The Next Post

I know it's been a while, but in all my excitement about ajvar, I completely forgot to rub it in your face that I went to Italy and Albania over my summer break (not that anybody even remembers what happened over summer at this point). They were pretty cool trips. That's all I want to say about that. Eh, I guess I could tell you some weird things about where I went. In Italy I spent most of my time in Venice. I'm sure you already know that there are pretty close to zero roads in Venice. Instead they use these fancy things called canals to get around (that was a dumb one). In Albania people hang up stuffed animals in unfinished houses to ward off evil spirits. And they are obsessed with watering the concrete. Gotta keep it clean, I suppose. Since I came up with two for Albania, I should probably come up with another one for Italy. Shops in Italy—especially restaurants—tend to be closed at random times throughout the day. What that is about, I have no idea, but it is a very sneaky tactic utilized by the shop owners to create a state of confusion among the simpleminded tourists. Really the only bad thing about it is that it can cause those doltish out-of-towners to become quite belligerent. Some of them even got so mad they walked away and went to another restaurant. It was out of control.

Over the summer, I also helped out at a few summer camps, which was pretty freakin' awesome. If I could, I would do that all year long. But I looked into it and unfortunately summer camps are only during the summer. Who knew? The kids at the camps I went to were great. They've got some pretty good heads on their shoulders (I should be clear that there is only one head per pair of shoulders. I know it sounded kinda weird the way I wrote it so I thought I'd clarify that just to make sure we're on the same page. A lot of you have never been to Macedonia before so maybe you think that a different type of person is bred here. I don't know what's going through you're head. I can't even figure what's going on in my head half of the time).

My boys and me from YMLP

I should preface this next part by saying that I'm kinda nervous about this whole situation (I don't expect this sentence to translate to Macedonian very well because most Macedonians use the word nervous when they really mean angry. So any Macedonians reading this might think that I'm angry and that's just silly). This might be why I've waited so long to put up another post. It could also be that I've had computer problems, but I already used that excuse before so I'd hate going to it again.  

Anyway, what I've been trying to say is that my host mom just started reading my blog (and by just, I mean she read my last blog post three months ago), so now I'm gonna have to be extra careful about what I say. When she read that my last post was all about ajvar, she asked where I learned how to make it and then told me that I wasn't allowed to write about ajvar unless I made some. I'm taking that as an official invitation to an ajvar making party. Now I know that it was an invitation to a day of ajvar making because I did end up helping a bit. At least as much as the women would let me. A bunch of pics were even staged so that it looked like I was the one doing all of the work, but all of those pictures have since been lost forever. I've never seen them anyway.

OK, I know they aren't in season anymore, but what's the deal with grapes? I tossed a grape into my mouth and started chewing without thinking, but instead of the sweet explosion that I was expecting, I bit into something hard. Crazy things were going through my mind. Has the middle of the grape miraculously been petrified? How did a rock get inside of my grape? Do insects have teeth, and how big are they if they do? Well, I looked into it a bit, and before I could find out whether insects had teeth or not, I discovered that grapes actually have seeds. They aren't nearly as cool as cherry seeds, which are the only fun seeds that come from a fruit as far as I'm concerned. I guess I've just been spoiled all of my life with seedless grapes.

Which leads me to my word of the blog. The word is:

грозје (grozye) - grape

Grapes are an important part of the culture here in Macedonia. Yes, people eat them, but I think more grapes are used for making вино (wine) and ракија (rakiya). Pакија is homemade liquor. It's usually between 40% and 50% alcohol and it's almost always accompanied by salad of some sort. Also, it's important that I add that it is drunk from shot glasses (or a reused plastic water bottle) but it is NEVER shot. There are so many other drinking rules when it comes to ракија but as long as you know not to shoot it, you'll be good. I guess you should also probably know that you're supposed to use your right hand for drinking ракија. Those two rules ought to do it.

I don't know why I'm throwing this in here, but it is happening. You know how when people say hello to answer the phone and then the person calling says hi back? Then because the answerer doesn't know where to go from there since they weren't the one that decided to pick up the phone and call someone, they give a second, more personalized hi to the person. So of course what does the caller do? They say hi again and then get on with the business of the call. That's four hi's where there should really be no more than one. Two tops. That's enough of this uselessness. Will you cut the malarkey (I had to throw a Dave Chappelle reference in there because nobody here ever gets them)!

You all already knew that my host mom could rap, but I bet you didn't know that she got her inspiration from old school classics. I was sitting alone in the living room and listening to the song "Three Little Indians" by Run-D.M.C. when my host mom came in. Now she's not a fan of any kind of rap or hip-hop so she wasn't feeling the song. But when she heard the words "father" and "mother" in the song, her ears perked up a bit. For the rest of the day she wouldn't stop saying those words around me. And that is how I know that she knows how to say those words. Other family members that she knows are brother, sister, and cousin.

Again, I don't know why I'm putting this in here. For some reason it was written down on this document so I guess I'll share it with you instead of deleting it. I would like to present some words of wisdom to the reading community out there. If you can't read, then you probably aren't smart enough to understand this anyway: People who don't use their head use their feet.

Stay classy world.

It's Ajvar Season, Baby

I woke up this morning craving Jolly Ranchers. And I don't even particularly like Jolly Ranchers. I had to settle for some iced tea though because that was the closest thing I had to it sitting around in my room. Believe it or not, it was pretty satisfying.

I don't know what Jolly Ranchers have to do with anything else that I'm gonna write about, but they have somehow managed to find their way into the first two paragraphs. Unbelievable. This paragraph was supposed to be all about the cute new kittens that Boni had, but the Jolly Ranchers are completely taking over. Which makes me wonder, how would a cat react to eating a Jolly Rancher? This thought of course led me to YouTube where I watched three very real videos. From these videos I have come to the conclusion that cats love Jolly Ranchers.

Boni's kittens have now been pushed down to paragraph three, but I promise they will not be neglected any longer. The tale begins on Friday night. I was sitting in the living room with my backpack on the floor by my feet. Boni seemed to be very exploratory that night. There had been a documentary about 15th century explorers on The History Channel earlier so I thought that is what had gotten her in the mood, but that wasn't the case. Eventually Boni was drawn to the backpack and climbed inside. I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous she looked but my host dad got her out of there pretty quick because he was pretty sure that she was looking for a place to give birth. And whad'ya know? The next morning I woke up to the news that Boni had five kittens. It looks like that sly cat got his paws on her after all.

The tired mama with her 2 remaining babies

I know this is a bad picture, but just look at how small that thing is

And here's that picture I promised you last time of my cat and I cuddling. I bet you thought I forgot about that, huh? And I bet you forgot about that too, didn't you?

I'm sure that at this point, the Macedonian word of the blog is very predictable, so I bet you could guess what it is. And, no, it's not gonna be Jolly Rancher, but just in case you're interested, Google Translate says it's весела ранчо (vesela rancho). The actual words (yep, there's more than one) are:

мачка (machka) - cat

&

маченце (machentse) - kitten

Use those words wisely.

