Evaluation

Ten months in.

Accomplishments: few

Language skills (including english): dimished

Spirits: low

makin' friends at the pazar

first, a short quiz.

Finish the sentence.

1. Heidi is __________.

a) Albanian
b) American
c) Bulgarian

The correct answer is clearly 'b', but i do hear about people around here thinking i am albanian. and today, someone was convinced i was bulgarian for about 5 minutes until my macedonian vocab failed me at the market.

let me expand on that story because it was cute/annoying.

there is a small pazar in Cair that I go to on occasion, more now that i have somewhat conquered my irrational fear of markets and it does not make me feel as people claustrophobic as the bit pazar. i have been trying to go to the same stands to build up a rapport with some of the people there and feel like a part of the community. there is one lady who gets happy to see the "amerikanka" at her stand. there is an albanian guy who sells mostly fruit and knows pretty good english, but does not understand why i bother working an NGO for the disabled when there are only, quote, "10, maybe 20" people with disabilities around here. why don't i help other people since everyone here is poor? besides his strong opinion about my work here, he's cool. today, i met a new lady.
when she saw me coming close to her stand, she bolted up from her wooden crate box doubling as a chair and started in with an endless serving of povelete's. i hadn't even figured out what i wanted yet, so i said broccoli since i hadnt seen any yet and i figured she would just say she didnt have it and sit back down and leave me be to peruse.

nope.

she tells me she doesn't have any. its not in season yet. don't i want some lovely onions? and then starts telling me i have to go to vero if i want some broccoli and i say thats fine, i know where it is, thank you. she keeps telling me directions to vero, even though i tell her i live right by it and yes, i still know where it is. then she asks me if i am bulgarian. when i say no, i am american, she throws her hands up as if i was a lost cause, EVEN THOUGH WE WERE HAVING A CONVERSATION IN MACEDONIAN ALREADY FOR 5 MINUTES. then she puts her hand on my shoulder and starts leading me away from her stand and towards the way to leave the pazar. i start worrying that she is really going to walk me to vero! then i hear her muttering that she must show me to the man who speaks english, who happens to be my fruit selling friend. when she comes over with me, we shake hands and she tries explaining to him that i do not know where vero is and that i am in deep need of broccoli. luckily fruit man has my back. we shake hands and he explains to her that im going to be here for a while and that i work here. aha. we start talking in macedonian again, suddenly i am intelligible again. so my other pazar lady friend comes over, and she happens to have two small bunches of broccoli. sigh. after all that... i buy the broccoli.

Lessons Learned:
DO NOT enter the pazar without a slight clue to what exactly you want.
DO NOT try to outfox pazar ladies.

the little things

i had the best (privaten) bus 19 ride last night. the bus itself was roomy and immaculate (not only by general Skopje bus standards) there was a working radio and sound system, and the bus driver was playing classical and opera. i really wanted to go up to the guy and just shake his hand for a job well done.

it did make up for the 'how to keep an american idiot busy for at least an hour' game that the komerzialna banka employees were playing earlier in the afternoon. i have to open a bank account to get my SPA project in motion. easier said than done. i went to the branch in the trgovski center, they said no, i have to go on the other side of the vardar to the main branch. ok. there are about 4 different entrances, i pick door #2. i explain in broken macedonian: треба да отворам нересидентна денарска сметка, or i need to open a non-resident denar account. one person said its not possible, i refused to leave so she asked someone else, who then said i cant have a denar account, but a foreign currency account and gave me a form, but said i needed to go to one of the other 3 entrances to actually get an account. i am familiar with this game after trying to send packages with ajvar to the US at various post offices in skopje. needless to say, when the employees at the other entrance gave me the same spiel and told me to go back to where i just was, i walked out, shaking my umbrella vigorously in frustration.

today i returned, armed with a native speaker who did not know english but knew my plight. after some more labyrinthine games, i now hold a non resident denar account and our SPA project can move right along.

at least my bus ride yesterday was nice right?

I've found my peeps.

Most of my life prior to er...sophmore year of college was spent as the weird kid looking in on everything that seemed not awkward. I watched other friends and acquaintances flit through public school like it was the Best Thing Ever while I felt uncomfortable and out of place for about 90% of my waking life. I think I gave up early on trying to fit in and just made the most out of being as nonconformist as possible (and in the process, becoming an attention whore). If you asked me then, I would never never have admitted it.

