Found an hour to compose this e-mail which I am typing at “home”, putting on a flash drive, and then eventually going into the town to put it out over the internet. This is the way I have to do it until December. Not as convenient as at home.
Let everyone at home know I really appreciate the e-mails and to keep them coming. I appreciate the humour and keeping informed about what’s going on in each family. I have lots of pictures and will post them on Picasa when I have some time. The only problem is that you won’t necessarily know what a picture is all about.
Negotino is a town composed of several villages and colonies. The grocery market, pharmacies, bakeries, meat markets, cafes, etc. are all at the bottom of the “valley” with the homes of the villagers up in the hills. So everyone walks downhill to the center and uphill fully loaded with goods. It’s amazing to see the babas and dados (grandmothers and grandfathers) manage the uphill trek. I would suspect that a lifetime of this climbing these hills results in a low risk of heart disease in this country. The lung cancer rate must be pretty high though, since many Macedonians smoke, including some of the 12 year olds that I’ve met.
Last Sunday Kocho took me on a 12 kilometer hike through the vineyards and up a local “mountain”. I walked with my Macedonian dictionary with me and we were able to communicate pretty well. The view from the top was awesome as you could see distant villages, the Town of Negotino, and the distant real mountain ranges. I spent the rest of the day upon my return studying my Macedonian, which is coming along rather well.
This is the time of the year when everyone is getting ready for the winter months. Wine making equipment is being stored, garden plots are being furrowed, and it seems almost the entire neighborhood is splitting and stacking wood. Kocho’s neighbor was butchering three pigs on Sunday. It was somewhat of a cultural shock to see two boys of about five years with knives gutting the slain animals as their father supervised the process.
Until you’ve visited the country in person, you cannot appreciate how friendly the Macedonians are. When they meet you, they want to take you to their home to meet the rest of the family and to have a drink or two of chai or homemade wine or rakija. Last night I got a call at 8:30 inviting me over to the birthday party of the host father of one of the other Peace Corps trainees. I was getting ready to study but I accepted the invitation and wound up staying for 1 ½ hours communicating with the other family members in attendance in broken English and broken Macedonian. I’ve learned that I can usually get around the language barrier now but look forward to the time when I can converse more fluently in this nation’s language. On Thursday night I am attending an internet class with four of the men who attended the birthday party. They asked their instructor if “Michael from America “ could come with them one night to class and I was heartily invited . I just hope we don’t stop for a few on the way home. At least we’ll be walking, so there is no chance of getting a DUI citation. I wonder if they give WUI (walking under the influence) citations?
Included in the pictures are Kocho and me at the top of the hillock (is this really a word?) where the panorama is awesome; a view of one of the villages as seen from the top; a picture of a tractor and a farmer with his horse drawn cart that we passed in the vineyard; a picture of drying peppers that almost every family seems to grow (they dry in those bags and are pulverized into paprika). These pictures are the last of the batch I took with the highest resolution on my camera. This resulted in enormous upload times when I was sending them to you. Hopefully, until I can set up a Picasa site, these will be easier for everyone to download.
Love, Love, Love, Majkal ApXaptik (aka Mikey)
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