Back in Action

The students returned to school on the 20th. They were pleased to be back after a 21 day vacation. Upon my return, I was greeted by the three flagpoles that were once hidden behind 30 foot evergreens next to the school building and now stand way out in front of the school, proudly displaying the Macedonian National Flag. The Director must have gotten tired of me harping about flying the flag, because she had them moved over the vacation. Or maybe she just thought it was a good Idea. Anyway, we are currently the only public building, or for that matter any building, flying the national colors daily. I’m hoping the idea catches on at the Municipal Building and the other two schools in town.

Alexandra and I are still coming up with supplemental ways to teach English. We are developing a system to rollback the amount of time the students spend in class copying vocabulary and grammar rules (good news: the government provides books to all students; bad news: students can’t write in them ). We are using music, English reading materials from our friends in America, and Macedonian-English dictionaries. The several dictionaries that we have open up many new instructional techniques and allow us to involve in different ways, all of the learners in class. In learning a new language, building a working vocabulary is a key to building up the confidence of the learner to speak and write. The texts that the Macedonian teachers must use, fail in helping the students build a vocabulary because they are genetically written to teach English to students, regardless of their native language.

Currently students attempt to learn English without classroom dictionaries. In reality, 98% (hyperbole) of the English teachers in Macedonia do not have their own classroom . They must travel from class to class and bring with them, only what they can carry. So dictionaries are not used and learning a new language remains more challenging for the students than need be.

David and I took a day trip to Skopje over the holidays (he hadn’t yet had a chance to explore it) to catch the Christmas decorations and ambiance of the capital during the holiday season. The City Fathers (if there are such people) did a marvelous job and located a temporary ice skating rink in the center plaza. People were having a good time and in good spirits. When you go to Skopje, you can leave your Macedonian language home. Most of the store clerks and waitresses/waiters speak English so at least you can make a purchase or order some food without getting out your dictionary. I stocked up on peanut butter and David bought a Macedonian flag to fly on national holidays.

The 19th of January is a feast day/holiday in the Orthodox Balkans, or at least here in Macedonia. The feast day commemorates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. The local priests, at the conclusion of the morning ceremony, toss a cross into the lake (as in Ohrid), the river (as in Vardar) or the swimming pool (as in Probistip). As I understand it, men from town who have married within the last year, are entitled to plunge into the winter waters in an attempt to retrieve the floating cross. Honor and blessings are bestowed upon the retrieveree (click at the top of the page on my annotated photos)

We’ve had a few light snowfalls in January, but unlike my first winter here, it has remained cold enough for the snow to stick around for more than a day. The children continue to flock to the "hill" outside my apartment, having as much fun as any skier or snowboarder at Aspen or Whistler. The majority of the residents in my neighborhood heat and cook with wood and basically live in one room for the duration of the winter. With the cold weather of the last few weeks, I see the babas (grandmothers)and pensioneers continuously fetching wood from their storage sheds located behind of the apartment buildings. Fortunately, all I need to do when it gets too cold, is turn up the dial on the thermostat of my electric heater. Electricity is an expensive alternative to wood, so a large percentage of Probistipians continue to use the traditional method of heating and cooking.

I am currently working on a bunch of projects (try to visualize a bunch of projects) which are keeping me very busy. I met the mayor’s chief-of-staff who invited me to give a presentation to the mayor and his staff on my observations and ideas as a one-year resident of their community. I was asked to facilitate a session at the upcoming mid-service- conference for the MAK13’s. I’m monitoring the best English students at school who are translating into Macedonian, Physical Education activities for the lower grade teachers and English-for-Police for the Probistip Police Department.

Right now, I have to do the monthly cleaning of my apartment, do two loads of laundry once the water comes back on, bake a pie using the apples that I received from my neighbors, make a carrot (the Vegetable of the Month) salad that I found on the internet which uses maple syrup and make some soup using the carcass of yesterday’s roast chicken.

