6 Months In...

It's hard to believe it, but I left Seattle almost 6 months ago. When I signed my name on the line and accepted my posting to Macedonia, 27 months seemed like such an enormous block of time. The possibilities of what could happen in that time were just so vast and unpredictable that there was no point in imagining what all would happen. It's kind of like when I was a kid and thought about becoming an adult...I knew that it was supposed to happen but it was just so far away that I halfway didn't really expect to ever grow old. And here I am, an adult who just happens to already have finished 6 months of the 27 months I signed up for. The hard part is thinking about what I've accomplished...because it doesn't really feel like much.

There are 3 main goals of the Peace Corps 1. to provide assistance to those in interested countries, 2. to promote understanding of America to locals, and 3. to share understanding of the host country with Americans. When I signed up for the Peace Corps, I knew that I wasn't going to save the world. I knew that a lot of my "job" was going to be just talking with people and hanging around. I knew that my projects and work would be a struggle and I knew that I needed to have realistic expectations. No matter how much I know though about what to expect, when you sign 27 months of your life away you hope to have a bit of validation here and there that it's all worth it. And I still don't feel like I've accomplished much...but I at least feel like I'm on my way to that point.

My first couple of months with the Macedonian Croatian Society (Makedonsko Hrvatsko Druzhtvo or MHD), I felt like I was just spinning wheels. Within the last few weeks though, I feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile. The first month with them, they just kept mentioning working on projects...which admittedly drove me a bit nuts because in my mind, projects are a means to an end and not an end of themselves. The second month, I finally got things narrowed down to a couple of core problems that I could help them with. The third month, I researched these ideas and found one that seemed like something I could work with: we would rehabilitate a park.

Across the street from my house, we have a large park called the Sport's Center that has a playground and a few different fields, pitches, and courts, all of which are in awful condition. This is one of the few green spaces in the city and is a place that both ethnicities frequent. With the schools, shops, and businesses largely self-segregated, there's not many places where both Albanians and Macedonians actually have space to interact. It could just be naivete, but the park seemed like a good place to focus my efforts. I wrote a letter of interest to the German Embassy in Skopje and they expressed interest in funding our project MHD just wanted a place to play Bocce Ball (evidently it's a huge sport in Croatia...who knew!), but I'm hoping to use this as an opportunity to share good practices for project development: stakeholder mapping, use analysis, grant-writing etc.

Evidently, we're not the only ones interested in rehabilitating the park either. A few local organizations held a community meeting about the park (Check out the Facebook Page here) and there was a report on the local news. There was lots of opinions voiced and a lot of people who seemed eager to work together. It was so great just to be in a room of civic-minded people!

The next day, some of the guys from MHD and I had a meeting with the Sport and Culture director at the Municipality and we got their support too (for anything that they didn't have to fund themselves). I have no idea how this will end up working out, but I'm excited to be meeting so many cool people and working with them on this project (and hopefully sharing competences along the way.

On top of this project, I've started planning a SAT/GRE/TOEFL/IELTS prep class for the local youth who are interested in studying abroad. (The TOEFL and IELTS are tests of fluency in English that are required for those wanting to study in the US or at English-Language universities programs abroad). I've had a lot of interest from people I've met here and I'm excited to be able to help them in this small way. I'm planning to hold this test-prep at the local American Corner, a library & resource room in cities around the country (and around the world) that are funded by the local American Embassies and support the spread of knowledge and interest in the US.

They've also asked me to help them out with planning a school competition that they're calling "Americana" that will have students competing in a Knowledge Bowl-esque Quiz on American history, geography, civics, literature, media etc. Seems like a pretty good way to work on goal 2 to me.

When I write things out it actually sounds like I'm getting a lot more done than it feels like in the moment. But I'm ok with that. After the crazy business of grad school, I'm finally getting used to spending time for myself. I've been working out a lot more, getting a LOT more reading in, catching up on show that I've been meaning to watch, studying Macedonian (while trying not to forget Albanian), eating healthier, and getting full nights of sleep. I'm getting into a schedule and realizing that I like it. I've even started making my bed every morning, something I haven't really done since I was 10 or so. It's not exactly what I expected to happen over here...but I feel like I'm accomplishing small personal victories which will hopefully better equip me for making larger victories elsewhere.