Let me tell you a li'l' bit about this ajvar (i-var - a sweet pepper spread) stuff that's mentioned in the title. This stuff is like crack only it's legal. Every year around this time people start gathering as many peppers as they can from their gardens, the local пазар (pazar - outdoor market), or they even resort to stealing peppers from their dear friends and neighbors (see, I told you it was like crack). After they finagle as many peppers as they can, all of the women within earshot are assembled and they get to work.

The first thing that needs to be done is having all of the bugs and dirt washed off of the peppers because, well, nobody wants to eat that shtuff (ooh, I almost said a bad word). Now comes the time where you get to play with fire or an oven if you're spoiled. The peppers need to be roasted so that the skin can be peeled off (much like the tradition of flaying among the ancient Assyrians and Aztecs or pretty much everybody during the Middle Ages. I assume this is much less painless for the peppers though). After being roasted, the peppers are put in a pot to steam for a while to make the peeling easier. Along with the flaying, the peppers are also deseeded (I'm not even gonna go there). This is supposedly the hardest and most tiring part of the whole process because it takes a certain level of finesse. Maybe if I can manage to crash one of these ajvar making parties one day I'll be able to find out what all of the fuss is about.

The next part sounds pretty awesome. You get to beat the shnot (caught myself again) out of the peppers to grind them up. You probably shouldn't go all Floyd Mayweather on them though (by the way, congrats on the win yesterday...47-0). After they are nice and, um, ground, the next phase is to move the peppers to a pot on some sort of stove type location depending on what's available so that the peppers can cook for about the length of a soccer match. I know what you're thinking. That it sounds like just the perfect length, right? The only issue is that this pepper mash needs to be stirred the whole time it's on there cooking so that nothing sticks to the pan. So don't scurry off to the couch and pop open a beer just yet.

Once the pepper mix starts to separate, you're ready to move on to the next step which is adding the oil. You continue stirring until the oil and the peppers become one. Oil is a pretty common ingredient here. The oil of choice is sunflower oil. Other types are available but pricier, and why hurt your wallet when you can hurt health?

From this point, you can call it good and throw the ajvar into jars so that you can enjoy it throughout the winter (if you can resist eating it at every meal). Or if you'd like, you can throw in other ingredients like salt, vinegar, garlic, parsley, Oreos, etc. (OK, so maybe nobody has ever put Oreos in their ajvar (I think that's mostly because they just aren't available here), but I think it's gonna catch on. Just give the people some time to get used to the idea).

The next step is eating the ajvar of course. It's mainly eaten as a spread on bread with some cheese (think feta). It makes a great breakfast or midnight snack.

On a disappointing note, the English word that my host mom knows is...drum roll please...ajvar. Nah, I'm just playin'. That wouldn't be cool of me to withhold you all from a real English word. But as far as I know ajvar is the same in Macedonian and English so if you want to get technical then you could put that on the list. And I bet most of you didn't know that word until now. This lady doesn't even speak English and she knows words that you don't. Embarrassing. The actual English word that my host mom knows is:

joking

Now I never thought it was important to learn this word in Macedonian and I'm still not sure that it is because I just assume everyone knows that everything I say is a joke. I'm probably serious about 3% of the time, and that is almost exclusively when I'm talking to animals. And let's face it, nobody is gonna take a person serious if they catch them having a heated debate about Kantian ethics with their livestock. Especially since the animal probably doesn't even understand English. So I figure even if I wanted to be, I wouldn't be taken seriously the rest of the time.

This on the other hand is not a joke. It is something that should be regarded and looked into with the utmost seriousness. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure my entire family is conspiring to make me learn Macedonian. They are always using words that I don't know. Now I know that happens to all the volunteers here, but this is a little bit different. Let me explain. In this scheme run by the whole family (including the grandma who lives in the house next door), they start using a word that I don't know all of the time, and this will go on for a week or two and then it kinda just drops out of use. I'm convinced that once they figure out that I know the new word, they have a family meeting and choose a new word to pound into my brain. Last week the word was напорно (naporno - difficult), but it seems now as if they're moving on to веднаш (vednash - immediately). I'll keep you updated on how this plays out.

I think at this point I've written enough for one post. That was until I just found out this exciting piece of information. My host mom is making donuts! OK, now I'm done.

Stay classy world.

Let Freedom Ring

I could probably write a book about all of the summer shenanigans that have been going on just in the last few weeks (we're talking Dr. Seuss length here. I know, impressive, right? I could try to make it rhyme too, but probably not as well as the doc. he's untouchable in that department). But I'm not gonna do that. And I didn't want to get into this, but I won't even write about it in this blog because documents have been signed and hands have been shook. Basically what it comes down to is that stuff happened that you may never hear about and that I may never "remember." I'm never gonna tell you, so just drop it. We're getting nowhere with this.

So, this 4th of July was an interesting one, wasn't it? My goals were to eat a bunch of hamburgers and hot dogs, drink a bunch of beer, and watch some fireworks. I ended up not celebrating it how I thought I was gonna be celebrating it so I only managed to achieve one of those goals. I'll leave which one that was up to your imagination. Even though I didn't accomplish most of my goals, I can't complain about how it turned out. I'm sure a lot of things happened that weekend that will never happen again. At least until the next 4th of July.

When I first heard of what kind of celebrations were going on in Macedonia, I thought I was gonna be going to the American Embassy in Skopje to party hard with the ambassador and eat a lot of hamburgers. I ended up deciding not to go there because I heard that there was gonna be a pretty legit party that the American Corner in Tetovo was throwing where I'd still be able to accomplish all of my goals. That ended up falling through though (because people here would rather have riots instead of parades on the 4th), so instead I got stuck hanging out with a bunch of volunteers for the weekend in a village outside of Tetovo. We didn't have any fireworks to watch or shoot off, so we had to create our own noise makers.

Speaking of noise, did you hear the crowds at the NBA Finals (okay, I'll admit, that's a bad transition, but that's what happens when successive paragraphs are written a month apart)? With the outcome of the NBA Finals looming in the back of everyone's mind (maybe not anymore since it ended like a month ago. can you tell that this wasn't written recently?), I know what you're all thinking. How do I say swish in Macedonian? And I have the answer:

                без коски (bez koski) - without bones (literal translation), swish (basketball translation)

Also while we're on the subject of sports, go Germany! At least the World Cup was a little more recent than the NBA Finals.

It took a while but my computer must have finally figured out that I'm in Europe because for some reason it wants me to start using British English. It doesn't matter what program I'm on; They all want me to use British spelling. At first I thought I was just losing my ability to spell in English when the words showed up as being misspelled, but I finally caught on to the trick my computer was playing on me when words like "center" (is there even another way to spell center? I'm gonna have to spend some time thinking about that one) and "flavor" and "practicing" had a red line under them time and time again. I also may have double-checked the spelling on Google just to be sure, but all that did was prove that I'm not getting more stupider (there it goes again underlining a word. I don’t even know what a blue underline means). Whatever, I'm giving up on this.

