Beth's Corps Experience

Profiling my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Macedonia.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Scotch tape isn't THAT strong


The Wine and Cheese festival was on July 30 and 31. Before the fest we had a press conference in Ohrid, the city where the festival would be held.

My colleagues wanted to hang this big banner up with scotch tape, I tried to tell them it wouldn't work. I hate to be always be the Nay-say-er, but sometimes the people I work with are silly, or at least have way too much confidence in the strength of scotch tape.

Barbeque Time

My neighbor Shaun, his lady-friend Vanessa and I barbecued the other night. It was delicious and exciting because we finally made use of our outstanding balcony in authentic BBQ style.

Here are the masters at work.

Watermellon watermellon watermellon


I caught this shot as Vanessa was enjoying the smallest watermellon we could find. Yum.

No title for this one

I caught this walking down the street in Ohrid about a week ago. I have no words to explain it.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Architecture and Brotherhood and Unity

Although in rapidly deteriorating condition, this building is a good example of Macedonian architecture in the early days of Yugoslavia--before architecture went the way of large nondescript concrete monstrosity after large nondescript concrete monstrosity.

If you look closely you can see a lovely hammer and cycle inside the star and greenery.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Parks and Partisans



Here's a little memorial to Tito's partisans who liberated Yugoslavia (before it was Yugoslavia). Behind Mr. Partisan is a what was once a nice little park, that had many large shade-providing trees. The new mayor systematically cut down all the trees within a month of his inauguration and most recently had all the plastic kiosk stores that surrounded the park torn down. Business owners aside, I think everyone is happy the park perimeter is free from profuse purveyors of purposeless products sold from plastic palaces.

That said, its unfortunate the city had to lose all its trees. Word on the street is that a new park will be built in place of the old park, but I am pretty sure at least some of the trees could have been saved in the process.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Name this Picture


Can anyone guess what this man is doing?

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Day of Sheep Breeding

Sunday, July 10 was the day of sheep-breeding. A few agriculturally-oriented aid organizations assisted the sheep-breeding community in organizing a celebration of Macedonia's traditional agricultural pursuit.

In this picture an old sheep breeder was handing me a very cute (but a little hard to handle) black and white lamb. I wanted to take it home.

Wrestling Contest?

The days events began with some traditional music played by sheep-breeders, which was followed by a sheep milking contest. After the sheep milking there was a wrestling match between 2 large men who were coated with vegetable oil. I am not well informed about that tradition, but I got a lot of photos of the ritual dance.

I had a horrible view of the sheep milking contest, but was luckier with the wrestlers. Here are a couple still shots of some of the ritual dance.

More of the dance-ritual

Parts of it were a little like a sun-salutation, although a bit less theraputic I think...

It seemed kind of slick...

and how is it that they don't get all sunburned?

Sheep Shearing Competition

The wrestling match was followed by a sheep shearing contest and afterward some dancing by the sheep-breeders and various members of the community (and not me, phew!). An award ceremony in which the best milkers, shearers and winners of a cheese-tasting contest were awarded cash prizes. It was an amusing and interesting day and I think the sheep-breeders enjoyed the events.

Pictured here are some sheep-breeders shearing as fast as they can. Awards were given based on both timing and artistic impression (I am not kidding).

Another Sheep-Shearing view


All the sheep looked naked afterward.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Just me and my big brother...

As I said my brother John was in Sofia, Bulgaria and I went to meet him. We spent some quality time tromping around the town and catching up. We were able to check out the local sites (which includes churches, parks and monuments (and restaurants that we don't have in Macedonia!)

Here is John in front of one of the churches in the center of Sofia (but I left all the tourist info with him so I am not certain what church it is).

We went to a Mexican restaurant

Actually we went to three. Or tried to go to three. The first one was not really Mexican at all, but the name and graphic led us to believe it was. We had an appetizer and beers there the first night and although it wasn't Mexican, it was still pretty good. When I went to Austria a few weeks ago I was really fired up to drink some delicious beer, but because I was sick I didn't drink anything that didn't have some healing power (meaning no delicious beer). But I got my fill in Sofia. Yum.

The Second night we scouted out the second restaurant but didn't look too promising so we then proceeded to the third one. It was interesting. I had a burrito that was pretty good but there were no beans or rice on the plate, only a creamy garlic sauce and straight up tomato sauce. But it was still good. John's meal came swimming in the same unorthodox (for Mexican food) sauces but also a pretty good margarita and the Sangria was tasty. On our way back to the hotel we decided we would try out the chips and salsa at the second "not too promising" place. The sangria was good there too.

Our waiter at the 2nd restaurant took this photo of us (notice the mask in the upper left corner).

Chess match observation from far away

and one of the onlookers strongly resembled Shadow Stevens...

Friday, July 08, 2005

Hop, Skip and a Jump to Sofia

My brother John had an unexpected meeting arise in Sofia and since it is only a 5 or so hour busride away from where I live I couldn't resist the temptation to take advantage of some qaulity time with the bro. I ended up arriving about 10 hours before him so I got my lay of the land, found our lodgings (and some pink bowling type sneaker shoes, sweet!) and some wicked blisters all before his arrival. Will post some photos once we take some!

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The honorable, gracious, most respected lovers of intellect and imparters of knowledge...

If you are a regular follower of the blog (or a friend or family member) you have heard about Luli. Luli is my sometimes-crazy-always-funny colleague. He is the coordinator for the sheep-breeders association--its mostly he and I that work together for the organizational development of the association. Luli studied agriculture at University and is studying human resource management for his masters degree...but in the meantime he is getting a special certification in mechanized animal husbandry farming something. For the last few months, on days we have meetings in Skopje, Luli usually tacks on a meeting with one of his many professors and I get a little exposure to Macedonian University life.

