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.