Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Negotino!!

SO yesterday we got out of language class early because the opshtina (municipality) needed to use our classroom for a meeting.  We were standing out in front of the building trying to figure out what to do with ourselves after the unexpected disruption of our daily language schedule. I was staring at the gate of the Talisman trying to open it with my mind, crisp golden leaves were fluttering from the trees to the cobblestone, and Miki was trying to dodge the cars that were clipping his backpack every minute or so.  The locals were strolling up and down the street going about their daily business of smoking and drinking kafe, and one particularly adorable little old lady was slowly making her way toward us.  I was watching her and smiling, as little old people typically cause me to do.  She was at least a foot shorter than me, and had big, warm brown eyes that made contact with mine.  She had an ‘I need help with something/I’m going to ask you a question’ look in her eyes as she came towards me. I know this look after working in Hospice and taking care of old people for years I swear.  As she got about three feet away from walking through our group, she was still looking directly into my eyes. I looked down to see what she was carrying in her hand, and what do I see? A m-fing SCYTHE. For a brief moment I felt in my mind that I had been mysteriously plopped into a very strange horror film, and I sucked my breath in and I believe my eyes got very large, because Miki looked next and his eyes got huge as well.  And then the sweet little old lady with the scythe just hobbled right around our group and kept going.  I reflected on the moment and the thought of this tiny old baba marching up to me and slicing my head off.  Did she refrain because I noticed the scythe, or was she simply up the hill cutting some tea leaves for her morning chai? I suppose we’ll never know.  I am thankful that I still have my throat to be able to laugh about it. 
TODAY, I finally found out where I’m going to be for the next two years! I’m going to be in Negotino, a town in the south/east/central-ish area of Macedonia with a population of about 15,000.  I’m going to be working with the Municipality of Negotino, mainly on tourism.  Turns out Negotino (as well as Kavadarci) is known as the home of Macedonia’s best wine and rakija (ironic now that I can’t drink it, but wonderful for those of you that are going to come visit me…more details on that later). Also, I’m going to be right on the rail line into Skopje as well as Thessaloniki, Greece.  I’ve been told I’ll be working on developing a tourism/info center for the town as well as networking with other tourist info centers in the region.  I’ll be working on the wine events/festivals, marketing for the Municipality, all while being surrounded by vineyards and the river Vardar.  I’ve been told ‘mild and rainy winters and warm and dry summers’… sounds about fantastic to me :) There is currently another volunteer there, who is awesome and works with a woodcarving association that produces some beautiful work.  I’m super excited, and get more excited by the minute :)
On another note, we found out today that our internet access is going to be even more limited, as the café that we typically use has shut down for the winter and the internet has been relocated to the café that all the high schoolers hang out at and play very loud pop music.  Not quite the environment that we all want to frequent. 

More later!
Love,
EM

Thursday, October 21, 2010

My first (almost) PC blister


We finally got to help Jess work on her playground project yesterday! She has been trying to work on it for a long time, and mother nature has been smiting her hardcore.  The day also began with a ridiculous amount of rain… seriously the most waterfall-like my path has been since I got here… so we thought we had been foiled again.  Turns out the afternoon proved to be lovely, and the engineer decided that a drain needed to be put in before the cement could be laid.  So a few of us cruised up the hill to the high school to help.  We were given 2 pickaxes, 2 shovels and a drain pipe.  Luckily the man in the tall rubber boots had pity on us and began the ripping up of the concrete so we could dig the trench to bury the drainage pipe.  Our first physical labor since joining the PC, joy! Maggie has all the pictures, though many of them look like all I was doing was staring… we had to take turns with our limited tools! After we successfully drained a silly amount of water off the playground and buried the pipe, we got to learn how to mix cement minus a cement mixer so we could seal it and start laying it over the rest of the area.  This is a mnogoo (very) long process, so we definitely couldn’t finish the whole thing today.  We finished the day hoping that someone would come unlock the room that holds the extension cord for our cement mixer for the next day. 
Day two they started early in the morning and had the cord for the cement mixer, but then the fan belt came off so they didn’t have the mixer for a couple of hours.  The rest of us arrived after language class to help.  Here is where I talk about my first taste of Macedonian gender “roles”.  None of us females could operate a shovel, pickaxe, wheelbarrow, the cement mixer or even carry rebar for more than one minute without some random male who didn’t even seem to be part of the original project coming and snatching away whichever tool and taking over whatever task himself and telling us to “odmor” (relax).  My irritation was quickly visible and Jess laughed and said to get ready for 2 years of that in pretty much every setting, not just building things.  This should be a very interesting challenge to my personality. 
On the music front, after obtaining a boatload of new and delicious music from Talisman as well as my lovely PST buddy Jason, I made the apparently unforgivable mistake of moving some (turns out most) of my music around on my computer in an effort to be the anally-organized self that I am.  This resulted in my iTunes not being able to ‘find’ most of my music and my having to go through and relocate nearly every file to rematch it to its iTunes counterpart.  Holy mother of 20 hours of clicking. The good thing about this is that I took the opportunity to get rid of any and all songs that I don’t love and cleanse thy musical library.  The wonderful end result? I can now put all 5,411 songs on shuffle and not want to click ‘next’ EVER.  I don’t know about some, but to me, this is a joyous event.  I deeply heart good music, and lots of it.  Please also note that Pandora does not work outside of the states, which will be leaving a hole in my heart… those that know my taste in music (Blake and Danielle this means you), I need you to be notifying me of music I should be obtaining during my adventure so I can keep up and not cry. Thank you :)
Last weekend Matt, Christine and I woke up at 5 am to hike up to the top of a mountain and watch the sunrise.  Hiking in the dark was interesting (thank you mom for my wonderfully useful headlamp!), and once we got to the top the fog rolled right in on top of us.  It was still fabulous and beautiful, though we didn’t actually get to see the sun herself, the gradual daylight mixed with the fog rolling in and out of the fingers and dips in the mountains was an amazing sight to see.  The hike back down of course was an entirely new one with light and I still got some good pictures. (see here!:  http://picasaweb.google.com/enger.emily/MacedoniaKratovo2#)  The leaves changing to bright gold and orange around Kratovo is more beautiful by the day and I constantly pray for SUN so that we can enjoy this natural beauty to its fullest while we can.  Life is good, life is beautiful, as always :)
6 days until we found out our sites… and an undetermined amount of days until I am privy to a hardcore full body massage by a yet TBD masseuse.
Peace and gratitude,
EM

