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.