volunteer based in southeastern Macedonia with extensive knowledge of agriculture and the business world in general, and he has put me in touch with some people who might be able to work with the Rice Cluster (a cooperative of rice producers in the municipality) to address their desire to find international markets for their special brand of rice. I've also done some research on some programs that could be useful, such as study tours and knowledge transfer opportunities, but it is very much a work in progress at this stage. I'm glad at least to have a little more to focus my attention on, but mainly I just want feel more comfortable with the language. On the plus side, I've spent a lot of time reading Macedonian news articles and my vocabulary list is growing daily. I'm not going to lie, knowing how to Russian well is a huge help.

Outside of work, I have spent a lot of time both at home and visiting the nearby town of Kocani (9km) in the past few weeks. One of the volunteers from our class, Morgan, lives in Kocani and we have become good friends fast, and it practically feels like we are neighbors, except for the fact that I have to rely on unreliable buses and taxis that run through my village to get there. I have become quite used to standing at the bus stop for 40+ minutes and freezing my butt off waiting for a bus. The main problem is that buses are either a few minutes early or really late. So you have to arrive early in case of the former, but most of the time the latter is the norm. Last week I waited an hour and 20 minutes for a bus (partly due to weather) in the blowing snow. It was cold. But anyway, Kocani has become my 2nd home, which is nice because I really need to have a break from Macedonia sometimes and spend time with Americans who live nearby. Fortunately they are awesome people so I lucked out with my location in that sense.

Within the village, I've gone na gosti (basically means going over to a friend's house) a few times to my counterpart Blagoja's house, including a special occasion called slava. Slava is a Saint's Day celebration for an individual home, and in this case it was Saint Nicholas (Sveti Nikola). Generally, slavas involve a lot of food and a fair amount of alcohol consumption. In this case, it was more low-key but I also missed the first day of the slava where there were more guests.

Finally, the most recent big event was spending Christmas with my fellow volunteers in the nearby town of Makedonska Kamenica. It was a very nice way to spend a Christmas when away from family back home. In total, we had about 11 people from various sites throughout Macedonia, including places that are practically on the border with Kosovo. We spent the majority of our time just hanging out, making good food, enjoying hot and cold holiday beverages, and doing our best to make something normal out of the abnormal situation of not being home for Christmas. For me, it was my second Christmas away from home. My first was spent on my first deployment in the Navy, somewhere in the South Pacific, and I don't remember much other than watching Elf in the wardroom with my fellow officers. We didn't watch Elf this time, but we got the Grinch, and Love Actually...I would have preferred Elf, but it is funny that we watched Love Actually because it was definitely on the ship's close-circuit feed during Christmas back on that first deployment, and I remember always seeing the last 15 minutes of that movie, never anything before that. Random I suppose. Anyway, some other activities included chopping down real mini Christmas trees (elka is Christmas tree) in the forest near Sara's (our gracious host and legit domakinka) house, making Gingerbread houses, and feasting on three roast chickens and moussaka for Christmas dinner. All of us had a great time, and I can't think of a better way to spend Christmas when abroad and away from family. For now that's all I've got, but I've included some photos below from the last few weeks to show what I've been up to.

Sworn-in and Settling-in

Since my last post, the next day we had our official Peace Corps swearing-in ceremony at a large restaurant/special event facility near Kumanovo on Thanksgiving Day. The US ambassador to Macedonia, Paul Wohlers, was in attendance and personally led the swearing-in, and gave a short speech before being followed by several officials from the Macedonian government. But the biggest moment (and a bit nerve-wracking) for me was my chance to give a speech thanking the people who helped us get through our training successfully, only it was all in Macedonian and in front of roughly 200 people. The speech was a team effort because another volunteer gave a translation of the speech in Albanian after each paragraph, and we tried to make it light and funny, while still sincere and meaningful. Anyway, when I able to get laughs from the Macedonian audience after the first 'funny' part I knew we were in good shape, aside from 10 sec of terror after losing my place while trying to read tiny Cyrillic text with my glasses and microphone in the way.

So after the ceremonial portion, it was a mad dash get some Thanksgiving turkey and the massive variety of side dishes prepared by the host families and some of the volunteers. And before we knew it, the event was over and everyone went home, and it didn't really register that I wouldn't see most of the other volunteers I've gotten know well until at least a few months, maybe some not until our June inter-service training next year. Although, I suppose we have it pretty good compared to most PC volunteers who are in larger countries with much less developed transportation infrastructure.

The next day I moved to my permanent work site in Obleshevo. I am living with a home-stay family for the duration of my service here. My room is a decent size (see photo), with essentially a large sectional couch for my bed and plenty of storage space. My host family includes two parents (Silvana and Venco)( who are both teachers at primary schools and Dedo (Lazar) who is a retired veterinarian. And of course two cats, one kitten named Marko and an older, less crazy one named Boni. Marko likes to pretend he is Spiderman and you are a large building to be climbed. But he's great and usually just likes to hang out and fall asleep on you. The parents also have two children, but both are away studying, one in Skopje and other in Austria at a music school. The son in Austria plays the accordion, and Silvana showed me a video clip of his accordion skills, so hopefully he'll give us a free concert when he comes home for the holidays. Everyone is very nice and I already feel much more comfortable here than I did in my previous homestay in Kratovo.

For work, I've been at the main office in the Opstina (municipality) and basically have spent the majority of my time reading material about the region and some various things to help me get more familiar with what what's going on around here, along with building my work vocabulary in Macedonian. My exposure to Macedonian is constant since it is rarely spoken at the office (usually either if people want to practice or if I look particularly lost during a conversation) and my host family does not speak English. It will definitely accelerate my language acquisition but it was a pretty intense first few days.