We made it safely to Skopje and hopped onto the slowest public trans bus in the city towards my friend, Rachel’s, apartment. Rachel and I served in the same Peace Corps group and did Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World- the girls’ camp that I ran here) together. She loved it in Macedonia so much that she found a job at a private American primary/high school where she hopes to stay for a few more years. She lives in a beautiful apartment in a great part of Skopje and was generous enough to let us crash at her place while we were in Skopje. After settling in, she took us to the one Mexican restaurant in Skopje. Had I still been a volunteer and hadn’t been home for a year and a half, I’m sure I would have loved it. But, seeing as I’ve been Americanized again, I found it a little bland and didn’t see much difference between a taco, burrito and enchilada. But, for Macedonian standards (a country far from Mexico or any other country with similar food), it was really good. We grabbed some ice cream and headed back to Rachel’s to crash.

We woke up Wednesday and headed to the center to meet my friend, Dejan, for “early” coffee at 10:00. Dejan and I worked together briefly at my school and the fist time we met, we had a pretty extended conversation about American music. His English is amazing due to the fact that he spends a lot of time watching American movies and films and listening to American music. His knowledge of American pop culture is also pretty amazing. We’d hang out often and watch movies and trade music. He now lives in Skopje and is finishing his English degree. We went to a café along the river after I protested his first suggestion of the Irish Pub. I think the Irish Pub in Skopje is great if you’re an ex-pat looking for fellow ex-pats and a pint of Guiness. However, I’m not in Skopje to be an ex-pat, and I’d like to consider myself less of a foreigner then your average American in Macedonia. After a good couple of hours of conversation, music and movie suggestions, we parted ways and met up with Michael, another volunteer from my group in stayed in Macedonia and found a contract job with USAID. We met at one of the typical Peace Corps Volunteer lunch spots, Del Mat Fu, an Italian joint right in the center with tons of pizza and pasta options and female servers with extremely tight miniskirts. This was also the first restaurant I’d ever been to in Skopje, so it’s got a little bit of sentimental value as well. Michael and I caught up and it looks like he’s headed to Return Peace Corps Volunteer Central (aka Washington, D.C.) to grad school. It was great catching up, and hopefully we’ll see each other again stateside.

Continuing with our busy day, we then stopped by the only open LGBT organization in Macedonia, MASSO (Macedonian Association for Free Sexual Orientation. Robb and I talked to a bunch of the members about the state of LGBT affairs in Macedonia and Robb took tons of notes for what will hopefully be his first story in the Windy City Times. The state of affairs here is pretty rough and they hope to get sexual orientation included in the anti-discrimination laws within the next few years. As it stands, only one staff member (the president) is openly gay while the rest are out to most of their friends as well as on the organization’s website, but none of their parents know. They’re opening two regional offices in other cities, but the state of affairs is much different in Skopje than it is in other cities, and the other volunteers in other cities are afraid to even go to an internet café to access MASSO’s website for fear that the runners or others in the café will see which website they’re on. Skopje is one thing, where people are much more accepting of that which is different, as is seen by the number of different groups of people you’ll see walking down the streets (obvious foreigners, fashionistas, punks, businesspeople) as opposed to the one basic look you see in most other cities. But MASSO has done some great work on making the LGBT community more visible through festivals like Love is Love Week as well as photo exhibits, and they are now working to get sexual orientation added to the anti-discrimination laws in the country. They also hope to make those in the LGBT community more comfortable in coming out in Macedonia, then get Macedonia more comfortable with the LGBT community. They’ve been around for just a few years, but have made great strides already.

We had one more person to meet up with- Viktorija, one of my “GLOW girls” who was first a camper at Camp GLOW and then returned the next year as a junior counselors. She also taught English lessons at the school where I took my private Macedonian lessons in Kocani. We caught up at the New Age Café, an earthy café hidden on a windy street near the center that serves tea in terra cotta kettles and cups and has great hot spiced wine in the winter and that cozy “pillows on the floor” feel to it. After that, we headed to Rachel’s to recharge and then headed to my favorite sandwich stand in the country, Nino, which not only serves veggie burgers and hummus, but also has veggie sausages, spinach burgers, lentil burgers and seitan. A true haven for us veggies. While at the stand, I asked one of the counter women if the taxis in front of the stand were trustworthy. When she said they weren’t, she immediately offered to call a taxi for us instead, which was extremely nice by normal standards and practically unheard of by Skopje standards.

