Stone Dolls

So I have caught my first cold/upper respiratory issue while in Macedonia.  Everyone else in my PST group has been sick, so I feel good about eluding it for this long I suppose.  Last weekend also involved an intense insulin spike after inadvertently eating white bread and not-so-inadvertently drinking red wine and eating the evilness that is the French fry.  It was a rather scary and not-so-pleasant feeling, so I’ll be cutting out the alcohol in addition to all the other things I can’t put in my body.  It continues to get colder, and Smartwool is my current best friend. Language class has its ups and downs, though our instructor reminded us that we have only been learning for under 48 hours total and we could definitely survive the basic needs of functioning in Macedonian so his putting it into perspective made us all feel good about our progress. 

This past weekend my host family took me to the Valley of the Stone Dolls, a beautiful and interesting place where erosion has left giant lava formations that resemble enormous people and characters (see new pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/enger.emily/MacedoniaKratovo2#

Our Safety & Security guy sent out an earthquake preparedness notice because apparently there have been some earthquakes in the area the past few days.  I asked my host mom if she knew about it, and she said that yes, one had woken her up the other night, and she laughed when I said I had no idea.  I’m very sad to have missed my first Macedonian earthquake due to my hardcore sleeping habits. 

Not much else going on at the moment… My host mama did yoga with me the other night which was super awesome, and my real mama’s birthday is today, and I can’t be there to love on her and tell her how awesome she is so if you get a chance please tell her she rocks and to have a wonderful day :)

I find out where I’m going in t-minus 12 days… oh the anticipation!

Much love,

EM