Day 164 and 165- Wednesday and Thursday - 2/22-2/23/12

These two days were pretty similar at work. I have continued to plan the Language Fair and Essay Contest with my colleagues. One development though, was the taking of the World Language Day Photo for the photo contest!!  It was a great to be a part of the picture!

Wednesday night I had Learning English Through Games Club. We had a good turn out.  The first game we played was Chase the Ace. It was fun, but not engaging enough for the large group size.  So we turned back to the trusty, Spoons.  This has become a VERY popular game at the corner, and we have played it almost every week since I introduced it. I have to admit, I love the game too, so I am fine with everyone wanting to play it each week!

Lesson: Languages give us an identity but they also can bring people together!

Day 162 and 163 - Monday and Tuesday - 2/20-2/21/12

I was excited to come back to campus after over a week of being away. I was excited to see what things looked like, how much snow had fallen and then melted. This first picture is of he phone booth. Unfortunately the snow pile on the top had been knocked down, but check out how big the scooping pile was!  Pretty Amazing! I also took some pictures of campus the next morning when I woke up.  I also took pictures of the sad, sad, sad, gazebo! I am so glad no one was under it! It looks as though the support beams just snapped under the weight of the snow on top.

We also went back to work today. For the first part of this semester I am going to be working on creating a Language Fair with the Language Center.  This fair has several purposes. They are to celebrate World Language Month, to promote SEE-U to high school students, and to announce the winners of an Essay Contest that the Language Center is also sponsoring. I am excited to get to be a part of this. We are going to have students in the Academic English and Advanced Academic English classes run booths representing different languages. They get to be as creative as they want in the information they share. The language booths that we will have, include: Turkish, Albanian, Macedonian, German, British English, Australian English, and American English.  This should turn out to be a pretty amazing project- it is promoting the university and giving current students a different way to express their learning and knowledge!

Tuesday night, Cassidy traveled to Tetovo to give a presentation on American Wedding Traditions. I came to listen too!  She did a great job explaining how there are some traditions that are widespread across weddings, but that most weddings have different portions depending on background, religion, and personal preference. We also got to hear a few things from those in attendance regarding differences in the traditions here in Macedonia.  Following Cassidy's presentation, I filled in for Conversation hour.  Since it was the day after President's Day, I decided to have our topic be about being president. We talked about how President's Day became a holiday and why it is celebrated. Then I had prepared some questions that we all shared our opinions about. Questions like: Would you want to be president?  What are the president's job responsibilities? What would you change if you were president.  It was a great time!

Wedding Traditions presentation

Cassidy and I having a good laugh during her presentation

Conversation Hour

Lesson: Excitement that is a effect of inspiration is so contagious!

Day 158, 159 and 160 Friday, Saturday and Sunday 2/17-2/19/12

It was another weekend in Skopje with friends.  I will preface what I am about to say with: I really like living in Tetovo! I am happy with my placement, the people, my living situation etc! With that said, it is also a lot of fun to go and be with people in Skopje as well. The atmosphere of Skopje is like a bigger city in the U.S. This means more events, more diversity of people (internationals), and just more "stuff".  There is a group of Americans and English speakers in Skopje that Cassidy has befriended and that now I can call friends too.  Getting to go out and socialize with them from time to time is really wonderful. It also means that we get to know more local people because we bring all of our friends together! This weekend was no different. I was able to enjoy the company of other Americans living in Skopje and Macedonia, as well as meet some wonderful new friends from the area.  It really was a wonderful time!

Here are just a few pictures from the weekend of fun!

Claire and I

Cassidy and I

Being Goofy- with the new glasses I bought 

Cassidy, Hyun and I

Cassidy and I 

Those silly glasses again!

The girls!

Lesson: Finding people you can trust and enjoy time with is irreplaceable!

Day 156 – Wednesday 2/15/12

I know this is a bit out of order, but I had to share what I learned on Wednesday! My camera has food settings!  I love food, and I love taking pictures, and I found a way to pair those together in a new way today….  Lizzie had been feeling under the weather the past few days so I offered to cook us dinner.  Cassidy was in Shtip visiting NGOs and the America Corner there so it was just me in the kitchen.  I bought what I hoped would were two steaks, some Brussels sprouts, onions, mushrooms and garlic.  I say what I hoped were steaks, because I have learned that I do not know my cuts of meat just by looking at them and that has become VERY obvious here. I can’t ask for the kind I want, and any sign is something that I can’t read well enough to know for sure!  But I will have you know, I picked right!

So here are the photos, with the different food settings…. Now that I know it exists I will have to do some  playing with different colors and pictures!

Lessons:  My camera has food settings.  I know what a steak looks like… hopefully I can know next time too!

