A Stroll to Kocani

I decided yesterday to finally do something I've wanted to do since I arrived at site- walk to Kocani from Obleshevo. Up until the last week, the weather wasn't cooperating, but finally yesterday I had both the free time and beautiful spring-like weather to do it. It also helped that I wanted to go to Kocani to buy some essentials at the supermarket like muesli. Muesli is my daily breakfast food. While it is good on its own, the deliciousness increases exponentially with addition of dedo's homemade yogurt. It is like the Greek yogurt you can buy back in the US, only its not $6 for a 16oz container and it's homemade. Or as they say it here, it's domashno. In my experience (5 1/2 months down), with few exceptions, domashno is always better. Ok, enough digressions. So I was going on a walk to Kocani...

Here's the road to Dolni Podlog. It's a small village on the way to Kocani.

A creek off the side of the road.

A church and cemetery in the village of Dolni Podlog.

Over the duration of my walk, I ran into several people and said hello, though I'm sure they thought I was a bit weird. I tried to avoid taking pictures when people were in the vicinity, lest they think I was going to publish the photos in my next SITREP to the CIA headquarters. Or whatever they call it. Anyway, eventually I made way through Dolni Podlog and Gorni Podlog, and crossed the M5 highway and marched through a medium-sized industrial zone to take the back way into Kocani.

I think this guy is made of motor parts and is playing a cello.

At the end of the industrial zone, looking across to Plachkovica mountain.

Another purpose to my walk was to figure out the route I will take once I purchase a bike. Originally I planned to buy one in December, then it got cold and snowy, so I decided to wait until the spring. With a bike, a trip to Kocani is either 30 denari (one-way bus) or 150 denari (one-way taxi) cheaper while taking no more than around 20 minutes. So anyway, after walking for about an hour and 40 minutes, I made it to Kocani:

I managed to get the items I needed at the supermarket, and then walked towards the city centre in search of insoles for the new shoes I bought in Skopje (no luck). However, during my search, I stopped in a sports store called Orka and met the brother of my host mother's colleague at her school. We talked for a bit about America, and it made me think of something that Macedonians also thankfully enjoy:

Yep, I bought a basketball. There is a primary school directly across from my house in Obleshevo with two basketball hoops, so I think I'll be able to make good use of it. Maybe the 8th graders will let me join them in some games. With March Madness coming up soon back home, it's my way of showing solidarity with my alma mater, the Duke Blue Devils. You'll notice my basketball is also in Blue Devil colors. GTH, Carolina, GTH!

More photos of my walk are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150566042364117.377521.525244116&type=1&l=9694b66ad1

Spring is here?

Well I hope it's here. In the last few days, I've gone from hugging my space heater in my room until I go to sleep to turning it off in the middle of the night and removing layers of clothing so I don't melt. Speaking of melt, the snow is all gone. Sadly, it just reminds me of how drab things looked before the winter kicked into gear. Just brown and muddy. Not really any trees. The mountains look nice, but mountains always look nice and I don't live in the mountains. I live in the 'rice bowl' of Macedonia. Apparently the rice bowl gets flooded in April or so during planting season. That'll be interesting.

Not much new to report from Obleshevo. I just got my first haircut today in about two months. One of my coworkers remarked that it makes me look younger. But given that most people thought I was like 22 when I got here, does that mean I look 18 now? Although 18-year-olds in this country with full beards must be somewhat rare. I also talked to the barber and he wants to come to my English class. I left out the part about me lacking teaching experience or much of a clue in general about what I'm doing, but that's ok. Thankfully, it seems like most people who come to the class don't care, they just want a break from the normal routine and a reason to get out of the house and maybe learn something. Definitely takes the pressure off me! I played hangman with some vocab the other day- it's called бесилка in Macedonian. Which I'm sure you wanted to know. It makes me feel like I'm using the language and 'immersed' when I include Macedonian words, and isn't it so cool with those funny letters?

More about classes. I really need to speak slower. It is hard to remember. Part of me wants to say, "Haha, that's what you get for speaking fast to me all the time in Macedonian" but that wouldn't be very nice or helpful to them. I've found that I also can't expect to run the same lesson the same way for my two village classes. Given the obscene amount of free time I have at work to prepare for classes, I probably shouldn't be so lazy. So for one class I've resigned myself to speaking a little more Macedonian because I noticed a lot fewer blank stares when I tried that.