I was recently inspired to add a new section to my blog posts. It's going to be called English words that my host mom knows. My expectation for this section is that I will be awestruck by the amount of English words that my host mom actually knows. I haven't been sitting down and teaching her English, but I think she likes to learn new words just to rub it in my face that now she's learning new words more quickly than I am. OK, that might not be true, but it also might not be false. I guess this section of my blog will help me to figure that out. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. This first entry is gonna be a double whammy because my host mom busted out a nice line that you would have expected to come right out of the pages of a Dr. Seuss book (granted it was only 2 words long, but that's pretty impressive) So, the first words that you will learn about my host mom knowing are:

                crazy & lazy

She didn't throw the "and" in there with them, so it was more like "crazy lazy." And I think when she said crazy she pointed to herself and when she said lazy she pointed to me. Even if I'm imagining that part, there was definitely a pause in between the words so I'm pretty sure she wasn't talking about me for both of them. But either way, now I have to learn how to say lazy in Macedonian. I can't be having my host mom show me up by knowing how to say words in English that I can't say in Macedonian. Plus, if she starts talking about me in Macedonian, then I'll actually know what she's telling other people.

Here's a picture of me with my host parents way back in the day

I think you're gonna appreciate this next part Sir Nicholas. Wait for it. The cats are back again. Sometimes when they cry out at night I think it's the wail of a toothless baba (Macedonian for grandma. I guess that's a bonus word of the blog. I'm not gonna show you how to write it in Macedonian though, but I will say that it looks pretty much the same as how it's written in English). That's how weird it sounds. Where I live, we have a female cat, Boni, and one of the male cats in the neighborhood has been bold enough to jump up on the porch and come running into the house chasing her until he gets her cornered. I guess because his owner is welcome in the house, he figures that he has an open invite as well. Of course his owner doesn't come in here and start cornering us, so I don't know who he learned his manners from. Anyway, this cat definitely wants more than to just play this weird version of tag with her, but he usually gets knocked upside the head and shooed out of the house before anything more can happen. I guess we'll find out soon enough if he ever got his paws on her.

That's not all that's been going on with the cats though. Boni has taken a real liking to me. So much so that when I'm lounging around on the couch, she likes to jump up next to me and try to get me to pet her. That's true love right there if I've ever seen it. After she finishes with those preliminaries, she curls up in a ball or sprawls out next to me and takes a nap. Cuddling with the cat has become one of my favorite times of the day. It's funny watching her because she puts her paws over her eyes which I can only assume is to keep the light from messing with her important REM sleep. I was going to include an adorable picture of Boni taking a nap with me, but I didn't see her today and I probably shouldn't wait any longer to put this up. Otherwise it'll be another week before I get around to doing it. If I remember, I'll throw one up on the next post. Just don't hold your breath.

Well, that's all she wrote.

Stay classy world.

Consider Yourself Updated

Hey y'all. By now you're probably used to me not posting at all. Quite a bit of interesting stuff has been going on in my life since the last time I posted anything, but I just don't usually get around to writing about it. That's my bad. I acknowledge that that's something I need to work on. Here are a few things that have happened to me in the last month or two. Also, because much of this was written quite a while ago, I'll be providing updates next to things that could use them. One last thing before we get into this. The "k" on my keyboard has been pretty hard to press lately because there's something stuck under it. Don't worry though. I have the top professionals working on resolving the problem as you're reading this. I just wanted to let you know that if something doesn't make sense or you think a word is misspelled, try adding a "k" in it somewhere (Well, I only had to write "k" 7 times to tell you that, and it only took me 4 minutes. Now I'm up to 9 times).

The best naps are taken in street clothes and in a place other than your bed. And they are usually started between 2:30 and 4. How do I know this you ask. It's quite simple really. I've been practicing taking naps every day for like 2 whole weeks, so I've gotten pretty good at them. It's been going great too. (Update: I'm no longer taking naps. They ended up not working out too well with my schedule because I like to sleep for 2 or 3 hours.) If you take the time to change, it completely messes up the whole ambiance of the nap. Even if you think your sweats are gonna be more comfortable than a pair of slacks when you slide your legs into them, don't touch that belt. OK, well, I guess you can take the belt off because that buckle can be bothersome sometimes--especially if you like to lay on your stomach--but the pants stay on. And that's final! I know that I didn't have to join the Peace Corps and come all the way to Macedonia to learn this, but I should mention that a lot of people here are pretty pro at taking naps, so it might have helped me.

How many of you have ever seen a nearly full thing of lip balm disappear in one sitting after accidentally putting it through the washer and dryer? I know I have. Well, I have some breaking news for you. I discovered that it remains unharmed if it just goes through the washer. Thanks Macedonians for not using dryers. This is the first time I can say I truly appreciate that. I recently thought that I lost my very manly lip balm. I won't go into details about brand or flavor because that would just be embarrassing--for others of course, not for me. It turns out that it was just hanging out in my pants pocket. There was no permanent damage caused by the washer. It just makes the lip balm a little wetter than normal which I happen to think is great. I mean who doesn't want to hydrate their body with a little liquid and protect their lips from those deadly UV rays all in one glide around the mouth? If I had known this was gonna happen, I wouldn't have waited so long to start putting my lip balm through the washer.

In other news, I think I have a colony of ants living in my computer. Just the other day, 5 of them crawled out of somewhere and onto the screen. Or who knows, maybe they were just playing a friendly extended game of hide and seek. Either way, I'd appreciate it if they'd just move out or find a new playing field because I prefer my computer to have no ants inside, on, or around it. Of course if I was an ant, I don't think I'd be able to resist the nice insides of a laptop either, so I can't really blame them. (Update: The ants have moved on. Either that or I killed all of them. I'm not sure. I'd like to think it was the first thing. And now I'm beginning to think that this might in some way be related to the "k" problem I've been having.)

Let's see, what else has been going on? Oh, I recently lost a tooth (OK, I didn't really lose a tooth, but let's just act like I did for a paragraph) and I wanted to know if I was going to be able to make some money off of it while I was here or if I should wait until I got back to the US so that I could scam a couple of bucks off my folks. So to figure this out, I went to a professional on Macedonian culture who knows how to speak some English (i.e., I had a talk with my old host dad). It turns out you don't get a single denar for your teeth here, so I'll be saving this one for when I get back to the states (I'll also take a check if you're reading this mom and dad. On second thought, you better make that a wire transfer since I can't cash checks here. Thanks a lot Bin Laden. OK, I know it's not Bin Laden's fault, but it sounded so cool when Zach Galifianakis said that in Hangover). Instead of putting their tooth under their pillow, they throw the tooth up on the roof of an old building and say to the crows "I give you old. Now give me gold." The only thing is, they don't ever actually get the gold. The crows get the teeth and they get to keep their gold. Sounds like a scam if you ask me. I do wonder what the crows are doing with all of those teeth though. I told my old host dad about the Tooth Fairy and I think we both decided that it was a better system--at least for the children.

So the actual reason I'm doing these word of the blog things is so that you guys know I'm actually learning another language and I can show off. Otherwise how else would you all know that I'm bilingualish. I choose this word since the weather's getting nice and it's almost every child's favorite time of year because they won't be in school (well, at least the ones that were smart enough to pass won't be. for the "slow" ones that got stuck in summer school, it really sucks to be you).

