 |
| My Dad and I |
 |
| Roomies! |
 |
| Dan and I |
After a long few weeks of goodbyes in Washington, I was seen off at the airport by my awesome roommate Alex and my Father Paul. My mom was there in spirit but was in Connecticut preparing for an awesome relay race in New Hampshire. I was joined by my fellow Evans School student, Daniel Kostek
We left SeaTac at 8:30 AM on Thursday the 12th of September on what was supposed to be a direct flight to Ronald Reagan Intl. Airport in Washington D.C. However some nasty weather in DC kept us from getting there as soon as we had anticipated. We hovered around in the air for an extra 90 minutes before landing at Washington Dulles for another 2 hours to refuel and wait on the tarmac until we could make the quick flight over to Reagan. We finally got to the hotel at 8, about 3 hours later than we had planned. After a delicious dinner of Ethiopian food with Alison and Josh Schorr, I stopped by my last brewery in America (Capitol City Brewing) before getting to the hotel and meeting some of the people from my group.
We're a pretty diverse cohort, from all across the US. Washington definitely does the best job representing though. There's about 6 or 7 of us out a group of 35. We're also demographically much different from the average Peace Corps group. We're pretty close to having an identical level of males and females, we've more retired volunteers, a majority of us are in or have completed grad school, and only two or three of us are straight out of undergrad. I'm actually really glad for the diversity in my group. Not that I was at all concerned about the quality of the people that the Peace Corps lets in, but I think the the depth and the variety of experiences present in our group really set us up well for a successful experience.
Training in DC was pretty standard. It was a bit of form signing, followed by a lot of group activities. The moment I saw markers on the tables of the hotel conference room, I knew I was doomed to group-building exercises. They really haven't stopped since then, but I'm just glad I've been able to get this far without doing a trust fall. I'm pretty sure just getting everyone to Macedonia was an achievement in group dynamics.
Over the last 40 years, Peace Corps really has gotten the flight logistics problem figured out well. 5 of us were selected to be group leaders. We were responsible for getting everyone into groups, handling tip money for the hotel and the bus driver, getting everyone checked out, loading and unloading the bus, and doing group counts periodically throughout the airport. I was amazed at how smoothly everything worked. Even more amazing though was looking at the collective mountain of stuff that we brought to this country.
We're a pretty diverse cohort, from all across the US. Washington definitely does the best job representing though. There's about 6 or 7 of us out a group of 35. We're also demographically much different from the average Peace Corps group. We're pretty close to having an identical level of males and females, we've more retired volunteers, a majority of us are in or have completed grad school, and only two or three of us are straight out of undergrad. I'm actually really glad for the diversity in my group. Not that I was at all concerned about the quality of the people that the Peace Corps lets in, but I think the the depth and the variety of experiences present in our group really set us up well for a successful experience.
Training in DC was pretty standard. It was a bit of form signing, followed by a lot of group activities. The moment I saw markers on the tables of the hotel conference room, I knew I was doomed to group-building exercises. They really haven't stopped since then, but I'm just glad I've been able to get this far without doing a trust fall. I'm pretty sure just getting everyone to Macedonia was an achievement in group dynamics.
Over the last 40 years, Peace Corps really has gotten the flight logistics problem figured out well. 5 of us were selected to be group leaders. We were responsible for getting everyone into groups, handling tip money for the hotel and the bus driver, getting everyone checked out, loading and unloading the bus, and doing group counts periodically throughout the airport. I was amazed at how smoothly everything worked. Even more amazing though was looking at the collective mountain of stuff that we brought to this country.
After a long flight from Washington DC, a quick lay-over in Vienna, and a short flight over to Skopje. We finally made it to Alexander the Great Airport in Skopje.
Upon leaving the airport, I was very surprised to find that Western Macedonia looked surprisingly similar to my home in Eastern Washington.
It's kind of an interesting situation that I've actually spent a lot of time processing. I've traveled halfway across the world, but the land itself reminds me exactly of where I came from. There's the same brown landscape with low shrubs and bushes. Same mountains and hills in the background. Same fantastic mountain skyline. What I've seen has definitely been beautiful, but we'll see how the similarity ends up effecting me over the course of the next two years. Could make me homesick or could lessen the degree of homesickness. Could just not matter at all.