Wait a minute! Aren’t those women’s chores? I hope I’ll still remember how to use a hammer, change the oil in my car, and spit once I return home to America.

More Holiday Season II

Christmas on the 25th was just another day and it didn’t really seem anything like a holiday. I did however, enjoy my Skype’ed visit that evening with my wife, sons, their maidens, my mother, my brothers, sister, brother-in –law, sisters-in-law, niece, nephews, and as the case may be, their wives. Also a quick thank you to my neighbors back home– the Wilsons, the Hoveys, the Nolans and others - who have watched out for my wife over the last year and eased any concerns that I may have had in her ability to survive two-and-a-half years without me.

The week after the 25th was the lead-up to the holidays here. Decorations went up, people bustled around the town and the holiday spirit began to appear. The students at school were busy decorating classrooms and common areas. As usual, Alexandra took the lead and was overseeing the whole process. It was nice watching the students make most of the decorations from ordinary pieces of paper.

The music teachers with the help of some of the classroom teachers put together a wonderful New Years Pageant which I recorded. I put together a souvenir DVD which I hope we can use to raise some money for English-Macedonian dictionaries. Since this is a new concept, I will have to sell the principal on the idea.

We had a wonderful teachers’ holiday party at the local hotel. Macedonians love to dance and they seemed to dance the Oro non-stop. I kind of missed the Chicken Dance, YMCA, the Hokey Pokey, and the Electric Slide, but maybe someday in the near future some innovative Macedonian (probably Alexandra) will sneak it into a Macedonian celebration. I feigned ignorance of the Oro and chose not to participate, not because I couldn’t dance it, but because I didn’t have the stamina to dance non-stop for 40 minutes at a time.

Most of the excitement in Macedonian is focused on the first day of the New Year. So the other PCV in Probistip, David (you met him in previous blogs) and I went to Bitola, the second largest and most beautiful city in Macedonia (reference earlier blogs from my wife) to spend time (and free lodging) with the most famous photographer from Connecticut, Phil.

Winter bus rides afford riders a great view of the countryside landscape. The defoliated trees along roads enable one to experience a unobstructed view of the valleys, rivers, and distant mountains. The emerald fields of winter wheat stand out in the otherwise brown and gray landscape and the leafless vineyards and arbors, with their dress-right-dress formations remind one of a North Korean tribute to President (dictator) Kim Jong-il (that’s my analogy, OK? Maybe that wouldn’t be your’s.).

Bitola was dressed in all its holiday splendor and ready to rock at midnight. We caught up with the other volunteers from Bitola, Heather and Katy and Michael (who just completed his PC service) and his friend from Australia, Ed. We showed up at midnight on the square with lit cigars and took in all the sights. The party lasted until 2:30 in the morning. We successfully dodged all the fireworks that were being tossed from all directions.

The secular holiday of New Year’s Day was the most celebrated holiday during the days of the Yugoslavian Republic. Orthodox Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were working days. Now Macedonians have freedom of religion and there are many holidays related to the saints of the Orthodox Church. I was invited to spend Christmas Eve with Jasmina’s (my language tutor and friend) family. Jasmina’s mom put out all the traditional fare (no fat is served on this day, so fish was served) and her father provided us with the recently made rakija and wine from this year’s harvest. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are relatively quiet holidays where family members spend the day at home with one another.

The students are off until the 15th or 20th. I’ll verify the exact day tomorrow. The teachers, however, are required to show up each day for a couple of hours. Once the ridiculously cumbersome (my personal opinion) grading and the documenting -of-grades process is completed, there is little to do for the teachers. So everyone socializes for a couple of hours and then everyone departs for home.

I’ve got lots of stuff to try out, and hopefully implement, in the upcoming months, so I’m looking forward to the students’ return and an invigorated back-to-business attitude for a new year. Don’t forget to check out my newly uploaded photos. Catch you later!