I have my frustrations here and there, but I'm generally pretty happy with my service so far. I've got something to work finally, I've got a great living situation (I have popcorn and a glass of wine just about every night), I'm beginning to make some friends with the locals, and I've a great juice cafe just a few blocks from my house where I'm able to write blog posts like this in smoke-free bliss. I hope all is well with you all too!

Pollution in Tetovo

Today I woke up, looked out my window, and for the first time in weeks was able to see the mountains less than a mile from my house. I walked outside and the air just felt clean. It's a spectacular feeling. It's like when you live in Seattle, and it's been months of nothing but dreary and finally the sun comes out and it's warm and everyone is walking around a little drunk on all the Vitamin D. That's what it feels like to me today. My lungs feel sooo good. This is the first day in ages where I don't feel like I'm being poisoned just by walking outside. Yeah...the pollution has been bad here.

How bad?

Pollution levels in Ulaanbataar

Pollution levels in Beijing

Bad enough that the pollution nanoparticle concentration in Tetovo was almost 4 times higher than the winter average in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. Bad enough that it's 5 times worse than Beijing's worst pollution levels for January. This means that it's 70 times worse than the pollution in Seattle right now. It's worse here than the highest level ever recorded in Omak during a forest fire. 

PM10 refers to particulate matter that is smaller than 10 microns, or roughly 1/6th the diameter of a human hair. The World Health Organization recommends setting a legal daily average cap to PM10s at 50 nanograms per cubic meter per day. The US caps this at 150 nanograms per cubic meter per day. The Republic of Macedonia follow the WHO recommendations and sets a limit on the amount of days that a city can exceed that average of 50 ng/m3 at 35 days per year. Tetovo exceeded that daily average over 330 times last year. As I'm writing this, the air is at about 100 ng/m3...and I'm excited at how clean the air feels...when it's twice the legal limit. Joke as much as you want about Macedonia being Posh Corps...by the end of my service here my lungs will say something completely different. 

Here you can see out my office window to the local hospital, a distance of less than a city block. During the last week, I haven't even been able to see that from my office. That is how bad the smog has been here. 

The trick is that here, just as everywhere else, there is a high degree of politicization with just about any issue. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I need to steer clear of local politics, so I am being deliberately careful about not casting blame on any particular political party. Both here and in Skopje, local NGOs have been organizing protests of citizens in hospital mouth masks and military gas masks. I've had to distance myself from the actions because it's hard to predict whether I'd be seen as protesting the pollution (which I can do) or criticizing the government (which I can't do). In any case, the air is nice and clean(er) outside so I'm going to go out and enjoy it while it lasts.

(I know that PM25 is the much more harmful size of particle and thus the more important to measure, but the local Air Quality sensors in Tetovo don't measure PM25, so I've had to make do with PM10) 

Addendum: A local newsource on the cause of the pollution

I cannot emphasize enough that I am attempting only to document the existence of pollution levels in Tetovo and the region. I am providing this link for further information about the possible cause of pollution, I do not endorse any political opinions presented in the article. 

Getting settled into Tetovo

On November 29th, myself on 33 other Peace Corps Trainees from the United States were sworn in by US Ambassador Paul Wohlers as the 18th cohort of Peace Corps Volunteers to the Republic of Macedonia. It was a lovely ceremony that involved speeches in both Macedonian & Albanian, the singing of both the American and the Macedonian national anthems, and a traditional dance performance by a local troupe. Afterwards we had a reception with our Pre-Service Training (PST) host families and our new counterparts.

Rachel and I with our host mothers and the Ambassador

It was a very emotional affair for all of us. Most of us felt very attached to our PST families and were quite reluctant to move to our permanent home stay families the next day. We had also gotten used to hanging out with each other all the time, both daily in the PST training villages and weekly for our hub days. It was also a renewal of the sense of adventure though. We'd each been assigned and gotten to visit our permanent postings, our new home stay families, and our new counterparts. It was definitely a watershed moment in our time in the Peace Corps Macedonia.

The next morning, Goce drove me and my inordinate amount of packs and bags to Tetovo. I was honestly not looking forward to living here. My impression during our first week in country was quite limited and I really wasn't that impressed with the city the first time around. However, once I started getting settled in, I realized that it's actually quite nice. I'm incredibly close to the mountains, close to some really good skiing, and only half an hour bus ride away from Skopje. On top of that, there's really a lot being invested into the city. There's new high density housing being constructed throughout the core, there're trashcans to be found, the streets are decently well lit. There's also some really cool coffee bars and the local grocery stores do a good job about stocking the kinds of food I would want to buy. Overall it's pretty nice living in the city.