We spent our first week at the lovely Woodrow Wilson School in Tetovo, a predominately Albanian city in Western Macedonia. This is an international school in Tetovo that teaches both Albanian and Macedonian children from K-12. It's an absolutely gorgeous building with a great mission and a great staff. We were really lucky to have been able to stay there. We had a very full schedule at the school with days full of language trainings, safety trainings, medical trainings, and cultural awareness trainings. We were greeted by a group of currently serving volunteers who formed the Volunteer Support Network. They've been amazing the last half year! They've answered every sort of question we could ask on Facebook and they've been great resources here in country for helping us with navigating the culture. We were also welcomed to Macedonia by local dance troupes who performed the local circle dances for us.
One of the great things about spending our first week in Tetovo is that we got to start our Macedonian experience in a mixed community. Much of the country consists of ethnic Macedonians who speak the Macedonian language, a Slavic tongue that is closely related to Bulgarian and Serbian. They are mostly Eastern Orthodox and leave in the central and eastern parts of the country. However, a full quarter (likely, there are no exact statistics) of the country is ethnic Albanian. Most of the Albanians families have resided in the land that is now Macedonia for hundreds of years and consider themselves Albanians foremost. They speak the Albanian language which is its own branch of the Indo-European Language Tree (A difficult but beautiful language!) and are almost all culturally Muslim. Most of the Albanians live along the western border. There are also considerable Vlach, Roma, and Turkish minorities in the country. Much more on race relations in Macedonia later!
During our Orientation week, we were able to spend a few evenings in Tetovo and had a great time.
One of the cultural jewels of Tetovo is the Painted Mosque. This mosque was first built in 1438! It is one of the only mosques in the world that is painted both inside and out. 20,000 eggs were used in the production of the paints. The exterior was refinished a few years back, but the inside has never been touched up! The colors inside were beautiful! Definitely a beautiful first mosque to visit! You can see the minaret of the Painted Mosque in the photo overlooking the town of Tetovo.
Upon leaving the airport, I was very surprised to find that Western Macedonia looked surprisingly similar to my home in Eastern Washington.
It's kind of an interesting situation that I've actually spent a lot of time processing. I've traveled halfway across the world, but the land itself reminds me exactly of where I came from. There's the same brown landscape with low shrubs and bushes. Same mountains and hills in the background. Same fantastic mountain skyline. What I've seen has definitely been beautiful, but we'll see how the similarity ends up effecting me over the course of the next two years. Could make me homesick or could lessen the degree of homesickness. Could just not matter at all.We spent our first week at the lovely Woodrow Wilson School in Tetovo, a predominately Albanian city in Western Macedonia. This is an international school in Tetovo that teaches both Albanian and Macedonian children from K-12. It's an absolutely gorgeous building with a great mission and a great staff. We were really lucky to have been able to stay there. We had a very full schedule at the school with days full of language trainings, safety trainings, medical trainings, and cultural awareness trainings. We were greeted by a group of currently serving volunteers who formed the Volunteer Support Network. They've been amazing the last half year! They've answered every sort of question we could ask on Facebook and they've been great resources here in country for helping us with navigating the culture. We were also welcomed to Macedonia by local dance troupes who performed the local circle dances for us.
One of the great things about spending our first week in Tetovo is that we got to start our Macedonian experience in a mixed community. Much of the country consists of ethnic Macedonians who speak the Macedonian language, a Slavic tongue that is closely related to Bulgarian and Serbian. They are mostly Eastern Orthodox and leave in the central and eastern parts of the country. However, a full quarter (likely, there are no exact statistics) of the country is ethnic Albanian. Most of the Albanians families have resided in the land that is now Macedonia for hundreds of years and consider themselves Albanians foremost. They speak the Albanian language which is its own branch of the Indo-European Language Tree (A difficult but beautiful language!) and are almost all culturally Muslim. Most of the Albanians live along the western border. There are also considerable Vlach, Roma, and Turkish minorities in the country. Much more on race relations in Macedonia later!
During our Orientation week, we were able to spend a few evenings in Tetovo and had a great time.
One of the cultural jewels of Tetovo is the Painted Mosque. This mosque was first built in 1438! It is one of the only mosques in the world that is painted both inside and out. 20,000 eggs were used in the production of the paints. The exterior was refinished a few years back, but the inside has never been touched up! The colors inside were beautiful! Definitely a beautiful first mosque to visit! You can see the minaret of the Painted Mosque in the photo overlooking the town of Tetovo.