The Holiday Season Year II

While the hectic holiday season is probably boiling over in America and the non-Orthodox Christian world, here in Probistip the inklings of the holidays are beginning to surface. Since the biggest holiday is New Years Day, I am just now beginning to see the decorations and lights in town and on individual homes and apartments. Fireworks, which are illegal but still tolerated as in my home state Massachusetts (you are only fined for possession of fireworks after you blow your finger(s) off and are leaving the hospital post-surgery), are sporadically being set off by the local youths. The recently elected mayor and town counsel purchased some new decorations for the center (with of course some discontent from some of the older residents but no complaints from the children) which remind anyone walking in the center about the special nature of this time of the year.

Rather than have me explain again in detail the customs and rituals of the holidays in Macedonia, refer to my blogs from last year – Christmas in Macedonia and The Macedonian Holiday Season. Remember, Santa visits the Balkans on New Year’s Eve, having enjoyed a week’s rest after bringing joy to the children in other parts of the world. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are relatively quiet family days in Macedonia.

School continues until the 30th and then the entire country seems to go on a hiatus from working although it is not officially vacation time, similar to the workweek between Christmas and New Years in the USA.

Skopje on the other hand, is magnificently decorated and in full holiday mode as I found out on my trip there last week for a warden’s training meeting with Goce, the Safety and Security Officer for the Peace Corps in Macedonia. The training for selected (from a pool of volunteer Volunteers) wardens insures the execution of the Peace Corps ‘ plans for PCVs in case of a disaster or civil unrest . The Peace Corps puts a great deal of effort into insuring everyone’s safety in emergency situations.

Thanks to the wonderfully generous Macedonian-Americans from the Midwest, we now have a library of English language reading materials for the students at our school. Their organization held a “book raiser”, collected over 500 books and magazines, boxed, shipped, and paid an enormous sum of money to get them to us. When they arrived (after a few misunderstandings at the customs office), the children and teachers were elated to have the riches of so many new reading materials. From having only soft-covered textbooks and workbooks, they now had a library to help them learn a new language.

We are in the process of cataloging the reading materials so the students can sign them out and read them with their families at home. Alexandra has already assigned book reports to some of the advanced students, both to challenge them and get their recommendations. She has used the library to provide supplementary reading to the student s who have completed their work (in the past they would idly sit at their desks waiting for everyone to finish). And we are in the process of designing lesson plans that supplant the rigid structure of the textbooks yet meet the same instructional goals.

The new Student Council is learning its role in the school. We are in the process of developing standardized rules for the entire school to replace the rather hodge-podge set that are in place now. It’s a fact that students like order and well-defined structure and the Student Council members, with input from their classmates, have corroborated that hypothesis. So in the near future, with student ownership of the rules, and consistent enforcement by the teaching staff, the days of Dodge-City-like behaviors should mellow out. We’ll see.

Since my first days at Nikola Karev, I had wanted to get everyone together, as we do in America, and recognize the Macedonian patriots that had come before them. I put together a plan and “sold it” to the principal and then as usual, Alexandra took charge and executed the plan with the help of our new Student Council. Therefore I am extremely pleased to announce that on Monday morning, the 21st of December 2009, the entire school population met prior to heading to their home room classes, and sang their National Hymn (anthem) led by the school chorus. Everyone was talking about how great an idea it was and we will continue this ritual every Monday morning from now on.

If you read this blog before Christmas, then accept my wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year. You can of course post-accept them if you read it any time after then. December 25th is a workday for me but I’m looking forward to New Year’s Day. Hopefully you will not have overburdened Santa (or as we call him “ Father Ice”) with too many presents to deliver on Christmas Eve, so that he will have the energy to bring me mine the following week. Meanwhile I am looking forward to enjoying the gathering at my brother Mark and sister-in-law Joanne’s home on Christmas Day via Skype.

Mov'in Along

Although we’re astronomically into the winter season, the weather has been pretty mild. While we have had a few frosty nights and the mornings are chilly, the afternoon temps get up into the high 60’s. Snow isn’t expected until late December according to the locals. The trees for the most part have shed their leaves and have been swept up and deposited into the dumpsters that are located throughout the neighborhood.