We made it an early night at Rachel’s and got up early Thursday to make a leisurely morning before we headed back to Kocani. After dropping the bag at the bus station and buying our tickets, I took Robb to Broz Café, which is the one Starbucks-like café in all of Macedonia. Instead of your typical Macedonian café fare (Nescafe, macchiatos, powder cappuccinos and Turkish coffee), this place offers white chocolate mochas, caramel macchiatos and frappuccinos. I was pretty psyched when this place opened up near the end of my service, but their drinks were pretty mediocre by American standards, although fantastic by Macedonian standards. That was not so much the case this time around, as it seems they’ve improved immensely in the past year and a half. After Robb grabbed some souvenirs from there, we headed to a quick breakfast place and then went to the park by mall to take pictures of probably one of the most creative protests I’ve ever seen or heard of in Macedonia:

Due to the privatization of many formerly state-owned factories, a lot of people are losing their jobs. Even worse, many of them have been working in these factories for 25-30 years and are just five or so years shy of being eligible to receive pension checks and too old to start working again, plus most of them have college-bound children. So, they decided to camp out in the park that is directly across the street from the Parliament building in hopes of either getting a pension or getting their jobs back. They’ve been there since March and nothing’s happened yet, so we’ll see. But, in a country where the only other protests I’ve heard of are roadblocks or good ol’ fashioned strikes, this really stands out.

On the way to the bus station, I was finally able to get some burek, which is a pastry here that’s usually filled with cheese or meat. It’s pretty oily, and I tried to stay away from it while I lived here, but it’s sinfully good, especially at the end of a long night of drinking. The burek stand is Macedonia’s answer to America’s late-night Mexican joint. The bus ride home was fine, although by the time we hit Stip, the stop before Kocani, the bus was jam-packed with absolutely no room, which made me very grateful that we got on in Skopje and secured two seats. We made it back to Kocani and took a cab home.

Monday we woke up very early in the morning, in order to catch the 6:30 bus to Ohrid, a six hour ride from Kocani. The bus ride was pretty average. There was your standard Macedonian guy who was afraid of “the draft” coming from the window, and took each departing passenger as a sign that he had another window to close, until ours was the only window still pumping fresh air into the bus. It was a real showdown, as we were the only passengers left. He made it clear he was dissatisfied with the situation by giving us the occasional evil eye, and turning up his collar to protect the back of his neck from certain windy doom. This behavior is in sharp contrast to earlier in the trip, when he would ask the surrounding passengers if they could aim their little air blowers at him, because (I assume) he was hot.

While we were at one of the stops along the trip, Shayne ran into a Peace Corps volunteer. She is serving currently, and is in the group that Shayne helped train just before leaving to return to the states. They had a good amount of catching up to do, and did so. Shayne was also nice enough to share some of the goodies that she had brought as gifts for the Peace Corps Volunteers. It’s funny to see someone get so excited about peanut butter cups.