лето (leto) - summer

Speaking of summer vacation, hopefully I'll get some travelling in this summer. I've got some stuff in the works but nothing official yet so at this moment I'd prefer not to reveal it to the public. I was able to get a few trips in during the school year though, and I'm more than happy to talk about those.

I went to Greece for a weekend to go hiking on Mt. Olympus. Hiking was awesome, but by far one of the best parts was being so close to the sea. It was great to see a big body of water like that after so many months of going without. I'll go to Greece again even if it's just to see the sea. Plus I had a great time there, and there's so much more for me to check out.

Me, Kelly, & Drew hanging out with the gods on Mt. Olympus

I also went to Budapest on a school trip with the juniors. We took a bus up there from Kratovo. I'm pretty sure it took a lot longer than it needed to, but luckily I was able to sleep through most of it. Even with all of the turbofolk playing and jingerlaking (from my understanding, this is a crazy type of dancing) that was going on. Budapest is an amazing city, and it was awesome being able to go there with some of the teachers and students. I will definitely be returning to the city to see more of the sites that I didn't have a chance to see this time. We did have a tour guide for our group. Unfortunately she was speaking Serbian and my Serbian is lacking so I pretty much understood nothing that she said. Correction, I understood absolutely nothing that she said. A few of the students did translate some of the stuff for me (Thanks Christina and Sara. I didn't forget about mentioning you in my blog). Some highlights from the trip are bowling (it was the first time for pretty much everyone), a night cruise on the Danube River, and eating leskovacka.

Me and the other teachers that went on the trip

I know I didn't write much about either of the trips I went on, but I just didn't want to ruin those places for you. Now you will still be able to go there and everything will still be brand new to you.

Please feel free to resume your usual daily activities now.

Stay classy world.

Bathroom Selfie

Again, I've had this post sitting around on my desktop for over a week before posting it. Or maybe it was 3. I'm not sure anymore. At least I'm consistent with keeping you up-to-date in a delayed fashion.

I haven't got anything planned to write about, but I find myself sitting here in my living room again with another game show on the TV that I don't feel like watching, so I figured I'd do some writing. Since I've got nothing planned, this post is probably gonna be all over the place. Just warning you now so that you don't think you have ADHD and kept spacing off while I was busy connecting the paragraphs together in some artistic fashion. So know now that the paragraphs are not going to be connected at all.

I'm not sure how to start this off, so I'll just jump right into it. There's a cat jamboree being held outside my room every night and every morning. It's not the funnest thing to fall asleep and wake up to. Actually, it's probably the first time I've really wanted to kill an animal. Don't worry though I won't. I'll just "accidentally" throw them down the stairs or kick them across the room. OK, that first one never happened but I swear, kicking that cat across the room was an accident (notice there are no quotation marks). It was dark and I couldn't see it.

It seems like I've been learning a lot of children's games recently. We've already been over the Macedonian version of eenie, meenie, miney, mo, which I've actually managed to almost memorize. I also learned the Macedonian version of rock, paper, scissors (or as Microsoft Word wants to say "rock, paper, and scissors"). I'm not exactly sure how this is carried out, but I think it goes down like this. You hold your hand back and at some time together with everyone else (I'm not sure what it is that's done to make sure everyone does this together) you flip your hand either palm up or palm down and that determines the outcome. From what I understand, it's something that's done to choose teams. People with their palm up are on one team and people with their palm down are on the other team. I don't know. Maybe I'm completely wrong and just making stuff up. I'm sure if I am, one of the Macedonians will correct me tomorrow and I'll know the truth, but you will all be stuck with this fabrication. For all you know, I could be making up this whole game.

It's an unseasonably cold day here in the Krat, and it's been eating away at my mind all day. For this reason, I want to talk to all of you about this very important subject. The cold. Cold in Macedonia is not experienced the same way that cold in America is experienced. It's an entirely different concept here and therefore it must be handled differently because it just has to be. You're gonna have to take my word. And it's not just the way you handle it, it's the way it affects your ability to handle it. And this type of cold is handled differently everywhere you go. The Aussies say it's a three dog night. Well, here in Macedonia we say it's a 5 blanket and sleeping bag kinda night with the heater running on 5 because you just don't care anymore. Granted it doesn't roll off the tongue as smoothly as three dog night, but it gets the point across. Here are a few things that never would have occurred in the US because I was cold. You know you're Macedonian cold when:
-You don't take a shower because you feel like you might freeze if you took off all of your clothes in a room without any heating. Plus it's a b-i-t-c-h (just in case you're reading this out loud to young children. you can thank me later) to get dressed when taking a shower gets the whole bathroom soaking wet. Who forgot about Macedonia when they were introducing shower curtains to the world?

I've been practicing my duck face

-You are sitting in your room straddling a heater just so that you don't shiver (definitely not what I'm doing now).
-If that's not enough, you also lay your pillow and a nice thick pair of socks on your heater before you go to bed so that they are nice and warm.
-When there's time you even lay your clothes on the heater in the morning before you put them on. This isn't practiced as often as you'd like though because you haven't been able to kick your addiction of hitting the snooze on your alarm.
-You take a break from using your computer or other electronic device because you are losing motor function in your fingers
You know, I feel like I could have done a much better job with this list, but I was too lazy to push myself to come up with more stuff. My bad. I dropped the ball there.

I don't think the word of the post will be a surprise to anyone. The very fitting word of the post is:

снег (sneg) - snow

Remember, you don't have ADHD. Have you ever been sitting there breathing like a normal living person and for some reason someone is playing a kazoo to the pattern of your breaths? It's kind of cool at first until you realize that it's not a kazoo, it's you. No, I haven't been breathing like that my whole life and just now realized it. I just have a bit of a cold. The popular diagnosis has been that it's because I was in Skopje and the air's not clean there. Skopje does provide some of the worst air in the world during the winter months. The bad air combined with the drastically swaying weather is a recipe for stuffy noses. At least that's what they tell me, and I guess I believe them. It sure is hard to say you don't. Even when you say you don't.

Most of last week I played hooky from school and went to Skopje (shh, don't tell anyone) to party, search for wild animals that I didn't know existed here, and practice some of my new pickup lines on grandmas. Oh, and I had in service training, but that was just something I decided to do to pass the time while I was there.

There were a couple of birthdays throughout the week that we celebrated Peace Corps style. Needless to say they were pretty ballin'. After finishing an intense competition on Saturday night, I went on a walk around the grassy knolls of Kale, and to my surprise I saw a rabbit running along the edge of the brush. But this wasn't just any rabbit. I mean what kind of rabbit runs when they have one of the coolest methods of transportation--hopping. It turned out that this rabbit was a hedgehog (that made more sense in my head). WHAT!?! A hedgehog just prancing around in the brisk Skopje night air? Yep. I did some reading and most likely it's a northern white-breasted hedgehog (not that any of you were wondering. I'll try to keep those types of comments to myself from now on).