Speaking of leaves, I recently discovered and purchased two grass rakes at a hardware store in Kumanavo when I was strolling around there last month. I believe they were the only two grass rakes in Macedonia (an unverifiable fact). They are sold without the handles, so that I was able to bring them back to Probistip. Having watched my neighbors and the custodians at school sweep leaves with the short handled brooms and pick up trash that didn’t make it into the dumpsters with their hands, I thought I would introduce the concept of a grass rake into my neighborhood. Most of my friends and neighbors had never seen a grass rake (everyone has a garden rake) and they weren’t sure what it was for. So I obviously drew a crowd the first time I used it outside my apartment and was able to Tom Sawyer the local children, convincing them it was fun to rake leaves with this wonderful tool. The men were very curious and several of them asked where they could purchase one. My answer was the same answer I give to the children when they ask where they can purchase a Frisbee, “Not in Macedonia, yet”. I will try to convince one of the local hardware shops to stock them. I donated one of the rakes to the school where I have noticed that it is being put to good use.

School is in full swing now. On Friday, the students finally received their books for geography, math, Macedonian, biology and informatika. Since this is the first year that the government is providing books to all students, there was a delay in shipping them all out to every school in the country. We are four months into the school year and the students now have their books . Since the students must return the books at the end of the school year, late deliveries won’t be a problem next year. The downside of not owning the book, is that the students must spend a lot of time copying grammar rules and vocabulary during class time which puts a strain on the time we have to actually teach.

The Director has been very supportive of our suggestions and she is a pleasure to work with. After a meeting with her last week, we have now started a Student Council, will display the Macedonian flag at the school , sing the National hymn during Monday morning home room time, involve the school in ThinkQuest ( http://www.thinkquest.org/en/ and in the World Map Project (http://multimedia.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/library/R0088_worldmapproject.pdf ). We will also establish and implement an emergency evacuation plan for the school.

This school year I am running an after-school sports program entitled “Games From America”. So in addition to the usual basketball, jump roping and Frisbees, we have already played Kickball, Capture the Flag, Knockout, and Ultimate Frisbee. The students who show up seem to really enjoy the exposure to games other than football, volleyball and handball. The first time we played Kickball, I was very lucky to have Amber, Kate and Dan (the three trainees living in Probistip) participating. It dramatically reduced the time it took me to explain in Macedonian, the intricacies of the game, as they were able to demonstrate and model the somewhat complicated rules. The students loved the game so much, that we wound up playing for two hours and it has become the number one game request.

Thanksgiving Day coincided with Swearing-In Day for the MAK14’s. So we all – trainees, host families, and Volunteers – assembled in Kumanavo for a wonderful time. The American Ambassador to Macedonia sworn in the Trainees (this will the last time I have to use the word “trainee”) after which we enjoyed a somewhat traditional Thanksgiving meal, highlighted by the turkeys flown in from America and prepared by the function hall staff. I actually ate nothing but turkey, consuming at least three pounds of meat, knowing full-well it will be 364 days until my next opportunity to savor my favorite non-flying bird. We all returned home to Probistip around 8PM, time enough for the new Volunteers to spend their last night with their host families and time enough for me to Skype my family in Massachusetts to participate in a family-cyber-Thanksgiving-dinner.

Dave moved in on Friday morning and is currently settling into his apartment. He is looking forward to working in the Municipality, learning how to cook for himself, and utilizing the Macedonian language. Dave is my age, so I now have a playmate and we will have to like one another, otherwise it will be a long 13 months living right next store (no one ever says “nexT (pause) door)” to one another.

A Good Time Together

The month of October was highlighted by a visit by my honey who describes her visit in the previous Blog. We had a great time just hanging out, visiting PCV’s in Skopje and Bitola, attending “na gosti’s with neighbors, exploring the new supermarket, walking around the neighborhood, and editing English translations for the Municipality.