Ohrid is a very beautiful place to visit. The old part of the city was where we stayed, in a small hotel reminiscent of a converted house or mansion. From there, we had a very good view of Lake Ohrid, and most of the city. Our location was perfect, and we were very near to several of the sights we would later see. The first night we were there, we settled into the hotel, and then headed down the winding cobbled streets to the commercial area of Old Ohrid, near the lake. We needed to do some work at the Internet Café, and we kind of checked things out. Later we had dinner at a restaurant called Belvedere. It was nice, they served traditional Macedonian. The atmosphere was cozy, and in the right circumstances romantic. There were few people dining, something that can probably be attributed to the fact that we arrived a solid week or so ahead of the bum rush of vacationers for the summer. After work and dinner, we rounded off the evening at Gino’s where we got some seriously good ice cream. Throughout the day, we encountered bouts of rain. We walked the old town a while, and as we were headed to one of the churches that we wanted to visit, it started to seriously downpour. We used our rudimentary sense of where the hell we were, and decided (thank you Shayne) to stick to the route that we had come by, and got back to the hotel not too worse for the wear. The thing about Ohrid is that, if you were to look at a map, the streets look like someone spilled some pasta on the ground next to a puddle, so I would estimate that our dryness was directly affected by the lack of a standard grid pattern of streets. For a bit of night life, we planned a rendezvous with a friend of Shayne’s at a café. Shayne met Ivan when she first got back from Macedonia, and got a job at Olive Garden. Ivan has since come home to Macedonia, and we were lucky enough to catch him when we were in Ohrid. I had only gotten very surface impressions of the dude the once or twice that I met him in the states, but having spent a few hours with him buying us drinks (a feat most unnecessary, especially considering he was jobless – bad economy and all), I can say that he’s a really nice guy and fun to hang out with. It seems to be a trend with these Macedonians. It’s tough to find one you don’t like. A funny aside to meeting up with Ivan: Shayne arranged over the phone with him to meet at the “Old Tree” near the center in Ohrid. Having waited a while, she eventually got a call from Ivan asking where we were. When we told him we were by the tree, a funny thing happened. Apparently there are several old trees in Ohrid, and we had chosen different ones. Luckily as we walked to meet each other, Ivan spotted my foreign clothes from far away, and we proceeded to get our fun on.

Tuesday we arose with the intention of hitting certain sights in a certain order. Weather, time, and other factors soon realigned our priorities, and we chose a different path than originally intended. Some things, it became clear, would be best experienced on another trip for the future. That decided, we hiked up to the Fortress, and thanks to the placement of our little hotel, we were nearly halfway there when we started. The fortress was a pretty cool experience. I’ve never been in any kind of stronghold, so this was a good place to start. It was built in the 11th century, and has a good history to it. In addition to the history and fortressness of it, it provided a stunning view of Ohrid and the lake. For lunch, we went to Gino’s for some pizza. Shayne’s claim that it was the Ohrid authority on pizza was well founded, and I had a really good lunch.

Nothing magical happened on the bus ride to Skopje. We got to Skopje in one piece (well, two of us… one piece each.) We hopped the bus to Shayne’s friend Rachel’s place, where we would be crashing during our stay in Skopje. Rachel was a Peace Corps member that served at the same time as Shayne, and stayed in the country to work as a teacher after her service was through. We settled in a little, and then headed out with Rachel to grab some dinner. We ate at the Mexican restaurant in Macedonia, and it was predictably substandard by American standards. But as Shayne pointed out, for someone who has been in a Mexican food drought for nearly three years, it’s damn authentic. From that perspective, it does well to act as an oasis for any traveler with a yen for some serious burrito action. On a cute note, as with chips and salsa in most Mexican restaurants, this place served us some croutons seasoned with taco seasoning combined with some salsa. It was a noble effort, but again fell short when considering that there were maybe a dozen croutons total.

The next morning, we got up very early to catch a six-hour bus ride to the opposite corner of Macedonia, Ohrid. Ohrid is the resort city of Macedonia and lies on one of Macedonia’s only lakes, Lake Ohrid, which just so happens to be UNESCO protected and one of the oldest lakes in the world. I’ve been to Ohrid a few times and loved it every time. It’s absolutely picturesque and has tons of beautiful churches (they say 365 churches- one for every day of the year, but I’ve never counted) and the fortress of Tsar Samoil of Macedonia, dating back to the 10th century.

The bus ride was very long, but also very scenic, and when we arrived in Ohrid, we were picked up by the daughter of the owner of the “hotel” that we were staying at. While there are hotels in Ohrid, most are just private rooms in a home that someone rents out, which was our case. After resting a bit, we walked to the center and did some exploring. We tried to make it to St. Jovan, one of the most beautifully placed churches, but the rain caused us to retreat to our hotel room for a few hours. Seriously, every other time I’ve been in Ohrid, it’s been sunny and beautiful, except for Monday. It did finally clear up, though, and we made our way to St. Jovan. Then we headed uphill…way, way uphill to Tsar Samoil’s fortress to find it closed on Mondays. DAMN!