I share the city with one other volunteer,

Jordan, Shea, Me, Enid, Kelly, and Casey

Casey who is part of the previous cohort to ours (MAK17). Strangely enough, we're neighbors. In a city of 50,000 people, we just happen to live 5 doors away from each other. Two of my friends from Romanovce are here in the area with me. Jordan and Kelly live and teach English in villages about 5 miles away from Tetovo. There's not really any public spaces for women in their villages though, so they make it into town fairly often for coffee and talk. Also living in the area is Enid, a MAK16 who will be leaving soon to return to the United States. Another PNW volunteer, she and I actually have some acquaintances in common from back in Seattle. Overall, we're a pretty solid group here in the Tetovo region I think and I'm really excited to get to spend the next years of my life with them.

I'm also going to be spending the next few years of my life living with my new host family.

I live right in the middle of the city with a grandmother (Baba in Macedonian) named Dobrica. Baba Dobrica is a super energetic, fiesty, and hilarious retiree and widower. She and I share the first floor of a two story duplex. On the second floor live her son, his wife, and their two daughters (13 and 18). Baba also has a daughter who lives with her husband, and their daughter (18) and son (22) out in the village 5 miles from Tetovo where Dobrica's husband is from. Baba doesn't speak English, but everyone else does, so I try to get by in Macedonian whenever possible, but it's really comforting knowing that assistance is upstairs if the conversation ever gets too complicated.

Living here has definitely been a different experience than living in Romanovce. You're willing to put up with a lot more when you know it's only going to be for two months. When you're living with someone for the next two years though, it's really important to get things right. You want to strike the right chord and balance between being just a renter and being a full-blown member of the family. The motives of the family also have a lot to do with how your home-stay experience goes. In my case, my baba is basically adopting me. In other cases though, the host parents have been primarily motivated by have a reliable source of income. Luckily for me, my baba and I are both pretty outwardly expressive people and we're both pretty flexible. It didn't take very long for us to work out a system that worked well for both of us. I have as much autonomy as I need and try to help out around the house wherever possible. I tell her a day or two in advance what my schedule is going to look like and we plan meals around that. I get to cook whenever I want, but don't have to worry about the rest of the time. It also works out better that we have a similar diet. I like healthy breads, lots of vegetables, not much meat, lots of cheese, and not much oil. I have learnt that I have to be pretty insistent about the foods that I don't care for or I get them all the time. Medlars, persimmons, and bologna are all foods that I don't necessarily dislike but I really don't want very often. Other volunteers have definitely had more issues with finding appropriate diets.

They tell you when you get to PST that no two Peace Corps experiences are exactly the same, even within the relatively small program in Macedonia...and they're right. A large part of this is because each volunteer, counterpart, and posting are different. Within the last two years though, Peace Corps Macedonia has moved to a permanent home stay program. In the past volunteers would live in families for their PST but would move into apartments for the remainder of their volunteer experience. Now, however, we move from a temporary home stay to a new home stay in our host community and we will live in homes for the duration of our service. In addition to our differences as volunteers, the families we live with now also play a huge role in how our experiences go. Some of my colleagues, for example, are having issues with hosts wanting to be family when the volunteer just wants to board while some of us have hosts who just want more income and really don't want the inconvenience of having an extra person live with them. Some of us have huge freezing rooms in huge freezing houses while others have warm rooms in what are essentially separate units. I'm very happy with my living situation, but working with a permanent host family is definitely just another thing that can really have a huge impact on what one makes of Peace Corps service.

Probably the other largest impact on each individuals service is the work counterpart. These are our co-workers and supervisors for the next two years. Most of the time these are either fellow teachers at schools or one of the people involved in an organization or municipality. For me, I actually have two different organizations and my primary counterparts are the heads of the respective organizations. For the next two years, I'll be working with the Macedonian-Croatian Alliance of Tetovo and the Tetovo Youth Alliance, with the Youth Alliance being my primary assignment.