A new supermarket? Yes! Probistip now has a place where I can shop for many items which the small food shops couldn’t stock because of limited shelf space and a lack of refrigeration. My Market (yes, it’s in English) is a small chain of supermarkets in Eastern Macedonia. Opening day at the new My Market was heralded in with folk dancers, traditional Macedonian music, and free food and beverages (I saw a few of my students enjoying a beer) . I can now find a selection of cheeses and breads, diet sodas, frozen foods, a reliable supply of beef, and alcoholic beverages other than beer and wine. Unfortunately, some of the smaller shops (prodavnitzas) will probably lose out to this new competitor, putting more people out of work. I will continue to shop at the ”prodav” and butcher shops for the items I can get there, but the variety at the supermarket is a tantalizing drawing card.

The six trainees that are here in Probistip (we all hate the word “trainee”) are in their final three weeks of preparation. They are a great group and are having a wonderful time together in “The Probe” – as they like to call it. Two weeks ago they found out where they will be assigned for the next two years and last week they visited their new homes, met their new counterpart, and toured their new community. Amber will be going to the city of Strumica; Kate will be going to a village (Gradsko); Dan will be going to the city of Stip; Jennifer will be going to the town of Makadonski Brod; Keri will be going to the capital city; and Laura will be going to the town of Kocani. I realize these locations are meaningless if you don’t have a map, but for those of you who do – Bon Appetite or whatever. They all will all be TEFL’ing in Eastern Macedonia.

On Halloween, the six of them, plus Maja their language instructor, costumed up for their training day in Kumanevo with all the other trainees in MAK14. Their costumes were hilarious (see photo) and they got more than their normal share of stares when they walked to the school in costumes to be picked up for the ride to Kumanevo. They actually went out Trick-or-Treating to each of the host families homes on Halloween night and were a big hit with everyone they encountered.

On the day after Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving Day also happens to be the day the trainees on this cycle will be sworn in as full-fledged Volunteers and I won’t have to refer to them as Trainees anymore) they will all depart Probistip and for the first time since they’ve been in Macedonia, they will be un-tethered and on their own. It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by since I was wearing their shoes.
Their departure from Probistip is offset by the arrival of a new MAK14 Volunteer who will be living here for the next two years – Dave from Michigan. Dave was assigned here (the first time The Probe has had two PCV’s) to work in the Municipality. I’m not sure what exactly that entails, but I’ll soon find out. Dave will be living in the apartment right next to mine (it’s an unusual arrangement to have two volunteers in the same town living so close to one another) because the Peace Corps staff couldn’t find a suitable place anywhere else. At least I know where to go now to borrow a cup of sugar. With Dave’s arrival I will no longer feel the pressure of representing 300 million Americans. I will now have to represent only 150 million, which is a more tolerable number.

There are lots of new activities happening at school which I will address in my next Blog.

Toether in October

Once again, I’m told (by Michael in his Lieutenant Colonel Erhartic incarnation), that I have been given the great honor of being “guest editor” on his blog and get to share some of my experiences in this ever-fascinating new country.

Owing to technical difficulties (meaning I have difficulty with all things technical) the format of this month’s blog will be different from the usual, which separates photos and text. Michael’s pictures tell the story of our adventures much better than my words can, so if you will copy and paste the link below onto your browser, it will (I hope) take you to a series of photos and captions that tell the tale of October in Macedonia from a visitor’s perspective.

http://picasaweb.google.com/barber229/OctoberBlogPhotos#

Guest Blog

I am pleased to have, as a guest contributor to my Blog, my wife Lee, who will share her experiences traveling to and visiting me in Macedonia.

I’ll spare everyone and be brief about the first six days of, my visit this time: the jetlag; the lost luggage/no clothes because carry-on luggage was full of heavy stuff for Michael and the Peace Corps.; and the three-day flu, so vile that if it ever comes back, I will lop off my own head just to get it over with. I stared at ceiling moaning piteously day and night while Michael made excuses to all the people I had met on my last visit, many of whom expected to be first on my rounds of welcome back Na Gosti (barely translatable, means have a visitor as a guest).