We grabbed some dinner at a traditional Macedonian restaurant and met up with Ivan, who I worked with at Olive Garden back in the states. Ivan was actually the first Macedonian I met in America. The storey goes that while I was in Macedonia serving, my grandfather was at the Olive Garden near where I grew up and noticed that his server was foreign. He asked her where she was from, and when she told him Macedonia, he told her all about his granddaughter who was currently living there. She then told him that half of the staff there was Macedonian, which he relayed on to me. When I was home for Christmas, my family and I went to this Olive Garden and requested a Macedonian server, who just so happened to be Ivan. When We talked a bit in Macedonian, which completely took him off guard at first. I came home for good, I immediately applied to that Olive Garden and found myself surrounded by “my people”. Ivan has since returned to Macedonia to get married and lives in Ohrid with his fiancée.

We met up with them at a café owned by another fellow Olive Garden employee and had a great night talking and drinking. At the end of the night, we were again refused to pay by Ivan (who hasn’t been able to find work since he got back) and the co-owner of the café. Sensing a pattern of rock star hospitality yet?

We woke on Tuesday intending to go to St. Naum, a little town that’s a 45-minute bus ride away. I’ve been once during the summer and really enjoyed the serene beach, the beautiful church and the exotic peacocks (I swear that all I cam from me and not any tour book!). But, really, if you don’t have an entire day to spend there, it’s not so great. The buses to and from there run every couple of hours, so it’s tough to do it in just a few hours, as we were hoping. Instead, we went up to Tsar Samoil’s fortress and found it open (yay!) and had a great view of all of Ohrid, especially the separation of Old Ohrid and New Ohrid at the old city walls. We then stopped by a photo studio of an older man who has spent his life taking pictures in Macedonia and has had exhibits in Western Europe and the US. Robb and I both spent a long time looking at his pictures and found some great pics to take back with us. He had a lot of great framed pictures, showing a connection between two completely different pictures. They were all very creative. We took an earlier bus to Skopje than we had planned, but it was good timing as we didn’t have much going on and I was a little anxious to get to Skopje. Also, it started to rain just as we were leaving, so it seemed that it was good timing al around. Oh! But one funny story before we left:

Through our travels, we’ve never deluded ourselves that we didn’t look like total foreigners. And let’s face it, in a place like Macedonia, foreign is synonymous with Tourist. Bearing that in mind, we do everything that we can to follow customs and speak the language (me included) whenever possible. Nobody wants a selfish tourist that doesn’t give a damn about the place they’re visiting. So as common courtesy, we do what we can to “when in Rome” whenever possible.

As we enjoyed our lunch, we noticed that there was a table of elderly people near us, and it was obvious that they weren’t native. They were speaking exclusively in English, and going on like a bunch of self absorbed people. Luckily in a tourist mecca like Ohrid, they’re ready for it and a lot of the servers and such speak some English. The obnoxiousness only multiplied as time passed, and when their food was delivered, one of them remarked “I didn’t know it was going to be so big” In regards to their pizzas. Shayne jokingly said to me “It would be funny if they paid in [American] dollars.” As we were getting our stuff together to leave, sure enough, they were throwing twenties around like it was legal tender in the lovely Macedonia. Honestly, sometimes I just don’t know what to say.

I couldn’t believe it. Now, maybe if they tried paying with Euros, I may have understood, being that we were in Eastern Europe. But dollars?!?! That’s the kind of American ignorance that drives me nuts. I hope their server ripped them off for the inconvenience. I’m not a mean or vengeful person, but if you’re going to be that ignorant of other cultures and the basic economic structure of being in another country, then you sort of deserve the bad karma of getting ripped off. A taxi driver then tried to rip us off by charging us an exorbitant amount for the trip to the bus station, but I wouldn’t have it. I understand these things happen in tourist cities, so I try to keep up with what we should be charged rather than what we may be charged. In the end, I paid a few denars more, but it was much better than the taxi driver’s starting point.