Thursday, October 14, 2010

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

Saturday, October 9, 2010

I heart the Talisman

Let’s talk about hair.  Those who know me know I have a lot of it.  When my assignment initially appeared to be one in Africa, I was determined to keep it long in order to be able to easily keep it out of my way via braid or some other such method due to the fact that it was likely that I would rarely have an opportunity to wash it.  Once I found out I was coming to Macedonia, I thought it would be a better situation to manage the mane, therefore I took the opportunity to chop it off.  I mostly regretted it within two weeks.  This may sound like a trivial or silly issue to some… but I seriously have a lot of hair and it is a task.  Not that I’m complaining, I am grateful for my luscious head of hair, including the screamingly bright singular grey hair right in front (my host mama said if you only have one its good luck, so I let it live).  But over the years, I have grown to give les s and less of a sh*t about performing any kind of management process regarding my hair on a daily basis.  I secretly pray that one day my hair will take on such a character that I can literally just wake up and look like I made some kind of effort to look presentable without actually having to do so.  Is it laziness? I don’t think so… perhaps impatience and higher priorities. Did I bring hair tools to Macedonia? Yes. They told us to pack for ‘business casual’, which in my mind means, ‘look like you know what you’re talking about’, which then means not like you just crawled out of bed and walked to work.  But today, I decided to return the hair straightener to the suitcase and embrace my inner half-wavy-half-straight-whitechick-fro.  Will my hair be large and unruly? Perhaps.  Will it grow in accordance with the humidity level like Monica Gellar in the Caribbean? Not quite.  Will I be able to grow my hair back to the length I am comfortable with without it being fried by the time it gets there? Yes.  And this is the goal. 
In other exciting news, the bar/café we hang out at plays the greatest music ever, and I have struck a deal with them to trade all of my music for all of theirs.  Which means I am about to obtain a ridiculous amount of deliciously groovy tunes as well as spread the joy of the music that I love as well.  Can I express my excitement appropriately in this public forum? I think not. 
I must also provide a shout-out of love to my continuously incredible host family, who even when I come home from hanging out with other volunteers at nearly midnight somehow wake up and make sure that I have been fed and will not go to bed hungry, and to make sure that I’ve had fun and am warm….all with smiles on their wonderful faces.  How can I verbalize the immense gratitude I have for a family that expresses love and care so unconditionally and abundantly… I hope that I will be able to do so when the time comes.
We also were privileged to have a seemingly private PC performance of a traditional Macedonian band this evening.  We were told about the music earlier in the week, and I was expecting to show up to a large musical event.  When we got there, it was 6 band members in the office of the cultural center/museum in Kratovo.  They were all playing different instruments, and there was a young boy sitting in a chair near a computer, whom I thought was just there to watch or was with one of the band members.  Then, he started singing….with this amazing voice that was far beyond his years.  It was literally jaw-dropping… so beautiful.  I felt very grateful to be there and it was a wonderful experience, as the live creation of music always is :)
PST continues, the weather grows colder, the more I hike up this hill the shorter it seems (except for when it is pouring rain and walking home is similar to climbing up a mountainside creek bed) and we find out our placements in about two weeks. Craziness! I’m very excited to see what I’m going to be doing for the next two years… 
p.s. Christine and I went on a hike today and were privy to some pretty epic views of the fall landscape, I’ll post pictures soon!
Love and gratitude,
Em

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Art

Hey all, I've been getting requests for the art lately, so I thought I'd link the gallery to the blog:
http://www.gallerish.com/artist.php?ArtistID=625

Enjoy, and explore other galleries on the site too! There are some AMAZING artists out there :)

Love,
Em