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.