I actually got this spiky little critter to pose for a pic. Actually it was more like 20 but I decided to only post 1

While I was waiting for my 4 o'clock bus to show up on Sunday, I met this lovely wise-cracking old woman. She was feeding the pigeons her bread crumbs and I looked over to watch them eat. When she saw me looking at the pigeons, she started talking to me. I understood about the first 10 minutes of the conversation. The 4 o'clock ended up being a no show, so I waited around and talked to this lovely lady for about an hour and a half. She fed me and told me jokes and talked about her family. And in return I acted like I understood everything that she was telling me.

That wasn't even the highlight of my day. The best part was when I got home and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Man, it had been a long time. And that thing was good. Plus, on top of that I found the spring for part of my camera flap that I thought had been lost forever. And this time I was actually able to put it back on my camera without losing it for three weeks.

If the air quality, wild hedgehogs, and me being here isn't enough to make you want to visit Macedonia, maybe this will push the tides in my favor. Kratovo (for those of you that can't tell from the title of this blog, that is where I live) is even mentioned in this. Please ignore the first 8 countries. And if you are thinking about going to them, well I don't want to ruin your plans, but I've heard that they've been having outbreaks of some pretty deadly diseases as well as some pretty hardcore civil wars that don't look like they'll be ending any time within the next 20 months or so. I guess Macedonia should just be bumped up to number 1:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/lonely-planets-best-in-travel-2014-top-10-countries

I'm gonna end this with some words of wisdom that I told myself today. Feel free to pass them on to others. If you recently saw a cactus, be sure to take a 360 degree look around yourself before getting the okay to stretch. I don't know if you ever did this, Danimal, but I was sitting in the chair next to the cactus the other day minding my own business (and by that I mean ignoring everybody else in the room that was talking in Macedonian. yes, that includes the TV) when I felt a stretch coming on. So what do I do? I reach for a little sky and as I move my arms down to get a little side action in there, before I know what's going on, BAM! I slammed my hand into the cactus. You better believe I got my hand away from that cactus as fast as I could. But the damage had already been done. Surprisingly it didn't hurt too bad, but those cactus needles weren't fun to pull out of my hand. The sad thing is that this wasn't the first time I tried giving the cactus a high-5. I'm hoping it'll be the last though.

Stay classy world.

Attempts At Murder And Other Nonsense

No, that's not a typo. And, yes, that's attempts with an "s." But I don't want to spoil the ending, so I'll save the good part for later (you better not just skip to the end! I'm watching you). Now that I've got you all anticipating the lackluster ending, I'd like to say that I hope I didn't lose all my readers with that last post all about pastrmailija. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this one's gonna be any better unless you are a demented person that likes to hear about torturous situations that someone you know had to endure.

Also, I'd like to add for absolutely no reason at all that I would've liked to post this sooner, but my computer unfortunately decided to stop letting me use the internet for awhile. I haven't decided what I want to blame for that yet but right now Windows 8 is sounding like a pretty good option (I'm not sure how exactly, but a few people suggested that to me and I'm just gonna go with it). Which leads me to my first rant of the post. Does anyone out there like Windows 8 (and, yes, I know that this is a blog post, but that's not a rhetorical question)? I've hated Windows 8 ever since I met it, and I feel pretty safe trash talking it right now because I've never met a Windows 8 fan. For this reason, I'm gonna keep this rant short by ending it now (but that's mostly because I'm out of things to say at the moment).

I did end up going into Skopje and getting a new wireless card & driver (thank you warranty) for my computer. And my computer's been fine for about a month now, but I just didn't post this, even though it was completely finished except for this short paragraph right here. Also I'm back to using Windows 7 thanks to my counterpart. I'd like to give a quick shoutout to him for helping me out with that.

Anyway, getting back to what I was talking about before. When my internet stopped working, I was thinking about going old school and writing letters to send out to the readers, but then I remembered that I don't know how to postmark a letter because it's 2014 and that technology is pretty outdated. I mean, that would be like trying to figure out how to work Gutenberg's original printing press. It's just not gonna happen because the instructions were written in German and I don't sprechen sie Deutsch if you know what I mean. Plus, it's not like I'm some sort of philatelist or something. I don't have stamps just lying around my room waiting to be put on an envelop. And there're computers at the school that I could have used if I really wanted to keep you updated that badly. But instead I decided to write this post and let it marinate for a while until my computer and I decided to cooperate. As you can see, that worked out real well.

Before I get to the good stuff, it's time to drop a knowledge bomb on y'all. Yep, it's time to learn another Macedonian word. Even though it's not one that you'd use a lot, I think it's fitting for this post. The word is: 

живот (szhivot) - life

I'm not really sure if you'll be able to say that correctly because I have no idea how to write that first character in Latin letters without giving you an explanation and I really don't want to have to do that. Hopefully you guys don't embarrass yourself by mispronouncing that the next time you're using the 3 things in Macedonian that you know how to say.

Now, to the part you've all been waiting for. So something new that I've been doing to keep things fresh and exciting is try to kill myself in entertaining ways. I bet that's not what you were thinking when you read the title (you're probably a little bit disappointed but intrigued at the same time, right?). Now, I haven't been doing this on purpose so don't think that I'm suicidal or anything--at least not consciously. I should point out that all of the failed attempts thus far happened within 24 hours of each other, so maybe it was just a bad 24 hours. Anyway, enough with all this banter. I'm sure you want to hear these stories of how I accidentally tried to kill myself.

Attempt number one went a little like this. It's around 7 in the o'clock on a Friday evening and I'm sitting down at a typical doner restaurant (don't worry, I'm not gonna spend a whole post descibing what a doner is to you). I'm in this doner restaurant in Tetovo with another volunteer that may or may not be a pro at PCR (I hate to ruin the ending of this first story, but this is a little bit of foreshadowing). We're sitting there eating some doner while waiting for a certain habitually late volunteer (integration at it's finest). The plan is for us all to head up to Shapka together when he--or she--gets into town. I don't remember exactly what caused this next part to happen but I'm sure I said something especially witty or humorous as I usually do and it aroused such laughter that the food I had just swallowed decided to stop moving in the middle of my esophagus (a recent vocab word for the juniors) so that I could enjoy a great belly laugh. But then something happened. Something went terribly wrong and my food refused to continue going down. At first I sat frightened thinking this can't be happening again. I got a flashback from the previous time and remembered spitting a nice piece of bacon fat from my mouth clear across a camp site. I wasn't about to let that happen again. But when the food wasn't making any progress, I realized what needed to be done and I mustered up the courage to look at the volunteer across the table from me and try to tell her with my eyes that something wasn't right because at the time my mouth was pretty useless except for all of the coughing it was trying to do. It's crazy how hard that is to do with food hanging out in your throat. Eventually she got the message, but just as she got up to take action, I saw my eyelids flash before my eyes as they pressed together to squeeze out the moisture that was building up in them (definitely not tears). At this point I knew I would make it. Everybody that dies sees their life flash before their eyes not their eyelids. So now that I know I'm not going anywhere, I hold my hand up as a sign for her to wait. After a few more rough seconds, the food finally continued on it's journey to the stomach and I washed it down with some water infested with chia seeds which is not a good idea if you just had something stuck in your throat no matter how healthy chia seeds may be. My advice is to stick with straight water.

