Day to Day of PST (aka Pumpkin Spice Training)

Hey everyone! It's been a bit since I've posted because I've been trying to adjust to training and my new schedule, also nothing as noteworthy as the wedding has happened since. I have now been in N. Macedonia for a month! Some days it feels like time is zooming by, other days it feels like I have already been here for years. Since nothing super exciting has happened, I'll talk about my day to day life during PST or Pre-Service Training. Like American University, the Peace Corps is full of acronyms, and one of my favorite things to do is give the wrong answers for what acronyms stand for, hence Pumpkin Spice Training (I really really miss Starbucks).

Life in Sveti Nikole (or Sweaty Nicole as Danny calls it) is really nice! Every morning I wake up and get ready for school. My host mom is absolutely wonderful and always has breakfast waiting for me. Sometimes it's an omelet, sometimes fried bread, sometimes bread and ajvar (a Macedonian red pepper spread), or a piroshka (fried meat pancake). Whatever it is, it's always delicious and I'm very grateful to her for cooking for me.

After Breakfast, I head to school for Macedonian language class. I am in a class with 5 other trainees and our language teacher always makes class really fun. Even though it's four hours, it goes by really quickly. The amount we are learning is incredible! Three weeks ago, we could barely introduce ourselves, now we are talking about our schedules, what we eat, our families, and we can give and ask for directions! We have tons of dialogues and games, our two favorites are charades and Pictionary. I'm still not as good at Macedonian as I want to be, but I know that languages take a lot of patience and I practice every day with my host family. I can communicate with them so much better now, but it is still hard to get across more complex concepts.

After school I go to the gym with a few of the other trainees. The gym is pretty small but it has free weights and two treadmills, which is pretty much all I need. There are also inexplicably a lot of children who sometimes use the gym to play tag. In front of the treadmills there is a TV that is always playing MTV dance music videos, which I absolutely love. The gym also has a ton of really fun posters that emphasize the importance of getting swole. I am currently training for the Skopje Half Marathon which is in May. I think it'll be good to have a fitness goal to help get me through the winter. After the half marathon, I would like to run the original Marathon in Athens. It'll be in November 2020, so I have a long time to train, which I desperately need.

After the gym I go home to eat lunch with my family. We always eat lunch around 3, and it is usually chicken and rice, or soup with meat, or other traditional Macedonian dishes. During lunch I chat with my family about my day and ask for their help with some of the homework. After lunch I usually go hang out in a cafe or in the park with other Peace Corps trainees. Once a week we play soccer, sometimes against each other, sometimes against local youth (they beat us pretty badly last time). We also recently had a ping pong tournament and I got out in the first round. There are a ton of really nice cafes in the center, and I really like being able to hang out there.

After hanging out, I head back home to be with my family. Dinner is really small here so we usually have crepes with nutella, doughnuts call kifli, or bread, cheese, and ajvar. While we eat we watch Turkish Soap Operas. Turkish Soap Operas are really divisive, people either love them or absolutely hate them. My host mom really likes them, so I've been getting into them as well! They are dubbed in Macedonian so it is great language practice (It was really great for my family vocab, I would always ask my host mom "is he her brother or boyfriend?"). The three we watch are called the "The Smell of Strawberries", "Without Breath", and "Daughters of Fasilet". I don't really know exactly what is happening in any of them, but so far my favorite is "without breath" because it's the most exciting. There are also a lot of Serbian TV shows that are really popular here. There is a Serbian version of the voice, but my host mom doesn't like it that much because she doesn't like the judges. My absolute favorite TV show here is a Serbian show called "Your Face Sounds Familiar". It's a competition show where performers have to draw musicians out of a hat and recreate one of their most famous performances. The gender of the musicians doesn't matter, so a lot of times the performers have to be in drag. I understand a lot more of this show because most of the songs are in English, and it's musicians I've heard of.

That's pretty much my life here in Sveti Nikole, but there are some really exciting developments coming soon! I start practicums this week, and I have been partnered with a Macedonian English teacher. This week I am just observing her class, but in a few weeks I will be teaching! First with a fellow Peace Corps Trainee, then on my own! It is a bit nerve-wracking but I'm excited to be in the classroom. Also next week my class will be having a Halloween party, and I will carve a butternut squash because I have not been able to find a pumpkin. Two fridays from now we have our overnight in Skopje, and I'm so excited to be able to explore the city more!