Normal camera setting - steak, brussels sprouts/onions, and mushrooms

red setting

yellow setting

white setting

blue setting

Day 156 – Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday - 2/13/12-2/16/12

This week I had the pleasure to be a part of a set of workshops under the title, Equal Access through Service Learning for Persons With Disabilities.  It is a project that the State Department Alumni here in Macedonia have applied for and received.  The purpose of the grant/project is to increase Equal Access for Persons with Disabilities in both Macedonia and Croatia.  The idea is to accomplish this through the service learning method which is a method where students in classes do projects that benefit the community. Students at the university level and Professors at the university level were brought together this week for the first set of workshops in this project.  I was invited to speak about Accepting Human Differences. I gave a presentation on 2 different days about human differences.  It is such a wonderful project to get to be a part of!  You can look at the website for the project by going here: http://www.equalaccess4pwds.org/

I look forward in the coming months, even once I am back in the U.S. to continuing to be a part of this community changing project!

Day 1 

Day 1

one of my slides

Day 2

A new friend, Ana, from the conference

Day 157 – Tuesday  2/14/12

VALENTINES DAY!!!

When I was young I did not have the best feelings towards Valentines Day.  As a child I was sick every year with the flu. I never got to attend the Valentines Day parties at my school. This continued into high school, but has not been the case every year now that I am an adult- with this being the case, every year that I am not  sick is a good Valentines Day- luckly, this year got to fall into the healthy column!

I also took some more pictures out of Cassidy's window/balcony today... just thought it was good to show Skopje again!

Lesson: People’s experiences should be valued and appreciated. 

Day 154 - Sunday 2/12/12

I received a call today from Artan to let me know that the University would be closed this coming week due to the inclement weather conditions.  Since leaving yesterday it has continued to snow… and is forecasted to continue through Tuesday.  Not only is it hard to get around throughout the town, it is also impossible for people to travel into town from the villages.  It also means that students are not able to travel from their towns to get to the university.  I am not sure yet if this means we will be adding a week to the end of the semester or how it will be made up… time will tell.

Lesson: Enjoy the moment!

Day 153 – Saturday 2/11/12

Well- the snow didn’t stop and we now have another 10 inches or so this morning… this is some pretty crazy amounts of snow!  Despite this, Lizzie and I got ready to go to the American Corner for Kid’s Club and English Club. 

The snowfall on the phone booth again!

Daylight picture of the gazebo

Outside my room, notice the snow is higher than the step!

Out my dorm window

The apple trees

Knowing the conditions outside, I wasn’t sure how many kids we would actually have, but we trekked to the center anyway!   For Kid’s Club we only had 1, and it was Linda and Artan’s daughter Adora, who had helped me plan the Valentines Day activities for the kids.  Together we decided to save the activities for when the other kids were there. So we played some cards together instead…but about half way through our time, we decided that we would go ahead and make the crowns… we just couldn’t help ourselves! 

Lizzie, Adora and I with our Valentines day crowns!

Following kids club we have English Club…again it was a small group so we again decided to play cards. We played the game of Spoons and had a GREAT time.  The kids learned the game very fast and became experts! 

Playing sppons!

Before leaving the corner we took a few pictures of the snowfall!

Lizzie in the snow

Me in the snow

After clubs Lizzie and I stopped at a little Doner Kabab place that we often stop at on Saturdays…as I am typing this I am realizing that I don’t have pictures of it… next time I will get some!  We were heading to Skopje for the weekend so we had to get a combi (van) that would take us.  Combi’s are a very common mode of transport here- it is the way to get to the surrounding villages and a way to “carpool” throughout the country.  Lizzie and I went to the “spot” where combi’s meet to go to Skopje.  We got in the van, and there were 2 other people in it… the downside of combi’s is waiting for them to fill.  Today we waited over 30 min, but we had good company and funny combi guys to entertain us!   I know that Tetovo gets more snow than Skopje, but it was amazing to see the accumulation dwindle as we drove to Skopje.  Tetovo has over a meter of snow, but Skopje only has a few inches.  

We came to Skopje to attend a fundraiser put on by the International Woman’s Association for an animal shelter in Skopje.  I was really excited to find a way to support animals here in Macedonia! We were excited to go out with friends, and it was for a good cause as well.  The location was the Irish Pub in Skopje…I think we will be adding this to our list of places to go to eat… we had eaten at the Mexican Restaurant in Skopje- yes I said, THE, there is only one.  But after seeing some of the food at the Irish Pub- it is on my list to go back to!  There were lots of people in attendance, and it seems that there was a lot of money raised for a great cause.  There was also a live band playing lots of popular songs in English like: Journey, Mustang Sally, No Doubt… it was quite the great time! 

Lesson: Girls nights out are fun in every country!!

Part of Skopje 2014 project- the Arch is done

Some of us girls!

Nevenka and I 

Lizzie and I

The bridge in Skopje