End of the Holiday Season

The end of the holiday season is finally upon us.  The best holiday is Orthodox New Year, which occurs on January 14th.  Every year, on the 13th and 14th, Vevcani (Vevchani), a smallish village in western Macedonia, hosts a celebration where participants dress in costume and parade around town.  These participants go to various people's houses.  The people invite them in and everybody has a drink.  The costumes are insanely involved too.  One person dressed as Gaddafi, while his friends dressed as soldiers, one group of men who we followed around for a while dressed as trees, and there were other costumes as well.

 As you can see here, the group is a colorful lot.  In this vain, it's like the Mummers in Philly, but with less drinking.

Some more people in costume.

To add to the ambiance, the day before, it snowed in Vevcani and it was like the snowball-type snow, too.  So, while we were following the parade around, a snowball fight broke out, first between the other volunteers, but then, some Macedonian youths jumped in and for a while it was Americans vs. Macedonians.

Every ten minutes or so, we went into another house and got a drink.  I think I had somewhere between 8-10 shots of rakija on the day.  The other trick about Vevcani is its in the mountains and there is no flat land.  Wherever you walk, you're either going up a hill or down one.  From the snow and the cold, the streets all iced over (and in Macedonia, they don't salt the roads - people are just careful).  I think everybody slipped and fell at least a half-dozen times on the day.  It truly was dangerous going (and a volunteer broke his arm, too).



This is a view of a mountain from the base of Vevcani.

That's pretty much all there is to report.  I still don't do much at work and am just getting over a cold.

Holidays In Macedonia

The holiday season has just begun in Macedonia.  Macedonians are primarily Orthodox, so they celebrate Christmas on January 8th.  In addition to that, they still celebrate the New Year on the old Calender, on January 15th.  But, they celebrate New Year's on January 1st, just like everybody else in the world.  I headed out to Bitola for the holiday, as the volunteers in the area had a party.  Bitola is one of the largest cities in Macedonia, with approximately 100,000 people.  It is just to the east of Resen, about a half hour away.  Bitola also has one of the largest New Year's Eve parties as well.

Prior to the fireworks, there was an outdoor concert, same as America.  In fact, the singers even sang a bunch of pop songs in English.  I think we were the only people who knew the words.

I think all this pic shows is that my camera isn't all that hot at taking pictures of fireworks.

Bitola is a beautiful city in its own right, but just as American cities get all the Christmas lights up, so too did Bitola.  That and the snow that was on the ground really made the city feel like any other city in the Northeast during the holiday season.  Interestingly enough, they do have the lights, decorated trees, and Santa Claus over here, but here its for New Year's, not Christmas.  It's like they know Western Europe and America have these things at this time, but the only holiday at the end of December for Macedonians is New Year's, so over here, all these decorations and Santa Claus are for New Year's.  New Year's is the "celebration" holiday, anyway, whereas Christmas is more of a family thing.

January 1st was also the birthday of one of the other volunteers, so we had cake.  Here is the Marlin enjoying some fish food.

The only other thing that's really going on is I started teaching an Adult English class.  I didn't start the class; another volunteer in Resen did, but it is an interesting experience.  Especially considering that 3 months ago, I didn't know any Macedonian, it's pretty crazy to think that know I am teaching some of these guys English.  And of course, some of the people back home know that I am the last person that should be teaching proper English.  But, it requires a lot of thinking on your toes.  Especially because like one awkward silence or taking too long to think about the next thing to do totally throws the class off track.  There's more to classroom management than I realized, that's for sure.