Sunday, the whole family headed into Kocani to celebrate a cousin’s graduation. It was mostly a family gathering, with a few neighbors and such, so it was cozy. Luckily for me, one of the attendees (a family member whose wedding Shayne attended soon after arriving in Macedonia for the Peace Corps,) had lived in Indiana for a whole, and also spent some school years in America, so he was good with, and eager to speak, English. We talked a lot, for a whole about Chicago and America in general, but moved on to the topic of trying top move to the United States or Canada and how difficult that it can be. Every year, a mere 200 people in Macedonia are given green cards, and believe me when I tell you that many more than that apply. It is a shame that our land of opportunity is so selective about who gets that opportunity. I’ve met so many people in this country that I would love to see in the states. It pains me to see them struggle to achieve their dreams because of our bounty of red tape and exclusionism.

I’m off on a rant now. The graduation ceremony was a lot of fun, and a ton of food and wine. Shayne was concerned that I got drunk, but I think I was doing ok. I’ve learned to consume slowly, because it’s the only way to not die of gluttony.

I’ve had the opportunity several times to rant about our government while in Macedonia, which I didn’t expect. I thought my bitches and moans would need to wait until we were back stateside. However, the impossibility of immigrating to the states has laid solid grounds for my airing of grievances. I don’t know what the Macedonian people thing of our government, but I’m glad to demonstrate that we’re not all (and mostly not) in agreement with what the administration is doing right now.

I’ve also started drawing fearful parallels between the E.U. and all the dirty doings of any free trade agreements (NAFTA). To my mind, the only people that benefit from free trade agreements are the large corporations and chains of stores and restaurants. I don’t know about you, but I think the idea of introducing foreign big business into a country that is so heavily independent (small) business is a little absurd, it would crush any kind of independence that the populace would have, and force people into jobs with big companies who offer poor wages and benefits, much as most of America is experiencing. Beyond that, any country not currently boasting membership in the E.U. has to pay tariffs and taxes to countries if it wants to import or export, making trade tougher on them, and making joining the E.U. more appealing. As Shayne may have stated in earlier conversations, if the country were given a chance to establish a healthy economy on its own, it wouldn’t need the assistance of the E.U. so, it’s a mixed bag here, the E.U. looks like a quick fix for the government to get on its feet and turn things around, but it really won’t benefit the citizens, and in the long run, the country would have been better off building its power based on it’s national independence and the strong work ethic of its people.

We were finally able to go on our hike on Sunday as thee skies cleared just long enough for us to go to Добра Вода (Good Water), which is a n area in the mountains in Orizari. There is a water source there that is said to have magical healing powers that once healed a blind boy. We couldn’t have timed it better as exactly one minute after arriving home, it started to rain again. We rested up for the rest of the day and that night went to the graduation party of a cousin on my host mother’s side. I was so excited that Robb had the chance to see a Macedonian celebration chalk full of food, drinks and friendly conversation. Just as we were about to leave, there was an explosion of dance! Honestly, everyone was in the foyer getting ready to leave when someone broke out the traditional music and turned it up, and suddenly everyone in the room was doing the Oro, the traditional form of dancing. I jumped right in and got my Oro on while Robb took pictures. Before we arrived, I was lamenting the fact that I probably wouldn’t get to dance the Oro and Robb wouldn’t get to see it, so this was such a treat.

For those of you keeping score at home (and understand what I mean):

Times I’ve heard the “sh” word: 2
Turkish toilets encountered: 2
Random, unexpected encounters with Peace Corps friends on buses: 2
Turkish coffees drank: Too many to count
Mentions of “500 years….”: NONE! Can you believe it?