Attempt numero dos. This is a three part tale. Part I. It's Saturday afternoon and I've made my way to the fine slopes of Shapka with a group of even finer volunteers (you know who you are) to do some skiing. We've made our way up the first chair lift in pairs without any complications, but what happened next I was not at all expecting. We decided to go up to a higher point on the slope using a T-lift because that was the only option. If you don't know what that is, Google it. It'll help you understand how this next part was possible. Or even better yet, I have a suspicion that T-lifts are the stars of some pretty entertaining videos on YouTube if you don't mind getting distracted from my blog for a couple of hours.

If you've never seen a T-lift before, you're probably thinking the same thing I was at the time--This looks like fun! But let me stop you there before you get too amped up. It's not! It may have the potential to be fun, but I don't think I will ever see the fun side of them because I hope that I'll never use another one in my life. Continuing with the story. As I'm standing in line for the T-lift, I'm watching all of these seemingly normal people slide up to the boarding point where an attendant helps them get on the contraption properly. From what I can tell, it looks pretty simple. You get up there, stand in a certain spot, and when the next arm of the lift approaches, you sit down on it and it pulls you up the slope. But that's not how it's done. Not unless you want to fall off and make them stop the lift for you to get out of the way.

So what do I do? I slide up there next to my lift buddy with all the confidence in the world. I've just seen the rest of my group get swooped off into paradise on this thing, and I'm pretty sure it's going to go just as swimmingly for me. The lift comes and I lean to sit back on it, but I don't feel much support. The lift isn't going anywhere. It's just getting stretched out like a leash until finally it can't stretch out any farther and it has no option but to yank us forward. Only when that happens, I don't glide along the snow as elegantly as everybody else I saw. I stumble forward and after about 10 feet, the lift manages to throw me from its grasp along with another volunteer who after she's done laughing at me tells me that she knew you weren't supposed to sit. In the words of Adam Sandler, "Jeez, you know that information might've been a little more useful to me YESTERDAY!"

Part II. For some reason, the volunteer that I took down with me the first time thought that I had learned my lesson so she decided to get back on with me and try again. And I think I've got this thing down now that I know the no sitting secret. The attendant doesn't have as much faith in me though. This go around, he tells me "Don't sit!" about 10 times while I was waiting for the lift to come and, well, you wouldn't believe what happened next if you didn't have this first-hand account here telling you. The lift is coming. It's getting closer and closer. The attendant is continuing to chant, "Don't sit. Don't sit." in the back of my ear like sweet nothings. And I'm standing there thinking Okay, Jake. This is your time to shine. Don't let all these people down. And more importantly don't sit down. I hear the attendant grab the lift and as he shimmies it into place for us to get on, I grab the middle bar ever so gently and let one of the arms of the T pull me along the surface of the snow as he says "Don't sit." for the last time. It was magnificent. Cheers erupted from the line and I swear I heard people chanting my name. Other skiers even stopped to congratulate me giving me high 5s on their way down the slopes. I thought my troubles were over. But then I managed to do something. Something that would alter my opinion of T-lifts forever.

About halfway up the slope I managed to get my skis all kittywampus, and before I had time to correct it, I felt myself being pulled down towards the snow while the T-lift went on without me. Again I was able to bring my partner down with me (It may or may not be important to note that this was the same volunteer from the doner incident). I'm sure she didn't think it was so funny this time, but I was laughing. With as comical as I was on this thing, I wasn't about to ski back down just to fall off the T-lift coming up again, so we took our skis off and walked the rest of the way up. If you're thinking that people must have been looking at us like we were crazy people, then you've never been skiing in Macedonia because walking up the slopes is the cool thing to do. Everybody's doing it. At first I thought it was because they didn't want to pay for a lift ticket, but now I'm pretty sure it's because they've all been on a T-lift before and they know that walking up is faster. Plus if they're anything like me it'd be their ultimate fate anyway.

Part III. We've reached the final chapter in this trilogy, and this is where I still didn't learn my lesson. 4 of us decided to head up to a section of the mountain we hadn't been to yet, and since I hadn't been having the best of luck on these T-lifts, I elected myself to ride alone (ok, I admit. that's actually a lie. they made me ride by myself. I didn't have a choice). And they even let me go up first. Probably so that they could watch me fall this time. But to their dismay, I got on the lift without a single problem (booyah). But the story doesn't end there.

I'm riding up the lift solo when one of my skis starts riding the side of a snow drift along what's supposed to be the path. Of course I'm off in lala land at this point because I thought I had mastered these things so I'm not paying attention to any of this until I start to lose my balance. At that point it's too late for a person with my abilities (obviously right around the beginner level...only because I'm not sure what's below that) to correct what's been done, so I fall off the lift, but this is where it gets interesting. Somehow I managed to grab onto the lift on my way off, so now I'm lying on the ground being dragged along by the lift. This position really wasn't too bad, but I couldn't see where the lift ended so I kinda wanted to get back up on the lift if possible. After a few attempts to stand up, I realized that wasn't gonna happen while I was holding on to the lift. So I made the obvious decision, and I decided to get a better grip so that I wouldn't fall completely off while being dragged the rest of the way up the hill. After a minute or two and a couple close calls of having my pants come off, I looked up and saw something that I didn't want to see. The hill got steeper. Now I was already struggling enough to hang on (if you're thinking it can't be that hard or tiring, you should try it out some time) so I decided to call it quits. I let go of the lift without knowing what I was gonna do next, but I gotta tell ya, the situation didn't get any better.

The first pair goes by me on the lift. I'm not sure if they knew what to think at that time. But the next lift only had one person on it and she was telling me to position myself so that I could hop on with her. I don't know what made me think I had the remotest ability to even try this, but I looked at my other option and it didn't look any better, so I got myself into position as best I could. As her lift approached she looked more and more worried that this wasn't gonna work (probably due to my excellently misplaced positioning) and I was losing confidence that I could successfully hop on this thing. The moment came for me to curfumble my way on to the lift (yeah, I made a word up for this because I'm pretty sure one doesn't exist for what I tried to do. plus, it just sounds right). And then the moment went. But there was a lot that happened in-between.

Once I touched the lift, I felt this energy. I couldn't tell if it was bad or good, but it was something and I found out soon enough. As I turned my body and worked on making the adjustments toward getting my skis facing the right direction, I was starting to feel good about this whole operation that had been devised during the last 10 seconds. Then the lift wobbled and the wobble turned into vicious shaking and before I knew it, both of us were lying in the snow on opposite sides of the lift. But there was no time to rest. We had to hurry up and get out of the path so that we wouldn't cause problems for any other riders. After we got to the side, we realized that there was no easy way down this mountain. Luckily she's an expert and was able to find a decent escape route for us. We were ready to call it a day, but I wasn't about to admit defeat that easily. I'll get dragged up the whole way if I have to. So I made the wise decision and went back to that same T-lift and I rode that bad boy all the way to the top. I'm not gonna lie, there were a few close calls along the way. It felt great though. After I gloriously defeated the lift, I skied down the slope and got the hell out of there.

