The Rocky Road to Bitola

Good news everyone! The curtain has been lifted and Peace Corps has finally informed the current trainees where their sites will be for the next two years. This is extremely relieving for me as I hate being kept in suspense with anything, and am even more irritated when people withhold information from me. Let me start off by saying exactly how nervous I was before our site announcements. Luckily, Macedonia is an absolutely fabulous country, with zero bad site placements. However, some places are much more suited to certain personalities than others. For example, my biggest concern was that I would be placed into a small rural community (~200 people and without a pub... yikes!), working at an NGO that specializes in cat rescue and rehabilitation (I hate cats and am extremely allergic to them), and living with a family that has 20 children (over half of our 36 volunteers this year were placed in home stays). I calculated my odds at dodging all of these potential PC hazards at approximately between 7-8% through a very careful and thorough country map and cross-sectoral analysis. Honestly, I spent way too much time trying to calculate the odds of being absolutely miserable and it nearly drove me insane. Also it is important to note that while these things may not be appealing to myself, there are many people who would actually want all of those things I tried so hard to avoid.

However, now that the news is out, I can breathe a major sigh of relief. By some absolute miracle, that is absolutely a complete shock; I somehow managed to get every single thing I wanted without ever telling anyone in the organization what I actually would prefer. Luck has placed me in the second largest city in the country (beautiful Bitola with approx 80,000 people and presumably several pubs), at a democracy-advocacy NGO that works on an international scale with young adults through various organizations including the local university (no cats for this guy!), and I have been truly blessed to be receiving my own apartment somewhere within the city (no children with sticky fingers!). Everything that could possibly have been in my wish list has been realized. It makes me extremely guilty knowing that some volunteers were extremely upset with their site placements, while I received everything I ever wanted without saying a word but that is exactly how the Peace Corps goes sometimes. Complete luck. I half-expected a sign to pop up, ala Civilization V style, and say ‘your Golden Age has ended.’ The karma bank has run dry, all reserves have been used up.

Please bear with me for a bit as I torture you all with another history lesson, since I love to lecture so very much. In the shadow of Mount Pelister (Baba Mountain), Bitola is built on the ruins of one of the oldest cities in Macedonia (Heraclea Lyncestis), dating back to the time of Philip II, in the 4^th and 5^th Century B.C.E. The town is the site of many historical mosques, Turkish baths, and old bazaars that have been around for centuries. Ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Ataturk, went to university in Bitola, and many other historically relevant things occurred here over the past 2 centuries. If you would like, you can read ALLLL about it on the world’s most trusted academic resource, Wikipedia. I joke of course, but really, the basic history of the city is all there, complete with credible citations from various academic sources.

In a week from now, all the current trainees will get to experience the wild adventure of going to their sites for a 3-day excursion that includes learning how to use Macedonian transportation, meeting our workmates and counterpart, and hopefully seeing where we will be living for the two years at our site. I will be taking over the apartment of a departing volunteer, as also will be Joe, the other volunteer who will be working in Bitola as well. Joe also was placed in a great NGO, which specializes in small business incubation to help entrepreneurs manage their own new enterprises. Living and working in the same city with another volunteer will be a great joy, seeing as how some volunteers are placed far away from anyone they can converse in English with. Please be patient in the coming weeks as I can only update this blog so often with pictures and snippets of information about my new home. I still have a month left of living in wonderful Kratovo, but the excitement of starting a whole new adventure all alone is tantalizing. Hopefully at some point everyone, from all around Macedonia as well as other parts of the world, will be able to visit as well!

Please continue to do some research via the Wiki here, there is a lot of very interesting things to entice you all to come spend a week or two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitola

 

Американците се во СКОПЈЕ??

Every year during PST, the volunteers have an excellent tradition known as ‘Field Day’. Unlike what it would mean in the military, we get to spend the entire day in the capital, eat lots of food, and drink a couple beers. For several people in our group of MAK 17’s, this was our first experience to see the capital of Macedonia: a relatively quiet and small capital in the Balkan region with lots of history and great architecture.

Despite the massive cross on the mountain, this is not in Missouri. This is the view from the old bridge in Skopje, looking towards the Alexander statue in the old center. I like this picture because it looks as if Alexander is battling against the small tide of tourists who seem to be everywhere in Skopje.

History Lesson: Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, has a population of anywhere between 500,000 people and 1,000,000 depending on who you ask. During the 1960’s, nearly 80% of the city was damaged or destroyed during a massive earthquake. Apparently earthquakes can happen here, as Macedonia lies somewhere near a fault line and has a history of volcanic activity. Another interesting fact is that Skopje has the only Roma municipality in the world, a huge shock to me considering the general public attitude of Macedonians (and all other Europeans) towards this marginalized population.

Тhe most excellent part of field day is the fact that we as Peace Corps Trainees, get to walk around the big city and try to act as much like tourists as possible. Within our scattered groups, I think that people stopped every five seconds as to take another picture. I cannot judge what-so-ever since I was a serial offender in this action, constantly stopping in the street or busy thoroughfare to capture the precious moments on one of our only free days.

 Meet my good friend, Philip II, one of seemingly 1,000,000 statues that have been built in Skopje. The sign should say, 'welcome to Skopje! where construction is the flavor of the day!" but sadly, it does not..

Some of said precious moments included seeing a wedding procession crossing the bridge over the Vardar River. Weddings in Macedonia are excellent, if not only because the processions following the ceremony involve driving around the city with streamers, flags, and flowers on the car and literally laying on the horn entire time. Multiply this cacophony by 5-20 cars in any given procession and you have an absolute shitshow of noise. Other great photo opportunities included the million of statues that either have been or are being erected in the city as a part of the ‘Skopje 2014’ project that everyone from Kriva Palanka to Struga seems to have a differing opinion about. It is essential a project to ‘beautify’ Skopje by rebuilding many government buildings and adding statues of famous Macedonians and other worldly figures. I was relatively confused seeing statues of Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and author of ‘The Art of War’ who has absolutely nothing to do with the history of this region.

