someone please explain the excessive watering of pavement.

ive noticed as summer passes through Skopje that my biggest pet peeve is pavement watering in its many forms. water conservation has definitely not reached Macedonia yet. people are always hosing down sidewalks and driveways and roads.

why do i hate it? for mostly silly and selfish reasons.

1. waste o' water.

2. mosquito prevelance may be directly related to the amount of standing water in the city.

3. its gross to wear sandals because the watering just leads to mud and grit.

4. i slip on wet pavement and tiles.

5. i see it as a huge waste of time.

6. it makes the city air feel humid.

this also extends to the street cleaning trucks too, which inspired my gripe today. i happened to see one turn right in front of me on the way to work which meant walking to work with my pant legs held up high and carefully trying not to step in puddles that building up in the uneven parts of the road. the truck was a tanker truck with jets in front, no scrubbing just power pushing. it manages to wet the streets without cleaning anything. i've seen some with brushes on them, i think, but even those just push crap around.

i have no clue what the motivation is behind the excessive watering, but ive made up a few of my own hypotheses that i find too amusing to actually kill by asking a HCN why they are watering the pavement.

A. Keep dust under control.

If its wet, its just mud and mud can't be blown around by the wind. However, when it dries in 20 minutes, you'll still have to wet it again. Its a futile battle if you ask me.

B. To counteract the cultural art of spitting.

Spitting is out of control. Its a real talent for some of the babas I've seen. I've seen an old woman shoot a spit bullet through a gap in her teeth that was so impressive, I wanted to try it- unfortunately, i don't have gaps big enough yet. But, I imagine spit builds up and maybe this is why the watering happens.

C. Stray dog excrement/garbage residue

D. its fun?

I've got an english speaking friend here, I guess its time to ask...

there is something obscenely wonderful about vast expanses of road that are dead empty at ungodly hours of morning.

i just returned from a 4:10am bike ride. marissa caught a cab to the airport at 330am and i figured, eh, im already up and i needed to get back over to karposh 4 side of town anyway. i left my house and within the 2 short turns it took to get on the main road, i already was taken back by how awesome it was that the city was silent. i had 2-3 lanes of pavement all to my biking self. i could disregard most street lights and i was wasnt worried about being mowed down by a city bus.

i remember that night shift as a toll collector held similar moments of awe and general fascination. between 3-5 am, the time when you can feel the chemicals in your body switching over for a new day, making you feel nauseous and restless and wanting sleep so bad, i would sit in the 9x booth in the middle of 15+ lanes of black road and marvel at how odd it was for this place to be so quiet. bizarre to think that in just 3 hours, the plaza would be hopping with commuter traffic to nyc. i would shut off my movies, stop reading, turn off my music and just enjoy the silence. i would risk a cigarette, even though i knew it would probably just make me feel more gross that late/early in the night/morning, knowing that no one else would see me or catch me smoking in the booth. its a good time for thinking.

it would be nice to say that i will get up at 4-5 am from now on and bike around skopje, but lets be realistic- it ain't going to happen. ill just have to remember the feeling of this particular ride through a ghost capital and hope that maybe it will inspire me at least once more to do it again.

on that note, im going back to bed.

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.