The weekend is falling out of short-term, and into long-term memory. We’ve been pretty busy the whole time, and hence not regularly updating. On Friday, we visited Shayne’s counterpart from when she was a Peace Corps volunteer, Emilija. She was the one (her and her husband and son) that was nice enough to drive us home from the bus station when we fist got into town. She seems to love practicing her English, which was a relief for me, and probably super translator Shayne as well. It was unfortunate that her husband doesn’t speak any English, but we were assured he didn’t mind as he didn’t really make much with the conversation as it was. They have a cool house lay-out. Their house is sandwiched between a storefront that Emilija uses to teach private English lessons out of, while on the other side, her husband has a store front where he is a barber. Next to the husband’s space, there’s another space that’s not being used right now, but may be used in the future by his brother, who is working in Italy. There’s a very relaxed and comfortable feeling with their family, which makes me very happy for them. I like to see people happy in their lives. They have two kids; a son who is ten, and a daughter who is seven. The daughter – while shy at first – really opened up and is actually very outgoing. She talks a lot, which does a lot to accentuate how adorable her missing front teeth make her. As for the son, he’s the troublemaker of the family. Emilija was telling us that he doesn’t pay attention in his English lessons, and how he would do so well if he would just pay attention. As the night progressed and he got more used to having us around, he began to talk to me more and more in English. He would ask questions about things, and one time when I was telling him something, he said “Shayne told me.” To me, that’s a giveaway that he’s got a pretty good knowledge of what’s going on with the language. Emilija said she had no idea he knew how to speak English as well as he did. I assume he just doesn’t feel comfortable speaking it around his family. We went out for pizza with Emilija’s family after chilling at their place for a while. I got my first (and so far only) taste of Macedonian pizza. My assessment: the same, but with more salt. After parting ways with Emilija and family, we made a small walk over to a restaurant where Shayne’s friend Goce as entertaining friends from out of town. We originally intended to spend more than a few fleeting moments with him, but his obligations to his guests trumped his free hangout time, and so unfortunately we could only see him for a few brief moments. He is a very courteous person, and very well spoken. You can tell that he concerns himself with people’s overall comfort more than the average person. My fleeting impression of him is that he is a cool guy.While at the restaurant, we happened upon a small contingent of Peace Corps volunteers who happened to be there celebrating a birthday. We sat with them for maybe ten minutes, and eventually we all headed our own ways.

We had dinner plans with Shayne’s friend Vilma and her family on Saturday night. Vilma owns a health food store in Kocani, and Shayne probably considered it the coolest place around when she was living here. Vilma is a total character. She is constantly happy – to the point where I imagine that she probably sleeps with a smile on her face, and possibly the occasional giggle. The entire family is so distinct from each other, it’s amazing that they’re such a cohesive group. Vilma is so cheery, Kristijan is so intelligent and ambitious, her husband seems to be real keen on just knowing things. Vilma had prepared enough food for at least twice as many of us as there were, and my comment was “where are the other ten people?” She had even cooked for Shayne something that I saw for the first time on our trip: Seitan. I can say with the limited amount of authority that is afforded a foreigner that seitan is a rare treat in the area of Kocani. Kristijan lived in America for a while, and is currently studying in
Winnipeg, however he may have expressed interest in going somewhere much less cold. He seems like a cool kid ( I say kid because, while I thought he was probably in his mid-twenties, he’s actually like 19 years old.) Aside from being rather intelligent, he takes after his mom in the happiness department. Him and I shared some interest in photography, and it’s times like these where we really don’t know how much we don’t know until we talk to someone who knows more… right? Vilma’s husband didn’t talk so much, but he seems like a pretty cool dude. From my impression (and Shayne can correct me), he seems like he’s just into general knowledge of things, and history. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to be into history in the way that most Macedonians seem to be, that being going on and on about Alexander the Great. He asked us about things like tornadoes and other natural phenomenon, and then would quiz us on our knowledge of things like Lenin (U.S.S.R), and other historical things. I made mention of my relatives being fluent in Russian and having some doings for the government back in the day, and he was fascinated to hear what we had to say about all that. The dinner that night was terrific, and the company was great. I don’t think I was that jolly since the time we touched down. You can tell it’s a very loving and friendly place to hang out, which I hope we get to do again soon. One vocabulary tidbit that I got was from Vilma’s husband, who informed me (however biased this may or may not be) that the “thank you” that I was taught was not authentic Macedonian, and that instead I should use a different (and much more difficult to say) word, that was more appropriate to the country. Thanks to him, I have a repertoire of “thank yous” now.