The Tetovo Youth Alliance is a bit of a misnomer, as they actually focus on good governance. They originally started as response of many young adults to the insurgency in the early 2000s here in Tetovo. As life here as calmed down, they have focused their energies on improving civil society here in the Pollog region surrounding Tetovo. Coming up this year, we hope to be working on a project ensuring that children aren't being used by political parties during the upcoming elections. Past projects have involved monitoring municipalities for transparency or ensuring procurement protocol are followed. They do a lot of work here in the region, but they (and many other NGOs in Macedonia) have a hard time making sure they're busy year round. A lot of the work I'll be doing with them will involve networking, finding alternative funding sources, and building up capacity so that they can operate year round and really focus on their mission. The other important work I'll be doing is to actually help them define their mission, goals, values etc. With these, I can work with them in developing five or ten year plans etc. So much of the work that I'll be doing here will have a lot in common with what I've been learning the last year at the Evans School.

The Macedonian-Croatian Alliance will be a very different work experience though. They are a volunteerism focused group that wants to share their Croatian culture and goodwill with their neighbors here in Macedonia. There really isn't any more focus to the group than that. Some of the volunteers are focused on youth sports, some of them are focused on cultural events, and some of them are focused on underprivileged or handicapped children. With them, it's a lot more difficult trying to identify ways to achieve the goal of building capacity...but implementing projects is still good experience for me so I'll go along with it. Besides that, my counterparts are very enthusiastic about the potentials of having a PCV...so it might be a bit before I figure out what exactly it is they want me to do. I'm still early enough into my service that I'm not really that worried about any of that though.

In any case, that's what I'm up to. We'll see how long it'll take for me to get some other blog posts up on here. I learned a long time ago not to promise frequency of posts. But I'd like to get some smaller posts about some of the things that I've been  up to since arriving here in Tetovo.
Hope you all have a great holiday season!

Romanovce/Rramanli

Considering that I've been here in country for almost two months now, it's probably about time that I tell you a bit about how I'm living here.

Romanovce

I live with the Angelovski family in a town called either Романовце (Romanovce)/Rramanli. It has two names because it has been home to both Macedonians and ethnic Albanians for hundreds of years and both groups have a slightly different name for the town in their respective languages.

The town has about 3,000 inhabitants, ~2200 of which are ethnic Albanian and ~800 of which are Slavic Macedonian. The town lies in a narrow valley, is about 1/4 mile wide but about 3 miles long. It's surrounded by farmland but is only about 3 miles from Kumanovo, one of the largest cities in the country.

I live with the Angelovski family, one of the Slavic Macedonian families who seems to be related somehow to just about every other Macedonian family in town. I was a little anxious when first we rolled up to my house, but my fears were quickly proven to be unfounded. My family is plain awesome.
First of all, I was greeted at the door by this little guy!

Medo!

His name is Медо (Medo) and he's pretty much awesome. He's about 3 months old now and it's just so fantastic having a puppy around to play with when I'm tired of speaking in Macedonian.
Along with the puppy, we have an older dog (Bruno), two kittens (Max and Sara), two cows (Duschka & Gyurgija), 12ish chickens, and occasionally pigs and goats.

For Dario.

Pretty much just a photo op.
I'm awful at milking.

Harvesting some late season grapes!

In addition to raising animals, my family grows grapes, wheat, barley, sunflowers, leeks, onions, potatoes, tons of herbs & spices, and the juiciest tomatoes I'd ever had in my life. All of this fresh produce means that I've been blessed with some absolutely amazing cooking. This, for example, is my typical breakfast! I start with a bowl of homemade noodle soup (both the soup and the noodles are homemade!), something fried, some cheese, a salad of tomatoes, onions, & peppers, a cup of tea and a cup of coffee. Lunch is normally a bit heavier, and always includes meat and rakija.

What's rakija you ask? Well remember those grapes we grow? My family makes our own wine. Every year my host father produces about 7 barrels of wine. Of those barrels, only about a full barrel goes to wine as a finished product. The rest goes into our family's antique moonshine still where we make our own distilled wine. Though grouped with brandies, this stuff is clear and STRONG (about 60%). And it's not just my family making it either. Most rural families in the area make their own rakija and insist upon sharing it with you whenever you make a social call.  A second item that every family around here makes is called Ajvar (Aye-var).

