Macedonian Holiday Season

Since my last post just after New Years, we've been in the middle of the Orthodox holidays here in Macedonia. The two most significant celebrations involve events around Bozhik (Orthodox Christmas), held on January 7th, and the Old New Year (according to the Julian calendar) on January 14th.

For Bozhik, most of the other Peace Corps volunteers throughout Macedonia, especially in my MAK 16 class, spent the holiday with their old host families from PST. I decided to stay with my new host family in Obleshevo and it was really interesting and often fun cultural experience. The festivities started on Thursday night, the night before the day before Christmas (which is called Badnik). I went with my host parents to a large bonfire in an old soccer field on the outskirts of my village, and I spent most of the night making new friends, watching people dance the oro in the cold rain, and drinking hot rakija. Hot rakija has to be my favorite of the national drinks because while it is super strong, it has a nice taste to it (sugar helps) and keeps you warm in the cold Macedonian winter. I don't know if it tops drinking delicious hot mulled wine in the center of Krakow a few Decembers ago, but I'll take it.

The next day was Badnik, and there wasn't a whole lot going on until the large dinner we had around 8pm. It was by far the most ceremonial meal I've had since I've been in Macedonia. There were no guests (aside from me) outside of the immediate family. Once the food was all ready to go on the table, my host grandfather (dedo) went outside the room to invite Jesus to the meal, and then set aside a small piece of bread for him at the table. Once it was all set, we started on our meal, all without meat, and included sarma (cabbage rolls stuffed with rice), phyllo-dough pastry (cant remember the name) similar to burek, and assorted fruits and nuts. For drinks we had kompot (sort of like a non-alcoholic sangria) and rakija, along with a bottle of wine that I bought to share with everyone. Finally, on the actual day of Christmas, we went na gosti to my host mother Silvana's parents' house in Kocani for a golem ruchek (big lunch). It was overall pretty low-key compared to the previous days, but enjoyable nonetheless. Photos here:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150478789449117.365947.525244116&type=1&l=d5444ac91c

After a few days off, next on the agenda was the Old New Year, and a bunch of volunteers from all over Macedonia decided to make the trek to the renowned Vevchani Carnival. Located in a small village about 30 min from the town of Ohrid, the Carnival has been known throughout Macedonia as the place to go for Old New Year. It didn't disappoint. The costumes were crazy and creative, everyone had a great time, and I'd definitely go back again next year. I don't want to do a complete play-by-play here, but the first day (friday) was the opening parade, which involved seeing all the costumes/masks on display, along with the burning of the Greek flag wrapped over a wooden coffin. Yeah, Greece isn't super popular here in the Republic of Macedonia.

For Day Two, we expected the main event to be a bonfire where all the masks were burned in the town centre, but additional highlights included a massive snowball war ('fight' is too mild for this one) where we were initially chucking snowballs at each other in our small group of 5 or so before locals got involved, and it escalated into all-out urban warfare with a like six neighborhood kids (and passing locals...one of which dressed as a SS officer). They tried hiding behind parked cars so eventually we started charging them and it was just crazy fun. In the midst of all this, we were invited to join a group of people dressed as trees to go na gosti with them at random houses in Vevcani. So we marched off with them, still trying to defend ourselves from the 'snipers' continuing the snowball war, until we reached the first house, which welcomed us with hot rakija and free food. We stayed there for about 20 minutes, then we went off to another house...then another...eventually it was time to go to the bonfire after 6 houses or so and we proceeded to dance around the fire for a while before a few people from our group needed to go catch a bus. At that point the Carnival was pretty much over, so we just retreated back to our hotel to relax, find food, and look at the all crazy pictures from the weekend. Here are some of them: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150478846599117.365957.525244116&type=1&l=afce36c0bd

Goodbye 2011. Macedonia owns 2012.

Four days into 2012 and I feel like I should at least acknowledge what a crazy year 2011 was before I look ahead. To start, I rang in the New Year in San Francisco with my best friends at MIIS. By the next month, I had learned not only I was medically cleared for Peace Corps but was given my 27 month assignment to Macedonia. Leaving in September. So instead of spending a relaxing stress-free summer at home, I decided why not apply for and take an internship at an NGO in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Build some experience working with NGOs, use Russian all summer, live in a part of the world that is at best known by most Americans as the "Stans"...what's not to like? So I bought my $1700 roundtrip ticket and sent in for my business visa to get me through the summer without getting booted.

However, before I could embark on this particular journey, I needed to knock out another semester of grad school at MIIS. This entailed totally rocking several group project assignments (and brought me out of the Stone Age on social media topics), managing to write a 10 page paper in Russian on bureaucratic corruption (given that I couldn't put together a basic sentence in Russian around June 2010, I'm fairly proud of this), a 3 week intensive seminar on development project management, and topped off with an epic going away party in San Francisco with my best friends from school. With everything academic done in mid June, I had a week off to pack up my life, or sell/donate it, because I was getting lean and mean for my upcoming Peace Corps service. So I shipped everything I wanted to keep or take with me to Macedonia to Springfield, packed my remaining bags with stuff I needed for my summer adventures. Which started with a family vacation in the Canadian Rockies! My sister's family road-tripped from Seattle to Canmore, AB while my parents and I met up in Calgary enroute to Banff National Park. It was an short but amazing trip, and I have never seen such consistently beautiful mountain scenery. More than that, it was one of the best family trips I've ever had, and it was going to be the last time I would see my sister's family in person until Christmas 2012. So my parents and I took the same flight back to Virginia at the end, and after a 24 hour breather I repacked my bags and departed for Istanbul enroute to Almaty.

Let's just say the travel to the eastern end of Central Asia is pretty killer. Since I rarely sleep on planes, I was beaten down and exhausted by the time I arrived in Kazakhstan, and it took me a good week to get on a normal sleep schedule. But I dove right into the work at the NGO, got involved in a bunch of different project ideas and proposals, stumbled at first and eventually found my stride in Russian, and before I knew it the summer was over and I was heading back to Virginia for another short breather before heading across the Atlantic again, this time to Macedonia. I was fortunate to have some time with my parents and catch up with a few old friends before catching a train to Philadelphia for Peace Corps staging. Somehow we managed to get a hurricane and tropical storm flooding in that timeframe, and I just missed an earthquake. Not exactly natural disaster-central in suburban northern Virginia, but hey, why not. I arrived in Macedonia on September 11th, and the rest is in my other blog posts that I don't feel like repeating.

It's been a strange, fascinating, and exhausting year. Fittingly, I welcomed the New Year not by attending some big celebration or house party, but instead doing absolutely nothing except relax, listen to music and enjoy being warm. Perfect way to end a crazy year. Looking forward to seeing what the Year of Macedonia has in store me.