Going to Sisko’s was great because he always wants to talk politics, but in a different way than most others. He was a major hippy bac in the day and still bases a lot of his beliefs around Lennon and “Imagine”. He traveled a lot in his youth before settling down and getting married in Kocani. He’s anti-EU and feels that if Macedonia could get their own economy on its feet, they wouldn’t need the EU. It’s always refreshing to talk with him because he’s one of the very few “older” Macedonians I know who doesn’t glorify Tito and talk only of the past. His thoughts are still future-bound, and that’s pretty exceptional.

We then made our way to Emilija’s. Emilija was my counter part at school, meaning we worked together every day. I loved working with her because while a lot of volunteers had problems with their counterparts who weren’t open to change our new ideas, Emilija was extremely open-minded and starving for new ideas on how to improve her classroom. She loves teaching English and it shows in her enthusiasm and dedication to it. We both learned so much from each other, and I feel like she was really looking for someone to talk about higher-level issues; things she didn’t feel comfortable talking to her colleagues about. We had many talks about women’s rights, the state of
Macedonia, gay rights, etc., and I could tell she had different beliefs than many others her age. She seemed like a textbook case of a woman trying to juggle a career and a family, which is 100 times more difficult her because of traditions and cultural norms, but she was doing it.

But I digress. Going to Emilija’s was great and we were met with the same rock star Macedonian hospitality as everywhere else. This extended, of course, to dinner as we went out for pizza and were forbidden to pay. It was a family affair with Emilija’s husband and two children with us. Her 10-year old son shocked us all (especially Emilija) with his English skillz. He took a quick liking to Robb and bombarded him with tons of questions. After dinner, we were able to stop in another restaurant where my good friend Goce was playing translator for his friends from England and all of his family, Unfortunately, it was a 5-minute drive by as he left the next day for Thailand for work until the end of the month.

The next day was just as rainy as the past few, thus thwarting our plans once again to go hiking in the village and Kocani. Instead, we took it easy and eventually made our way to Kocani, where we ran into an old colleague of mine, Beti, and her fiancée, Dejan, at a café. Beti is the art teacher at the school where I worked and really marches to the beat of her own drummer fashion-wise, which is a very brave thing to do here. Her fiancée used to work at the Indian restaurant in the capital. It was conveniently located across the street from the American Embassy, meaning Dejan new English pretty well as mostly ex-pats visited this place. We volunteers would treat ourselves every few months with a trip there, as it was way out of our price range, but the food was fantastic. So, Robb was finally able to speak some English and have a real conversation without me serving as a translator, which I think he really enjoyed. Once again we weren’t allowed to pay for our drinks and felt that rock star hospitality all over again. After a brief visit with Emilija, we went over to Vilma and Mile’s for a true feast. Vilma was my “cool aunt” here and really took care of me. She and Mile own a health food store in Kocani, which is how we initially met, and became fast friends. Her only son spent a year in America to finish high school, so I served as a surrogate child in his absence. Both Vilma and Mile are absolutely full of life and Vilma really knows her sh#& about healthy living. Kristijan, her son, is a great guy and has an ambition that is rarely seen in teenagers here. After spending a year back at home after his stint in America, he is now going to college in Winnipeg. He’s home for the summer, though, so he was there for dinner (and lovely English conversation) as well. As is usual for Vilma, there was tons of healthy food, including seitan for me. We spent quite a few hours there, talking, eating, drinking and laughing. It was a beautiful night.

Now, I may have been exaggerating a little bit, as I am want to do from time to time, but burek is pretty freakin’ good. I know that part of my love of burek is due to absence making my heart grow fonder for it, as there is no real substitute for burek in the states, mixed in with a little *cue Poison* “Don’t know what you got till it’s gone,” because I didn’t eat it as much as I should have when it was readily available. I chalk up Robb’s poor burek eating experience to a poor burek stand.

In conclusion, burek is still awesome.