It's the important, life-changing stories like these that I'd like to share with you all. I'd like to say thanks for being good sports to everybody who I made fall off the lifts with me.

In other news, on my way back to Kratovo after the ski trip, my day was brightened a bit. I saw an old man, probably in his 60s, at one of the seemingly random roadside bus stops wearing a hat that said "My mom thinks I'm cute" in colorful letters. He must have one of the happiest mothers in Macedonia. You gotta wonder if that man even knows what the words on his hat mean. He ended up just dropping some tools off in the compartments where the luggage is kept without getting on the bus so I didn't get a chance to test his English abilities to see if he could understand what his hat said.

Also, I've been made aware of the lack of photography shown on my blog so I'll work on changing that even though I'll probably just end up stealing most of the pictures from Facebook.

Stay classy world.

This Is What Happened Next

Okay, guys, the expectations are pretty high, and I've been getting a lot of requests for more posts (I think I'm up to 2 requests now. feel free to keep 'em coming). The fan mail is pouring in too, and I've even had to spend my tutoring sessions (yeah, right. we all know I haven't started those yet) going through them. Quite frankly it's a little intimidating. I don't know that I can live up to all the hype surrounding my newly found fame, but I'll do my best to please the hordes of fans that are supporting me from all around the globe (i.e., Macedonia & the US…actually I think both of the requests came from the US, so we can narrow it down to just the one).

I don't know how many of you are recurring readers (I'd like to give a quick shout out to those of you that are because you're the only people that will understand this next part (as long as you weren't as drunk when you read my last post as I was when I wrote it (just to be safe, that's obviously a joke). oh, and in case you're wondering, that was the shout out)), but I'm sure you'll all be disappointed to hear that my search for a wild boar was a failure (well, I guess I don't know that I would call it that. I suppose I'd actually have to look for one for it to be considered a failure). Nonetheless, there is no boar and no pastramailija.

I reckon I should take this time to educate all of the people out there that don't know what pastramailija is. But before I do that, I just realized that I need to stop writing it like that because I know that the Americans out there are pronouncing it wrong (and I really need to please both of my fans), so I should correct that before I make you read it 12 more times. Lord knows that when I found out I was coming to Macedonia (I could be wrong, but isn't that a type of nut?) and I was doing research on the country and saw the name of the capital city, Skopje, I was pronouncing it wrong (I'm not even sure if I say it right yet). But still, if I heard my old self say it now, I'd just laugh and think Obviously you've never been to the Balkans or studied a Slavic language. What a loser.

Anyway, how about we talk about that spelling change now. So instead of spelling it pastramailija (I swear that's the last time), I'll write it pastramyliya. I'm not really sure that that's even gonna help, so you know what, how about I just do this...pas-tra-my-lee-ya. Now I know what you're all thinking. Ooh, what a huge difference, Jake. That's a life saver (no, not the delicious candy). But I'm just gonna need you to be honest and level with me for a second. You were definitely pronouncing that wrong before, weren't you?

Now that you've come to terms with the truth—and even more importantly learned how to say the word correctly (at least I hope so)—let me tell you a little bit about this thing called pastramyliya (I feel really weird spelling it like this). It's pretty much the most fantasized about dish in all of Macedonia (besides the illegal trout from Lake Ohrid). And it's actually quite simple to describe, but I don't think a simple explanation would be as engaging for your senses, so let me see what I can do about that.

Weeks of preparation go into the making of pastramyliya (at this point I’m just copying and pasting this word because it's so weird to write it like this, even though the only time I've ever written the word at all is in this blog), and I want to inform you about what goes on during each minute of that period (I promise it’s gonna be fun! but if you really don’t want the minute by minute gameplay, please proceed to the next sentence where you will see I skip that part). Before you can even think about eating it, you must first get yourself a pig. In the case that you don't have one readily available in your kitchen (I’m not even gonna comment on that, but come on, guys, get yourself together), you can pick one up from your local farmer or butcher or whatever (I don't know. I've never personally done this step. I've only heard legends of it being done). After you pick out the pig (hopefully you know what you’re doing and don’t choose the runt) and it is killed in front of your eyes, you finish cleaning the blood spatters off of your clothes (again, this is only speculation) and you lug the pig home where you salt it, rinse it, and let it dry for about 2 weeks (there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on here that I don't want to bore you with). Honestly, I just don't want to have to research how it's done or find somebody to ask about this right now because I'll probably get stuck in a conversation for a couple of hours and have rakija (for you Americans out there rak-e-ya...it's a type of liquor here that many people make) poured down my throat. Pastramyliya is exclusively a winter meal because the meat needs cold weather to dry out nicely (wow, there is absolutely no connection between this sentence and the one before it. you know what, I’m gonna take that back because I just read the sentence before the previous sentence and it’s kinda related. that makes this whole little monologue right here pretty much useless). After the meat is sufficiently dried, it gets smoked. I don't think any further explanation is necessary here. With this step completed, you're now well on your way to having some pastramyliya.

Since I have experience as a culinary professional (I think being a consumer of food counts here), let me get your taste buds primed. Imagine you're sitting down in a typical cafana style restaurant with some live performer covering a traditional Macedonian song such as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxbVaM2tdY (for the proper ambience while reading this, I'm gonna have to ask you to click on that link. don't worry, I'll wait for you before I continue).

After ordering your food from a menu that features items such as a chikan berger and meckarony (bonus points for those of you who know what foods those are), your homemade red wine is brought out to you in a decanter (or whatever it's called) and sloppily poured into a wine glass for you (sorry for the less than perfect picture I'm painting here, but I'm just trying to keep it real. it’ll get better). You sit back and enjoy the music and the questionable wine (this part I'm making up. I know pretty much nothing about what wine's supposed to taste like, but to me just about all wine is questionable) while you wait for your food. As you're waiting, you look around the room and notice that even though music is blasting out of the speakers so loudly that it doesn't seem possible for anyone to be doing anything else but be listening to it, not a single person is moving to the rhythm (that's even harder to spell than rhyme) of the beat.

Finally you see the waiter coming over with your pastramyliya, and it looks a lot bigger than you thought it'd be based off the cost (it's about $4.00 dollars. if you want an egg in the middle (don’t worry it’s out of the shell and cooked) then you better be willing to cough up the big bucks. I think it’s like 25₵ more). Just as you're wondering if you're gonna be able to finish it, you get that first whiff that invigorates your olfactory senses in a way you've never experienced before. It's a combination of freshly baked dough and sizzling slabs of bacon (I should mention that no pigs were harmed in the writing of this blog. I can't say the same about my dinner though).