Poor, poor me!

But I’m going to consider today, Oct. 11, the start of a three week visit and simply dismiss my first week here as a bad dream. It all would have happened anywhere in the world.

Except maybe the part about how I should spend five hours on various buses and an hour in a taxi to pick up my luggage at a different airport than the one I had arrived at…

Luggage balks at Balkans

I had arrived in Sofia Sunday afternoon excited to see Bulgaria, my husband and the lovely Macedonian town of Probistip, not necessarily in that order. Apparently my luggage did not share my enthusiasm and had decamped somewhere between Boston and the Balkans. Air Bulgaria would fly it to the Macedonian capital of Skopje when they found it, I was told, and I could go pick it up myself. (A clerk was unmoved by my despairing plea about the length of that journey, and the fact that by then I would be in my fifth day without a change of underwear. Apparently a long history of invading their western neighbor made any sort of ground sortie by Bulgarians onto Macedonian soil problematic).

Fortunately Michael is sophisticated in the ways of Eastern Europe by now and with the help of our Bulgarian-speaking driver (Bobbie), found someone who saw the wisdom of keeping foreign visitors happy. They would drive my luggage to the border when they found it and hand it off to Bobbie to drive it back to Probistip.

Faster, better, cheaper—the American way. This approach had apparently never occurred to them, so score another blow for international understanding.

There are grapevines, and then there are grapevines.

I continue to be amazed at how news travels in a town without a daily community newspaper, community center, phone chain or e-mail chain (there is a local TV station with local news and community happenings). Nattily attired in a pair of old slacks I had used to pad a delicate electronic device in my carry-on luggage and the most effeminate tee shirt in my husband’s wardrobe, I ventured out on day two for an espresso in the town square and the makings of dinner.

After 10 months of working and teaching in this small mountain town, Michael seems to have gotten on hailing terms with most of its residents, so just strolling to the center with him could turn into a half-day excursion. Many neighbors now wanted to stop and exchange a few words with the Amerikanski. Today was no exception.

As we made our way the few blocks from Michael’s apartment building to the café we discovered that, to a man--or woman, as the case tended to be at this time of day--each person we encountered already knew I was in town and understood precisely why I was so oddly attired. Our vegetable vendor knew. The butcher knew. The folks relaxing in the café knew.

Had someone posted a notice in the municipal building?

Staggering back home with our cloth shopping bags full we were not , of course, surprised to find that Yelitza, the tiny baba from the next building, knew all about my arrival. We’d spent hours chatting and drinking coffee in her apartment on my last visit, so she would have been considered an interested party—but how did people I’d never met know this detail of my life?

Who cares, already?

And why would anyone who did happen to know it think it was interesting enough to pass on? But Yelitza moved on quickly to news of her own: she had learned some Engliski since I last saw her.As we waited expectantly she drew herself up to her full 4’9”, thrust her thumbs up in the air and pronounced clearly: “aw-w-w-l-l-righty!” Jim Carrey’s mother would be so proud.

Back at apartment building #6 on 11 Oktombre Street, a never-before-met neighbor commiserated over the lost luggage, of course, and then chattered on to Michael for several minutes.

“She’s sorry about your luggage, but she says it will be here tonight,” Michael explained.

“You mean she hopes it comes tonight, right? You said that as if she knew,” I told him.

‘No, I meant she said it would be here tonight at 5. Bobbie left for the border an hour ago.”

And so he had, we discovered from a "missed-call' message on our cell phone a few minutes later. Even Michael doesn’t have enough command of Makadonski to find out how she came to know about my luggage before I did, but lesson learned none-the-less:

Don’t even think about doing anything in a Balkan village that you wouldn’t want every soul in town to know about.

I’m hungry (what else is new?) so I’ll sign off now and wander down to the front stoop. Someone out there is bound to know what Mikey is making for dinner tonight…