Stirring the Ajvar

Roasting Peppers

Ajvar is a local paste made from the ground flesh of roasted peppers. It has the consistency of a tapanade and is absolutely delicious. It's a very long process to make the ajvar. First, you roast the peppers on a giant stove until the skin starts separating from the fleshy interior of the pepper. Second, you peel the skin off and clean out the seeds. (Or if you're my host father, you make goofy faces while eating fried fish) Third, you run the peppers through a meat grinder. Finally you throw in some oil and spices and reduce the paste in a big pot over a fire before canning it and enjoying your homemade ajvar the year round. It's delicious, but I'm really not sure how nutritious it can be after being cooked for so long

Sveto & Nadica

In case you've seen any blog posts talking about some people here, I should probably introduce my family. My host dad, as seen in the posts above is named Sveto (Sss-veh-tow). He's an amazing sport and even obliged me with a photo of him drinking Terere. He looks so natural with the guampa in his hand that it's really hard to tell that he isn't a Paraguayan. My host mom's name is Nadica (Nah-deets-ah) and she is easily the best cook of any of the host mothers in Romanovce. They both keep super busy during the day with household and farmyard chores and like to relax in the evening watching some Turkish soap operas (which give my Latin Telenovelas a run for the money). They both are very physically emotive, which is fantastic for me as I struggle with Macedonian as it means that I can look for meaning as well as listen for it. I could rant for hours about how much I love living with them, but for brevity's sake, just know that I could not have a host family that more closely matches my love of laughter, adventure, and hospitality. Finally there's Goce (Go-tse) who is my host brother here. He's a few years older than me and is basically the older brother I never had. He loves teasing me, telling me when I'm doing things wrong, and giving me advice on women. He's generally a pain in the butt...which is exactly what I've been to Daniel since forever so I guess what goes around comes around. 

Getting to Makeдонија

Since this is my first blog post from here in Macedonia, there's obviously a multitude of topics that I can cover. Since I'll be here two years, I'll have a lot of time to really give each of them the time they deserve. If there's anything you're curious about, just comment or message me directly and I'll try to make a post on it. In the meanwhile, I'll try and catch you all up on what I've been up to.

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.

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.

Time to start this up again....

More than 3 years after my last post, I'm finally picking up and dusting off the old blog in preparation for my Peace Corps Service. Having talked with hundreds of people about my upcoming time abroad, I'll try and get the gist of what's been going on in my life since the last post. I might even go back and fill in some of the holes in the last few years. We'll see. As you'll doubtless discover if you follow this blog long enough, I'm good at saying things are going to be here in the blog but many times life just gets in the way. I like to think that it's a result of being too busy being awesome but frankly it's probably just because I tend to write a lot and I dread the amount of time it takes me to write some of these posts. In any case...here goes.

I'm currently a Peace Corps Master's International (PCMI) candidate at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs studying Non-Profit Management (MPA). Essentially, I am taking a year of master's classes, volunteering for 27 months in the Peace Corps, writing my master's thesis while serving abroad, and then returning to Seattle to finish my studies. I purposely chose this path because it allowed me to work and demonstrate proficiency working with non-profits abroad and gives me the opportunity to spend my time in Seattle doing internships with non-profits here in the US as well. Though I have the opportunity to finish my studies shortly after returning, I'm instead planning on taking a full second year. After learning my core concepts during the first year of the MPA program and applying them while in the Peace Corps, I will return with a better knowledge of my competencies and will be able to take courses that either shore-up my weaknesses or augment my strengths. Though this does mean a total of 4 years to finish my studies, I am well satisfied that I will emerge on the other end with a strong resume demonstrating my dedication to social justice work.

In September of this year, I will be departing for my Peace Corps Service in the Republic of Macedonia (or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as they are referred to in certain International institutions). I will spend a few days in DC tying up loose ends before flying off to Skopje. While there, I will spend 3 months in intensive language training, cultural awareness training, and learning my role in the country as a Peace Corp Volunteer (PCV). At the end of this time, I will learn my site placement where I will live and work for the next 2 years. I have technically been assigned to a non-profit posting, but what that actually entails I have no clue. After perusing other blogs, I have found volunteers working with both local non-profits and with international NGOs. I think either would be a great learning experience for me, so I'm not too concerned at this point about which I will be working with.

I'll be updating this blog periodically throughout my time in Macedonia. I've learnt that Facebook is a great way to post pictures and keep people updated on occasion with my comings and goings and whereabouts, but I've found that blogging is a great way to put all those posts and photos into context. Plus, this blog has the possibility of being a resource to any potential volunteers or any who are posted to Macedonia in the years to come. I hope you all enjoy this revival of the old blog and I certainly look forward to sharing my experiences with you.

-David

Krakow and the Marathon

I was originally going to write this as two separate entries but that's just proving to be too difficult so I will blog about my entire experience in Krakow.

