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but then I remembered that I don't know how to postmark a letter because it's 2014 and that technology is pretty outdated.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.
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