After an intense week of initial language training and guidance on Peace Corps policies, I moved in on Friday with my new host family. I'm living with a very nice couple, Victoria and Lasto, in the town of Sveti Nikole about 30 minutes from the capital. I have my own room with a pull-out sofa bed and storage for all of my belongings that I hauled halfway around the world. Right now I'm writing from my host sister Katerina's house. She's a few years younger than me and has been married to her husband Panche for 4 years. They have a 3 year old son, Mario, who already knows more Macedonian than I do. There are a handful of other Peace Corps trainees (we're not volunteers officially until we finish training and are sworn in) going to language school here and every other week or so, we'll meet up with the other trainees for trainings together. My host family is incredibly nice, even though I can't say much and I don't understand 99% of what they say to me. I'm carrying around a Macedonian-English dictionary and I'm lucky that Katerina knows a lot of English. I must not be making a terrible impression because already they suggested I date and marry a Macedonian.
After arriving here, we did a tour of the town and stopped at each of the host family's houses. In Macedonia, it is polite to offer guests food and drink and for guests to partake of said food and drink. This means that we ate from 11 am to 4 pm on Saturday, 7 stops plus lunch afterwards with my host family. As I said before, the food is very good because everyone makes fresh baked goods, pepper spreads, etc. I have gone running a few times but I think I'll need to go more. Running is not a very popular sport here, especially in comparison to soccer and handball, but maybe I'll help bring it into vogue.
It may be awhile before I can post photos because of my limited internet access and rampant computer viruses in Macedonia, but I'll get some up as soon as I can.
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