Now I hate to generalize as much as the next PCV, but from my experience and observation it seems that University Professors here see themselves as God's gift to academia and the students suffer for it. I received an outstanding education at a small liberal arts college, the University of Portland (Go Pilots!). I benefited from close relationships with many professors--I cannot imagine having an experience where I didn't feel a close connection with my professors. My situation in graduate school was also similar; although Western Michigan is a huge school with over 30,000 students, my graduate department was small and I knew my professors very well.

Well in Macedonia it seems quite a bit different. I have heard many students talk about how the professors like to make students wait for hours for a quick chat about a paper, demand students write their papers emphasizing techniques or theories they like rather than allowing their students to explore the divergent theories, and I have been with Luli more than five times when his professors make appointments and then don't show up (not to mention the fact that some students purchase their grades!).

Today Luli had to meet with one of his professors and I went with him to wait inside the building because it was so darned hot outside. I was shocked to see the professors "office hour" was at 12:00 on Monday only. Yikes! Luli managed to squeeze in first but I think I counted about 27 students waiting to meet with the Great Professor. It was really eye-opening. I took this picture right as we were leaving the hall, (Luli is right in the center) there were about 10 students behind me and many more on either side of us. I must say I feel very fortunate to have had the educational opportunities I have had (thanks mom and dad) with professors who are more concerned about their students learning than how much they are revered.

Selfish in the Macedonian Language


себично, на Макадонски Јазик...

I must start this rant off with a foreword. I LOVE my landlords. They are wonderful. Koce, the Dad is hilarious and is always lightning quick to respond to my apartment that seems to be always needing attention (2 weeks ago it was termites, last week it was a window I broke, this week it's the door on the wardrobe/closet--and I think I can hear termites again...). Slavica, the mom is adorable. She always wants to practice speaking English and she just so cute. Marija and Ana, the daughters are really kind and ask me to hang out with them a lot, its really just a great family.

BUT, the building we live in is shared by Koce's older brother and his family. They are good people, but I have become ridiculously frustrated with a recurring problem I face with the woman of the house. It is all centered around drying the laundry.

Living home every day is only the brother of my landlord and his wife, but they have two grown children who both have spouses and one grandchild. They come home every weekend and proceed to do all their laundry. The way our building is divided my landlords live on the first floor. Shaun's Landlords (the brother of my landlord is Shaun's Landlord) live on the second floor and Shaun and I live on the third floor. Our Apartments are divided half-way and we both have big balconies. There are also 2 additional balconies on the other sides of the houses on both floors.

Shaun's landlords insist on using his balcony (and the hallway right outside his apartment) in order to do their laundry, where as my Landlords do not come up the stairs with out asking if they can either while I am passing or via phone call. A quick word about the laundry, I have no way to understand how in the heck they need to do so much laundry. Its insane really.

Anyway...

My frustrations began when the little round plastic bucket that my clothespins were in disappeared from my balcony one day this past spring. All of my clothespins were then mixed in with Shaun's landlady's clothespins. I didn't think it was that big of a deal so I just considered them communal clothes pins, particularly since Shaun's landlady considers my balcony as communal, she hangs her laundry on my side at least once a week (and had very noisy clogs, and likes to hang it out at about 7:00 on Saturday and Sunday mornings...clip clop clip clop).

About a month ago I had just returned from a longer run and I was stretching (and really sweaty and gross) and Shaun's Landlady came into my apartment (I had the back door open for some fresh air) and made me escort her outside. She then began taking my clothes off of my laundry line (kind of throwing them at me) and showing me that I was using her clothes pins. She then showed me that mine differed from hers in size and she separated them for me. I was
frustrated because not only was I being forced to interrupt my stretching and my newly clean clothes were being thrown on my sweaty person, but I was being told not to use her clothespins, while this woman was hanging her laundry up on my side of the balcony (which is divided by the way, by a two and a half foot wall). I told her I had no problem using only my clothespins but that I thought I had more--and I asked her where the purple basket went, to which she responded "We will find it." I then told her that the side of the balcony that is mine is only for me and she needed to stop using it. She said ok. Two hours later my side was covered in her sheets and clothing. When she returned a few hours I reminded her and she apologized and said it wouldn't happen again.

Pictured above is Shaun's side with most of the crap they need to dry.

selfish...continued

So I had been working on a big proposal three days before and was still working on it through the weekend and I needed to get some air that night to clear my head. I headed out on my balcony and found all of my laundry lines full with yet more of her family's wash. At this point I was just angry so I went downstairs and asked he what she didn't understand from our conversation from before. She immediately told me she would move her clothing. It is just ridiculous. She has the audacity to tell me not to use her clothespins, yet takes over all of my balcony space to dry her clothes. I thought this was finally settled (although I have taken down three of the lines to dry my clothes and only put them up when I need them) but Sunday her crap was all over my balcony again. Its just irritating. How anyone can be so selfish is hard for me to comprehend. And all of this would never have been a problem if she simply would have asked.

So here is where the amusing vocabulary lesson comes into play. The word for selfish is себично (pronounced say-beech-no) the middle syllable kind of sounds like the b word that rhymes with witch. Ce in Macedonian means everything. So a very useful pneumonic device is to think of someone as selfish, they are "everything bitchy." The situation is just irritating, although I do get some laughs out of it (when I don't have a laundry basket of wet clothes and my lines are taken by the neighbors).

Pictured here is my balcony with a bunch of their crap on my one remaining laundry line. Ugh.