I left Bielsko on Friday afternoon after a slightly emotional goodbye from my host family. The bus ride was fairly pleasant, and happened to go through the town of Wadowice, which takes its role as birthplace of Pope John Paul II rather seriously. Next time I go to Krakow I'll have to hop off the bus and explore the city a bit. My ride ended at the Krakow Station which is rather geniously not only the main bus and rail terminal for Krakow but is a big shopping mall with a food court. The best part though was the mexican restaurant. I've been craving Mexican food so badly lately that is was just wonderful having an opportunity to finally eat some. I literally started tearing up a bit at my good fortune.

After lunch, I started exploring a bit with the intention of getting to the "marathon village" to get my registration materials and race packet. I was pretty impressed with the whole operation and found it slightly humorous that the packet came with a free can of non-alcoholic beer and a coupon for a pint of the real stuff after the race. I also got my t-shirt, some muesli, some pretzel sticks, a ticket to the official pasta party, some useless adverts, and my ID chip and bib for the race. After this I walked around a bit more and waited to rendezvous with my host for the weekend.

I stayed with Kate Rak, the sister of one of my host sister's friends. I'd met her before while she was home for the weekend in Bielsko and she had extended the invitation to me to stay at her dorm. She's a Polish Language & Literature major at one of the universities in Krakow. I wasn't sure quite what kind of accommodations I was to be expecting (I even brought some extra money just in case I needed to stay at a hostel), but I was luckily enough to get a whole room to myself. She and her boyfriend have rooms right next to each other at one of the student housing blocks in Krakow, so she stayed in her boyfriend's room while I had a nice, cozy place to prepare for my run. And by cozy....I mean that. The Haggett single rooms are luxurious compared to this room. Seriously...most bathrooms are bigger...not that I was complaining; I was more than happy to have a good place to sleep. The three of us went out for a drink and some shopping, but I was pretty knackered after walking and traveling so I called it an early day and went to sleep.
I slept in fairly late on Saturday but I still had a few things that I wanted to see in Krakow, so I walked around a bit to see the sights. The place where I started was in the district of Podgórze which was the Jewish Ghetto in WWII. I took a quick glimpse at the Oskar Schindler's factory, which was fairly close but there wasn't too much there. I was actually quite hungry, so my first real stop was something that I had been dreaming about for a while: Chinese Food. As lovely as Bielsko is, it's fairly limiting for one with cosmopolitan tastes. I had searched online and found a place just a few blocks away. I have to say I was quite pleased. "A Gong" was a fairly typical looking asian restaurant and the serving staff was decidedly not anything Polish...but the food was oh so satisfying.

The dish was a Spicy Kalimari with Golden Rice. The dish was indeed spicy...by Polish standards. I could have used a bit more heat but I'm actually glad that it wasn't so...want to keep all the systems happy when you're trying to run a long distance. In any case it was a lot better than the China Star in Omak.

Next stop was the Transport Museum in Kazimierz, the former and current Jewish district. The district itself was fairly neutral. Apart from tourist shops and the occasional Synagogue there was nothing fundamentally different about it. The museum was really cool though....evidently it has only been around a few years, and they're just finishing a major revamping of it.

The museum is housed in the former roundhouses for the streetcars. There were workers running around everywhere, there were construction materials just lying around, and they didn't have any materials in English.This was the entrance to it. I had a hard time believing at first that they would even be open. But aside from that...it was cool. Poland has an interesting relationship with the automobiles they produced. They really don't like any of them, but they hold a special place in Polish identity. The coolest of them was the Star 266. This was a 6X6 military rig that is virtually indestructible. Despite being based on a 40 year old design, these trucks are still used by military all over the world, and even in some civilian applications, such as in rallies. The coolest conversion though was the Popemobile that was based on it.  

. It kind of looks like one of the amphibious "Ride the Ducks" vehicles.

After my little museum tour, I took a little walk to Wawel. This castle fortress is the historic heart of Krakow and of Poland. Built on a hill overlooking the River Vistula, Wawel was the home and final resting place of the Polish kings. Undergoing many incarnations over the years, this area is what ties Polish history together. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see all of what was there due to time constraints, but I did get to see the most important area right now: the resting place of Lech and Maria Kaczyński As you might have read, the decision to bury the Kaczyńskis here was a very controversial one. Lech was a politician (something most Poles are rarely fond of). Despite the universal grief at his death, many Poles don't consider him on the same level as their historic kings. He was sometimes controversial and many felt that the move to bury him here was a political one that unnecessarily brought politics into a time of mourning.  Throughout the city, there were little bits of graffiti like this one saying "Wawel is for Kings":

It was kind of sad to see the national unity broken in such a painful way.