 We will also know our permanent site placements in about 3 weeks so I am super nervous and excited for that. As always, I miss everyone at home so much (even more than I miss Starbucks), but I am finally settling in here and excited for all the things ahead. 

*These words are my own and do not represent the views of the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

Feeling like a Two Year Old at a Macedonian Wedding

Hello! It feels like it has already been two years, but it has actually only been a week since I arrived in North Macedonia. After an orientation week at the university in Tetovo, we have been sent our separate ways for training. I am with 10 other trainees, in a town of about 13,000 people. I haven't been able to explore much yet (I've been here for 4 days), but there is a wonderful park, a ton of cafes and bakeries, and even an archeology museum! We go to school in the firehouse, and we have language classes for four hours a day, every day.

We have all been placed with host families for the two months of training. My host family is an older couple named Vesna and Tome. They have two daughters: one lives in Slovenia, and the other lives in  England. They have been absolutely lovely and very patient. They only speak a few words of English, and I speak less Macedonian than a toddler. We have been using a ton of charades and google translate to communicate. Some times I use a word in Russian if I don't know it in Macedonian and hope they understand. There is a lot that gets lost in translation. For example, when I first got there on saturday, my host parents kept saying "Cvadba" which means wedding. I looked it up on google translate but I still didn't know if they were going to a wedding or if I was invited too. I finally figured out that I was also invited to the wedding, which was very exciting because that was one of my goals. I was really worried though, because I only brought one dress that was wedding appropriate and it was white. I texted my language teacher in a panic, asking her if it would be okay to wear, and she said people wore white to Macedonian weddings all the time and it was fine.

We left for the wedding that evening. It was in Shtip, which is about a 20 minute drive from the town I live in. The wedding was at a super nice hotel and all the guests were dressed to the nines. I saw a woman in a white pantsuit and I felt much better about my dress. When we walked in, instead of a reception line, there was a place where all the guests could line up to take a picture with the bride and groom. I still don't know how to say "congratulations", so when I walked up to the bride and groom, all I said was "hello". We got our picture taken, and then went to our table.  I said hello to everyone and introduced myself, but that's all I could say. I really felt like a toddler.

After we got to our seats, the bride and groom did a ceremony where they crossed arms with each other, and drank champagne. Then they had there first dance and that part was very similar to American weddings. They had a live band and the singers were very talented! Since I couldn't talk, I danced a lot of oros. Oros are a type of Balkan/Turkish dance where everyone holds hands and dances in a circle. They usually only have a few steps, and most are pretty easy to pick up even if you are not the world's most talented dancer. I still managed to mess up a couple of times, but it wasn't a big deal. My host mom did tell me to sit one of them out because she thought it would be to hard for me, and it definitely would have been. Oros can go on forever! It was hours of the same dances, but to different songs. At this wedding, they danced before the food was served. We finally ate at 10 pm!

The waiters danced with a plate of roast meat as they brought it to the bride and groom. The bride groom, and the groom's brother stood up on their table and started dancing as the waiters brought them the food. I did not understand what was going on or the significance of it, but it was a lot of fun to watch. After the bride and groom got their food, the musicians brought out the traditional Macedonian instruments like a wooden horn and a drum, and played traditional wedding music. Something I thought was interesting is that they also did the bouquet toss, but the groom was the one who threw it and a man caught it.

By the time we finally left it was midnight! We had been there for 6 hours. I'm so grateful I was able to be there, and it was a great way to experience Macedonian culture! My next goal is to go to a wedding here where I actually know the bride or groom. I feel so lucky that my host family included me.

It has really been a struggle being in a place where I have a lot of difficulty communicating, and I've been feeling really homesick. Every day gets a little bit better though, and I am learning so much. I've also been hanging out with the other volunteers and that has helped a lot. I also feel really happy about the small victories such as being able to explain to my host family slightly complex things, like that my cat is declawed and that's why she lives inside, and learning tons of different Macedonian words. Overall, this is really challenging, but I'm glad I'm doing it, because I am learning so much already.