"Osogovo Style"

Добар Ден, yall. The final days of the Kratovo life are coming to an end. Its hard to believe that in 10 days I  will swear in and become an official Peace Corps Volunteer. After that is off to Bitola to work with the organization for two (hopefully) wonderful years. So what does a trainee do in their community the last couple weeks before leaving their families and going off to actually begin work? They go on mini-vacations of course. A group of us this past weekend were fortunate enough to have some time to get out of Kratovo and visit a nearby town, Kriva Palanka, and stay the night at an old monastery, and drink delicious wine on our Na Gosti with the current volunteers. What follows is a 'picture blog' entry of our descent into madness at the beautiful Monastery of St. Joachim of Osogovo.

So this here is the building we stayed in. The rooms were housing for monks back when this was an actually functioning monastery. Now its a nice place for tourists, especially us PCVs because its inexpensive and there is a bar/restaurant attached. Also, interesting fact, the mountains in the farther background are in Serbia. 3 more months and I will be able to travel there if I wish!

Here is our happy group of MAK 17 Trainees, all gathering to pose in front of the actual church itself. The scenery in this part of the country is absolutely beautiful. It is almost worth living here and dealing with the -20 degree temperatures in the winter time.

 Lots of the rocks are painted with religious icons, which makes a very awesome photograph. This image was on the rock face near the room we stayed in. 

The monastery was founded in the 12th century, though there are no remains of the original monastery. The smaller church in today's monastery complex got its present look in the 14th century, while the larger one was built in the 19th century. Currently, the monastery is home to approximately 23,249 cats, all of whom seem to thinks is a great place to wander about with the tourists because they feed them. This one was kind enough to let me take its picture. Meeetz!

So the church itself has many awesome frescos that are painted on almost every possible surface. This one is a happy Orthodox version of Jesus, and some nice fellow cutting off someones head. There is a slow process of actively restoring the frescos but this one has not been redone yet. 

Since the Jesus crowd was being represented, I felt that the other side also should have some press coverage in this blog. Don't ask me why, but apparently they felt the need to restore the depiction of Satan before the one of Jesus. So things don't need to make sense I guess.

The live music in Osogovo was excellent as well. This man is playing a traditional istrument beside one of the religious frescos. It was an excellent day, despite the small hangover.

Hopefully the next post in this blog will be from my own internet, in my own apartment, with my the comfort of having heat while I type away on the keyboard. Currently I would trade anything for that but it will be very distressing to move away from the great family and be on my own, in a new city, when it gets dark around 3:45 pm everyday. If I am already complaining about the winter now, I am worried to see how it is going to be in late January.