Host family life has been great after I finally adjusted and got used to it. I rarely cook for myself, and I've accepted that it makes a hell of a lot more sense to do that rather than cooking a meal just because I want to assert my independence. My host mom makes good Macedonian food, and it's more important to me to feel like I'm part of their family and eating their food. However, I did get a chance to cook for them fairly recently when a friend and I made homemade pizza for вечера (dinner!). My host mom was a bit terrified of letting me anywhere near the kitchen, but overall I think it was a success, and my host parents at least pretended to like the pizza (since they ate it). My dedo (grandfather) however wasn't a fan and switched to bread and ajvar pretty quick. You can't win them all.

So I'm a Teacher Now..?

So this was an interesting week- my first week as an English teacher. Right. You might be wondering:

'Do you have any teaching experience?' (Nope)
'Aren't you supposed to be doing Community Development and not TEFL?' (Yes)
'Who would be crazy enough to sign up for a class that you're teaching?' (No idea, but too many)

To give a little background, during my PST site visit back in November, it was pretty clear that the mayor and citizens in the municipality had a strong interest in holding adult English classes once I got settled in here. It didn't matter whether I had teaching experience or not, they just wanted English. So with that noted, we eventually started advertising (flyers around the villages) my existence and the fact that I was going to teach free English classes. I even got a реклама at a recent community forum. But despite that, I had no idea how many people were going to show up. In the week before starting classes, we had two meetings in Obleshevo and Cheshinovo (a nearby village, 5km away) to meet with those interested. We had around 12 show up in Obleshevo and roughly 16 in Cheshinovo. I was happy with that. I might even avoid having to break up people into groups and make my job more complicated, since I had already agreed to hold classes Monday-Thursday from 6-7pm.

So this past Monday, we started class in Obleshevo. 16 people showed up, and the majority knew at least a bit of English, so I felt like communicating wasn't super difficult. My host parents Silvana and Venco even made it, so that was pretty cool. I suppose I can practice English with them at home too, assuming they continue to feed me and let me drink their rakija. As far as my teaching, well, it's going to take a few tries before I get the hang of it. I started really basic, going over the alphabet and introductions, but I got the sense the material was way too easy for most people. As I spend more time with them I should be able to adjust more to their abilities. At the same time, there are a few people who did not know any English. I might have to work two different lessons each class period, and it could be feasible with the small numbers. Needs more thinking.

The following day, I started classes in Cheshinovo. I was told that there might be more people at this class than in Obleshevo. Well, yeah. 45 people wrote their name on the sign-up sheet. Including like 8-10 kids. Not adults. Not part of the plan. Despite cramming all those people into one classroom, it wasn't a total катастрофа, but it was not what I expected either. While it's hard to tell kids they can't come to class because it is for adults, it needs to be done for several reasons. One, they're already getting English classes at school. Two, I don't know what they're being taught in their English classes at school, and what I'm teaching could be at odds with that, and Three, I can't have 45 people come to every class.

For Wednesday, I was back in Obleshevo and it was probably my best class day of the week. Partly because I had the students слушатели (thanks dedo) play a matching memorization game (thanks PST) for about 25-30 min and I just walked around the room making sure they weren't cheating. But better than that, I ran out of material with about 15 min left, and decided to wing it and it worked. I closed the class by giving them an opportunity to use the question words I introduced and ask me anything they wanted. Big surprise, they wanted to know if I was married, how old I was, how many girlfriends I've had, etc. Very Macedonian questions. But overall it was decent. I think I do much better with the smaller group (about 16 again) than 45. Then again, who doesn't. 45 practically requires a lecture hall, stadium seating, and a really awful Powerpoint presentation.

Finally, I wrapped up class on Thursday in Cheshinovo and it was literally the same number of people, only this time I think half the audience members were kids. Not high school kids but 8-year-olds. Went about the same as Tuesday, though I had some help from a really nice guy named Goce who speaks nearly fluent English, and was home temporarily in the village while waiting for a visa to go back to Iraq. Works for DynCorp as a security contractor. So anyway, I managed to get through material I planned to cover (Where are you from? I'm from...) but my desire to get creative with such a big group was pretty low. Just getting everyone to do something simple like practice a phrase with their neighbor was a struggle. I'll just have to see how things go. If the kids are banned from attending (so mean, i know), the numbers should be more manageable and then I can focus on figuring out what the adults know and design the classes better.

Overall, it was an interesting week and probably the most 'stuff' I've had a chance to do since I've been at site. I also gave a presentation to the mayor and some school directors about our small grant program. So it was a busy week. And busy is almost always better than being bored.