College was great because I made a few close friends and with those people, I could do anything and everything that was interesting to me and it wasn't awkward (chinese checkers). it didn't make me feel like an outsider. Of course, in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog that was Marist college, I can't say we were really in our element overall, but we were insulated enough with other people with similar interests that it didn't matter. At least, it didn't matter to me as much as it did in high school.

Grad school further pushed me into a group of people who were so similarly minded, intelligent, driven and dynamic that I don't even remember wondering what the rest of Rutgers Camden was like, in hind sight, this might be better.

My experience thus far in the Peace Corps has been like grad school x 20. There must be a certain pattern of experiences, qualities, interests etc that tend to draw people into the peace corps, making this small cache of about 70 Americans the largest pool of people that I feel totally comfortable around. It feels to me what I always imagined public school being like for all the people that seemed popular. Only in this case, there is significant meaning behind what drives us, attracts us to this work and bonds us together.

(I was trying to get to a point where I could rationalize why I played 3 games of risk over the course of 5 nights of IST rather then go out on the town in Ohrid or do other less nerdy activities.)

sometimes i would give anything for coffee to go that tastes just ok and to drink it while driving. anywhere.
to go to a movie at a theater like its no big deal.
to go to a diner, in the wee hours of the morning with a friend.
to want to go to a restaurant, so someone can/will cook food for me that i dont think i could cook better myself.
to find what i want within a half hour of looking. and knowing exactly where to go to start looking.
to have a beer worth drinking.
to go someplace by myself and not feel weird.
have a good radio station to listen to.
a long island beach.

october. me. america. its on.
and transsiberian railway 2010.

You can't avoid it, its definitely election time.

I can tell it is election time. How? Because nearly overnight, there are posters everywhere of guys in suits with uber serious "Vote for me, I know" faces. Everywhere. Huge billboards, empty walls now plastered with posters. Vans outfitted with advertisement. TV reklame/marketing time now devoted to izbori (sic?) 2009. i had asked a friend about this and he said that it was all for local elections, but that didn't make sense after seeing all the efforts going into these campaigns. I check with the Internet, and I see this is all for president. Well, that makes more sense.

here is my reaction as a passive observer.

Macedonia, unlike Germany, has a thriving pop culture of its own. they have their own tv shows, movies, music etc.

TANGENT: Germany was severely lacking here. some people I had asked about it said that the US influence was so great following WWII that Germany never had the chance to build up its own media culture. meh meh, maybe this is true. hence, when i went to ask for metal music at stores, i was directed to Rammstein or any number of US or scandinavian bands. why all the tv shows were american- exception of Verliebt in Berlin, but even that wasnt original, ive seen that story line in Ugly Betty and now here in a spanish soap opera. movies- ok germans do make movies. and very good ones. but they aren't pumping out a whole lot of em. maybe this is tied in a way to cultural pride. macedonians- very proud of being macedonian. germans- thanks to the Holocaust, not so much.

ANYWAY. where i was going with this is that the quality of tv shows and news here in Macedonia are not what i'm used to as an American. not talking about content here, i dont understand much of what is said. but film quality, camera techniques etc. but now with all these political ads for candidates, I am shocked to see some damn fine commercials. like artistic and really good. this one I saw was really beautiful, panning in and out on older Macedonians watching a candidate give a speech and the lighting was all soft and luscious and it almost brought a tear to me eye.
So now I'm thinking, wow, it is possible to up the quality of film here. But the next thought is, ah right, it probably comes down to money. Now I'm just curious how much money is going into the elections. I'm letting that question simmer.

It is also interesting that the candidates are assigned numbers. I remember watching this selection happen on the news, not really understanding what was going on. Click, got it. People don't even have to remember the name of the candidate, just the number.

What I do like is that the election stuff hasn't been in your face until now. The elections are on the 22nd of march i think. and its just now ramping up. Lets look at the US election campaign that started well over a year before the actual presidential elections. However, I think Macedonia could benefit from a longer campaign cycle. Now it seems more like a popularity/beauty contest after seeing all the posters.

Remember, just a passive observer.

Dear Mongolia, I am a comin'.

the planning begins.

preliminary internet surfing shows that there is a 30 hr train from beijing to mongolia with delicious scenery. thats a good start.

any peace corps volunteers in Mongolia reading who have input, please comment/share.