The only other part of the castle that I had time to see was Smok's Cave. The hill that Wawel was built on had a cave beneath it that was rumored to have had a dragon (the Polish word for dragon is Smok) inhabiting it. If you click on the link, you can see a little story on some of the legends of Smok. When the castle was restored the decision was made to include a stairway leading into the dragon's lair. I've never really had the chance to see that many caves, but I really want to see more in the future. It was really quite impressive inside the cave and I can easily see why people thought it might have been made by a mythical creature. It's really quite fantastic inside. Immediately outside the cave is a stylized statue of Smok.

The statue even breathes fire!!! Every couple of minutes it spits out flames...You can even send a text message to a special number and it will torch at your command!!!

After watching Smok and exploring his cave, I went to the Old Square for a coffee and bought a Polish copy of Tintin to read. On my way there, I accidently walked past the place where Pope John Paul lived while he was in Krakow.

In the Old Square, I grabbed a chair and waited for the hour to chime. See every hour, a bugler plays a special tune

called the Hynał Mariacki (St. Mary's Dawn) from the tallest tower of St. Mary's Church in the Old Square. Though I was seated a bit far away from the church, it was really quite cool listening to this tune that has been played so often as a part of history. While waiting, I read my new book in Polish, drank a Latte, and enjoyed a Polish specialty called Szarlotka.

Szarlotka is a Polish variation of apple cake. Mine was served was dried apples, shaved pear preserves, a fruit cocktail and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream covered in a hot chocolate-caramel sauce. It was absolutely amazing. After enjoying all of this, I trotted off to the Marathon village for the Pasta Party.

The day before a marathon, many runners choose to "carbo-load" with rice or noodles. The thought is that the body stores these complex carbohydrates slightly differently than other forms of nutrition. Once the marathon actually starts, the body is supposed to have easier access to this and is able to convert the carbs more efficiently into energy. I'll let nutritionists verify whether this is true or not, but the pasta-party was certainly fun. In fact, the energy  of the place was really infectious. It's really motivating to see so many people who are committed to and enthusiastic about the same thing that you are. I was also really surprised to see beer served there, as most sites I had read recommended not consuming alcohol the day before the race. Unfortunately for me, I didn't really see anyone there who obviously spoke English so I wasn't able to enjoy the party as much as I might have in another location. After my pasta, I went back to the dorm to call it an early night in preparation for the big race.

In fact, it was a little hard to sleep that night. I was kind of giddy with enthusiasm. It felt a lot like the night before Christmas as a child, when it's still really magical; you can hardly sleep because you're so busy imagining what the next day will bring.

I woke up bright and early, synchronized my playlist, and headed off to the village. The synchronization of the playlist should actually appear more important than it sounds. See...I don't like little headphones...I have my big DJ headphones and I'm really proud of them. Unfortunately, my headphones are worth a few times more than what my MP3 player is. . It wasn't big enough to last me a whole race without repeating but I was still determined to use it...until less than a week before my race it just died on me. I got this player when I was in Germany...five years ago. The screen stopped working two years ago, but the music worked ok enough so I didn't really have a good reason to buy a new one. About 1 year ago, the contacts started dying on it but as long as I put it in my pocket in a very specific way I was still able to get stereo sound. Then...just one week before the race it stopped working all together. I was lucky enough to have my co-worker Mike lend me his iPod nano, which meant no struggling with the contacts mid-run...but it also meant finding an extra hour or two of playlist...so that's what I spent Saturday night and a little of Sunday morning doing...so yeah...synchronizing was pretty important. If it hadn't been for the music, I would have had an even worse time than I did.

(As you can see...I like big headphones...)