Now that you've come back to your senses, you can see that it's basically just an oval-shaped pizza-like crust that has pieces of pork (and fat for those of you out there that are into that kind of thing) on it with a graciously sized hot pepper sitting next to it, but your mouth is telling you it's something more. Now it's time to get intimate with it. While your mouth salivates, you rub a greasy piece of pork around the edge of the crust before you tear off that first piece. As you're making the moves to put the first bite in your mouth, you notice how much you're drooling and you hurry up and wipe the drool on your sleeve before shoving that first precious piece in your mouth. And when you do, why it's just heavenly. It's everything you ever thought it would be and more. You take a swig of the questionable wine that somehow perfectly complements the pastramyliya and now provides the flavor that your taste buds were craving making you wonder where this perfect mutualistic food relationship has been your whole life. You sit back, look at the pastramyliya, and think of the wonderful relationship you're going to have with it for the next 2 winters before you devour this one in 10 minutes. The end (man, that ending sucked).

I guess it's about that time in the post for me to make up some word or phrase for you all to memorize so that you think you're learning another language. I'm gonna have to step my game up a bit for this one, so just let me think for a second. OK, I got it. The phrase is:

                                како си? (kako si) - how are you?

All right, fine. I admit my vocab game is slacking a bit. To make up for what I’m lacking in originality here, I will add that you can also say како сте (kako ste) if you’re trying to be formal (but that's just for suck-ups).

Well, I think my hands are about to freeze because I'm losing motor function as I'm laying here in my bed under 4 blankets writing this. One thing I've noticed in all the traveling I've done around the country so far, is that I got stuck in one of the colder houses. Sometimes I feel like it's colder in my room than it is outside, but without a thermometer, I'll never know. The only way I have to judge the temp is by whether or not I can see water vapor travel through my room with every breath I take (which usually means that it’s 45°F or less). If I don't, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a good day, and I might not even have to turn on my awful (ahem…I mean awesome) Peace Corps heater (that's really only if I'm trying to act like I'm Bear Grylls though).

Wow, I managed to make my tangent last for an entire blog post. I’m pretty proud of myself for that one. Oh, and I'm sorry for all that boring talk about pastramyliya. I'll try to be more entertaining next time. It's just, I figured you should all learn a little bit about some of the stuff that my life consists of these days (some people complained about not learning anything like that last time. I won't mention any names Dennis).

Stay classy world.

You Saw It Here First, Folks

Seeing as how so many volunteers have blogs to let their 6 friends from back home who want to know what's going down in Macedonia these days stay informed, I figured I'd join the bandwagon. Honestly, I don't know what the hell (I mean heck...sorry mom) I'm gonna write about. I really don't want to muck this up like Jerry would have. If you didn't get the Fargo reference, you're probably not alone. But don't worry, you're not missing anything. After all, what happens in Kratovo stays in Kratovo...unless I write about it here. And if I don't, well, that requires at least a level 4 clearance, and those things aren't just given away.

Anyway, I’m not gonna get into all of the technical stuff that Peace Corps Volunteers go through upon arriving in country, and I’m not gonna try to summarize what my last 5 months here have been like to get you all caught up. I’m just going to start from where I’m at now. And for those of you that didn't know I was in the Peace Corps in Macedonia, I'm sorry that you had to find out this way, but obviously I'm not very good friends with you (if you are reading this and you didn't know I was in Macedonia, I'm just joking around. but not really. god, I'm really hoping that none of you are reading this).

Okay, now that I got my intro out of the way, I want to clarify something before I go any further. One thing that this group of words that documents my experiences IS NOT is a diary. I know what a diary is, and its definition is completely different than that. I mean, it's not like I'm sitting here on my computer writing about what I've been up to lately and how I feel about things. Anyway, I don't want to get into that right now. It’s not important. I don’t even know why you guys brought it up.

Moving on, I think you all should know the pressure I'm under while writing this. As I'm sitting here at the computer, I've got about 4 teachers sitting behind me staring. Granted they can't understand a word of this. And I'm pretty sure I heard them comment on how handsome I look today more than once since I've been sedentary (okay, I admit that I used a thesaurus to find a smart word. you can only use the word "sitting" so many times before it gets boring). I mean come on people. I’m flattered but can't you find something else to talk about for once? Some of us are just born with radiant eyes, luscious locks of hair, and a dreamy smile. Now obviously I'm not talking about myself, but that's not the point. The point is that if I've just described a girl you know and she's between the ages of 19 and 25, can you please introduce me? It's time to start writing the next paragraph because I've lost my train of thought. You guys keep on getting me off topic somehow.

I figured that this blog (i.e., not a diary) would be a good way for all of my steadfast readers out there to improve their Macedonian a little bit (because we all know how important that is). God forbid you go into your next job interview without being able to write that down on your resume. You might as well get up out of the chair, turn around, and walk right back out of the room cause you and I both know you're not getting that job. So after much deliberation that ended in a 1-0 vote in favor of it (you're lucky the other side only tried to bribe me with a free trip to Italy if I gave them my social security and bank account numbers. yeah, right. I'm not falling for that one again), I've decided to include a Macedonian word or phrase with my blog posts (or at least for this one. we'll see how it goes. I don't want to put too much pressure on myself). So without further ado, I present to you (yeah, that's right. I rhymed (try spelling that word without spell check)) the Macedonian word of the blog. I'm gonna start simple, so that I don't set the bar too high if I do end up doing this again. For all I know this may be my only blog post. Anyway, the word is:

здраво (zdravo) - hello

So next time you see me walking down the street or my name shows up in your chat box, don’t be a stranger. And certainly don’t be afraid to show off your mad skillz in Macedonian.

Now that I'm done with all of my useless jibber-jabber that you probably weren't expecting (I know I wasn't) when you clicked on that link (I bet you're starting to regret that), it's story time. That's right y'all. Pull up a chair, gather round your screens, and grab that bag of chips that you keep on telling yourself you aren't gonna eat cause it’s about to get good.

So remember yesterday when my old host mom taught me the Macedonian equivalent of eenie, meenie, miney, mo? What do you mean you weren't there? So anyway, yesterday my old host mom taught me the Macedonian equivalent of eenie, meenie, miney, mo (how are those words even spelled? hopefully you know what I'm talking about). I'm not gonna write the Macedonian version out (mainly because I don't remember it), but it happened to come up in one of my classes the next day, and I found out from my students and counterpart what's being said. Loosely translated it means I'm a bunny, you're a squirrel, blah blah blah, the end, and you're it. That was pretty cool. There’s no moral to that story, but if you do feel like you want to take something away from that, let it be this. It was nice to know that Americans are similar to Macedonians in at least one respect. That is, that we both have stupid sayings that we've made up to select who’s it when we’re playing games as kids. After all, it’s the simple things that count.

Well, I've rambled on about pretty much nothing for far too long already. And as much as I know you’re enjoying reading this, I think now it’s time that I say goodbye because let’s face it, you've wasted enough of your time already by reading this far. So, that's all for now, folks. Stay tuned for the next edition where I'll go in search of a wild boar in the mountains of Kratovo to wrassle to the death. And if I win...free pastramailija for everyone! Okay, I’m really gonna go now. I just wanted to get the word count up to 1000 since I was so close.

Stay classy world.

Also, I feel obligated (mostly because I am obligated to put this on here) to mention that "The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps" (this sentence, however, I stole from someone else's blog). I'm such a rebel.