Congrats to the happy bride and groom waving from the back of the BMW. This was on one of the many bridges that cross the Vardar River.

Other fun memories included going to the brand new Skopje City Mall, which is a massive architectural project in and of itself, that much to my delight included a brand new Zara. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no money to buy anything from there so I had to resign myself to walking around the store in a state of catatonic depression, while the warm, chunky, wool sweaters I wanted to buy remained on the shelves. Also, hilariously enough, this mall had a really cool bookstore with Macedonian versions of Animal Farm and 1984, but also had a ‘sexual relations section’ at eye-level, directly above the children’s nursery books. It truly made my day to think about how the sheltering suburban American parents would be flipping their shit about ‘the sanctity of marriage and ‘protecting the children’ from what is CLEARLY such an obscenity. My only response is “lol”.

Another shot of the famous 'Стар Мост' or 'Old Bridge' in the center of Skopje. Notice my BFF Philip II in the background being a dude.

On a more professional note, the entire day gave us an excellent experience to meet the currently serving Peace Corps volunteers of Macedonia and to share stories of training, sites, home stays, and anything else possible. It creates an excellent support network as well as a working network to develop connections with people who are working on similar projects in other towns across the country. Many of us current trainees tried to glean as much information about our pending site announcements (only a few days away) as we could from the current volunteers. Unfortunately we could only determine a few sites that may be getting one of us trainees, but Тоа е Тоа. 

After leaving the capital, we had a lovely 2 hour taxi ride back to the mountains. For the whole drive, I had the luxury of riding shotgun with the potentially most bad ass taxi driver in all of the Balkans. While driving, a wolf ran out across the road in front of our van and almost literally scared the piss out of me. The wolf was at least 55 kg, and the thought of meeting one at night in the wild is not appealing in the slightest. This wolf sighting prompted the driver and me to have a 10 minute conversation (in completely fluent Macedonian of course), about different cities in the country and how the dialect of the word ‘wolf’ (“ВОЛК”), is totally different. Then the driver mentioned about how dangerous the route can be at night because of all sorts of transnational issues. At this point, after I had failed to read into what he was talking about, the driver produced a Colt 1911 from the door panel, along with a lengthy explanation and paperwork about how the police licensed him to carry a firearm for the protection of himself and passengers while driving to and from Skopje. All I could think about however was getting shot and thrown in a ditch somewhere around “Куклица.”  For a brief second, I felt like I was back in Oklahoma where at any given time, whoever I would be riding with could produce a pistol and a CC Permit from thin air.

Given the fact that I am writing this blog today, all turned out well and good, everyone survived and no one was left behind, (at least from Kratovo,) in Skopje. I made a new friend, took some lovely pictures, and shared 9 liters of Златен Даб пиво with some great volunteers. This upcoming week will be sure to be a busy and exciting one; we have development training, country director meetings, site announcements, and a Hub Day in Kumanovo, all within the next 5 days. Wish me luck, and cross your fingers that they’ll stick me in Bitola or someplace warmer!

 An evening silhouette of the massive Alexander of Macedon statue that is in the center. Ciao Skopje, its been real and I hope I can make it back soon.

Kichevo and Other Adventures

Здраво folks, its been awhile since anything exciting has happened but I will try to give a quick rundown of the latest events taking place thus far in this part of the world. We had our first hub day in Kumanovo this past Friday, which was a nice opportunity to see all those friends we made the first week that we have not been able to see since then. I was particularly excited about this opportunity as it offered a chance to return to the Irish Pub in Kumanovo, which according to all the locals, is 'the place to be seen.' Now let me share some things about this Irish pub, I think it may be the least Irish place I have ever been. They had no Harp, no Guinness drafts, and no crazy Irish paraphernalia hanging on the walls. They did however, have Guinness in bottles, at the OUTRAGEOUS price of 180 den a bottle... for a 12 oz bottle. To put this into perspective, in my town of Kratovo, you can buy a .5 L bottle of Златен Даб или Скопско for around 40 den. I find this insanely offensive that someone would charge that much for a terrible beer. I find it even more perplexing that people actually pay this amount for old Guinness in bottles in downtown Kumanovo. Oh well... Тоа и тоа.

On the other side of events, I was lucky enough to be able to travel with my host sister to Kichevo last weekend to attend a handball game. The drive was a winding, long trek through the mountains that took close to four hours (after stopping in Skopje) to complete.

Handball game! Go Kratovo! But... we lost. (T_T)

So this is the view from the top of the mountain on the way to the Kratovo vs. Kichevo game, its quite nice up here and the air is so much cleaner than downtown Skopje. However, I cannot even imagine how dangerous these roads are in the wintertime. Especially considering the way some of these drivers like to handle corners in their buses as if they were driving Formula 1 cars.

The scenery was very beautiful though, and apparently in the western part of the country they have a few decent (although expensive, I hear) ski resorts so I am hoping I can eventually break into some of my savings and go snowboarding one weekend in January or February.

 So I realize that I completely forgot to inform the world of my living arrangements with Мајка и Тато. This is my room and my very comfortable bed. The down comforter is especially lovely on those evenings where it dips down in the single digits.

Here is the favorite part of my room however, I was allowed to 'decorate' so I used this as an opportunity to be reminded of some of my favorite places. Pictures from Korea, and of course a map and postcards from my Okla-home.