In the year and a half that Shayne and I have been together, I can’t remember any time that she recklessly abandoned the rules that she has set for her diet. She takes eating healthy food seriously, and although I admit I haven’t known her so closely for very long, I’ve always known her this way.

Imagine my surprise then, when walking from Orizari to Kocani one day, we stopped at a roadside stand for something snacky. It was morning, and we hadn’t really eaten anything. So we were feeling a little hungry.

One of Shayne’s goals for our vacation has been to have me enjoy as much of the native food as was possible. One of these local delicacies is Burek. When she described it to me, long before I ever laid eyes on some, it sounded like something I would, without a doubt, love. Essentially it’s bread with ingredients like spinach, cheese, and meat cooked into it.

I admit, I ordered a piece that only contained cheese, and I wasn’t getting the entire experience. When I looked at the food presented to me, I couldn’t help but be a little astounded that this was something that Shayne had enthusiastically proclaimed was “awesome”. It looked like oily bread with cheese. I put ‘oily’ at the front for a reason. By FDA standards, the purveyors would be required to list oil as the first ingredient on a Nutrition Facts label.

Shayne admits that she was so enthusiastic because she has no access to it in the states, and so she misses it. This, I think, is where a lot of the enthusiasm was coming from.

Later, I gave it another try, and had some with meat which was much better than the solo cheese variety. In the end, it’s not as bad as I make it out to be… and it’s surely not as good as Shayne made it out to be.

My Impressions: The market was nice; really you can buy just about anything there except major electronics. And the presentation is impressive. You go to some flea market, or rummage sale, yard sale in the states, and shit is just randomly placed. At these markets, the items are so neatly arranged, it’s magical. Really it’s like a once-a-week traveling mall. It’s all nicely arranged and there’s a lot of energy-like-salesmanship. As Shayne was saying, we didn’t get a watch for now, but I can live with that. This graduation ceremony was unreal. It was as if there was a concert going on and we were waiting for the doors to open. Hundreds of people lined the streets as these kids did their thing, and due to the questionable punctuality that can generally be attributed to the Macedonian people, the event that was due to start at 7 pm continued starting for a good while, as students kept arriving. Now, I never took a limo to a school event, and even though it wasn’t that big of a deal to do so in the states, it was still kind of a big deal. I can only imagine what it was like for this city in Macedonia with a 35% unemployment rate and people earning so little money. It really had to be something special. Shayne’s immediate reaction that night was, “I didn’t even know limo’s existed in Macedonia.”

We went up with Shayne’s host family by chance when we were leaving the graduation, and we decided to all take a taxi home together, and in keeping with the continuous hospitality- they paid for the taxi and wouldn’t let us throw any money in. The following day was Patron Day at the school in Orizari where Shayne taught. My thoughts on that were that it is a big kind of Variety Show that they put on where all the grades have their own performances. I noticed that of all the songs sung, plays acted, dances danced- there were very few boys involved at all. Mostly they were playing instruments, or had parts in the plays acted out. I thought it was refreshing that the Macedonian National Anthem was so modern- something I attribute to it being such a young country, and it being Europe. I’d say I’m a pretty liberal and open-minded person, but some of the dances that these girls were doing (some as young as 10 I believe), were a little (and by little I mean a lot) inappropriate. Girls in short shorts doing dances to rap songs that were way too sexualized for how old they are. I did what I could to try and justify it, us being from different cultures, but the only counterpoint to Shayne’s objections that I could muster was, “I’m sure they worked really hard to learn this.” So then we walked to Kocani where we scored a great deal on cheap movies and music from Shayne’s old hook up. We spent the American equivalent of six dollars and got five new movies and a CD. From there we went to our most regular haunts so far in Macedonia (and in contrast to all of the beautiful nature we’re enveloped by, it’s something of my pudendum), the internet café, where we’ve been uploading these wonderful adventures. After some email checking and what not, I wandered to my Newspaper’s website where I located my first printed contribution!!! In a story about Shayne’s CNOW event at Women and Children First, they used a photo of mine as well as a quote I took down from one of the speeches.