I got to the village right on time, got changed, attached my chip to my shoelaces and got in line for the starting gun. But first I went to the bathroom. And I mention this because I couldn't stop laughing. There were probably 25 different porta-potties but there were probably 100 people waiting in line. People were running in and then running out again. In and out. Doors opening, doors closing. The whole time I was waiting I kept thinking of the Monty Python sketch. Watch the clip and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway. The race started and there was a great air of anxiety, I could hardly believe that I was going to do this. The gun went off. It took me about 3 minutes to actually get to the starting line. Luckily, this wouldn't have an impact on my time. Modern races are all equipped with computer systems that individually track each runner via low power RFID chips. Each runner ties his chip into his shoelaces and then at the start/finish and at periodic intervals throughout the race there are big sensors laid onto the road. When someone steps onto the sensor, it turns on a radio that reads the chips in the vicinity, lets out a beep in recognition, and relays the signal back to a central computer. Not only does this allow better tracking of individual times throughout the race but it also prevents cheating via shortcuts and allows runners to have a precise time of when they actually left the starting line versus when the gun went off.

Please click on the map of the marathon to get a better look at the course.
The race started with a lap and a half around the Błonia, which was an old meadow but is now a pleasant open field and park. This equaled about 4 kilometers. From there we went into old Crakow, up through the Old Square, a bit on the Green Belt and then back through the opposite side of the old square. This was all quite pleasant and there was a lot of enthusiasm from the onlookers. It was really quite encouraging to get so much support from the crowd.  I was feeling right on-track here, if not a little bit sluggish in pace compared to everyone else. From there we ran along a street to Wawel. This path was the former coronation route of the Polish kings, so it was simultaneously gorgeous and quite symbolic. We then ran several kilometers along the river Vistula. I was still feeling fairly on-top of things at this point. I was really encouraged when I found out that the volunteers along the river were all members of Scouts Poland. It was fun reflecting on some of my own volunteer experiences in the Scouting movement and made me proud of the time I had spent in the program.

From the river, we spent a lot of time running along one of the arterial streets. One entire side of the boulevard was shut down for the race. I was really quite impressed with the amount of effort that the city put into supporting the marathon committee. On top of easily fifty to seventy volunteers at each of the hydration stations, there were a few hundred police, city watch, and firemen to guide traffic, monitor the parade route, and ensure the overall health and safety of the participants. Additionally, there were easily a hundred different people cleaning up along different parts of the route. There were even two military marching bands belting out tunes while we ran past!  And this was on a Sunday morning, when most Poles prefer to be at Church with their family. Plus all the roads closed... Like I said...I was really impressed with the City of Krakow for all that they put into the event.

Towards the end of the loop, we ran into Nova Huta. This is a city-in-a-city that was very much based on Soviet ideology rather than social-interaction patterns. It has long been infamous in Poland for being the height of Soviet insensitivity to Polish life and the wastefulness of Soviet production. Several factories were built near this area. This meant that what was supposed to have been a workers paradise was noisy and quite dirty from all the pollution. It was also miles away from any resources or other infrastructure, which meant that after communism, not only was it dirty but it rapidly lost jobs as factories moved to more efficient areas of production closer to their sources. It's kind of like some of our "projects" in New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore. Luckily though, Nova Huta is making a strong comeback and was quite a pleasant and shady place to run through. It was here that I hit the Half-Marathon Mark. It was also here that I hit my wall...a whole lot sooner than I had hoped or anticipated.
From here, it was a long, hard slog back to the river and along the river back to the Błonia. Upon reflection, I'm thinking that I had started getting dehydrated by this point and that led to a big drop in energy and speed. I was also getting de-motivated as there were fewer and fewer runners around and fewer and fewer people cheering as well...I was surprised but they really do make a big difference. Most of the remaining 20 Kilometers were a disheartened half-run/half speed-walk to the end. I felt quiet tired and guessed a bit that I was running short on water. I decided to keep going, making sure to drink extra water and decided that at the first sign of increased danger I would stop and get medical help. Luckily this wasn't a problem and I was able to drag my way to the end. At three miles from the end of the race, I got a huge cramp in my left leg. It was charlie-horse painful. This had me limping a bit for a good while until the last 3/4 mile in which I simply jogged through the pain to get to the end.

My friend and co-worker, Rachel, met me at the end and helped me get myself in order and out of there. I was really stiff but I finished. After all of this, I had a bit to eat (finally!!! It was 3 and I didn't have any breakfast!!), went back to the dorm, took a nap, called my parents, packed up, said my goodbyes, met up with Rachel, Mike, and his awesome girlfriend Sara, had some dinner and went back to Bielsko.That wraps up my general story of the marathon but I have quite a few reflections on it. I'll put out what I can in the next day or two...I'm already getting quite long-winded in this post. I will leave with a parting picture of me (and my race tan), my finishers shirt, and my finishers medal.