Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Top 10 You Won't See On Letterman

My training draws to a close this week and I’ll be sworn in as an honest-to-goodness Peace Corps volunteer tomorrow on Thanksgiving day. Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Macedonia but we are having a feast of American and Macedonian specialties (including turkeys flown in from the States) to thank everyone who helped us survive training. Then my fellow volunteers and I disperse to our new homes and begin work. Volunteers in Macedonia either teach (or train others to teach) English in schools or work on community development, usually with non-governmental agencies or municipalities. The end of training is bittersweet—I’ll definitely miss my host family, my classmates and teacher in language school, and the coziness of Sveti Nikole. On the other hand, I am eager to explore Bitola and see what I can contribute there as a volunteer.

No more training also means no more daily language classes. The good news is that everyone in my training group passed the exam they gave us measuring our progress, so we’re all at an intermediate-low level or better. While I am eligible to work with a language tutor (and I definitely will), my progress with Macedonian is now more or less in my own hands. There are surely languages in other Peace Corps countries that are harder to learn than Macedonian but it’s no slam dunk either. To whit, here is my list of the top 10 reasons learning Macedonian is hard:

1. It’s in Cyrillic, with 31 letters to the Roman alphabet’s 26 letters. Some Cyrillic letters look the same as Roman letters and are pronounced the same; some look the same but are pronounced different; and the other letters are just alien to a native English speaker.
2. Same word, multiple definitions. For example, weather and time are the same word. So are Sunday and week. How do you tell the difference? Context, just context.
3. Genders. As is the case in many foreign languages, there are masculine, feminine, and neuter words. Truthfully, genders are easier to discern in Macedonian than German but this segues us to number 4…
4. Pluralizing nouns. There are 4 different ways to pluralize Macedonian nouns, which depends on the noun’s gender and whether the word is polysyllabic. Oh, and of course there are exceptions to the “rules.”
5. Verb conjugation. Verbs in Macedonian end one of three different letters. All verbs are conjugated differently for I, you, him, her, it, we, y’all, and they. This means there are 18 different patterns of verb conjugation to remember—in present tense. Then there’s future tense, past tense, and other tenses with names too complicated to remember. And while we are talking about verbs…
6. Optional subjects. With all the precise verb conjugation, putting the subject in a sentence is optional in Macedonian. For example, instead of saying, “They are going to the mountains,” it’s just “Are going to the mountains” because the verb conjugation indicates the subject. Which is fine, if I remember the right way to conjugate the verb.
7. Formal and informal “you.” Again, lots of languages employ formal you and informal you, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to discern which is appropriate to use.
8. Genders again, this time with adjectives. All the adjectives have to be conjugated for the noun they describe, based on the noun’s gender. So “short” man, woman, child, and people are all different words for “short.”
9. Direct and Indirect Object. In Macedonian, the direct object or indirect object in a sentence must be identified twice. So if a sentence is something like, “Every day I drive my mom’s car,” then in Macedonian it’s more like, “Every day her I drive my Mom’s car.” Really confusing stuff.
10. It’s just not English!

Of course, knowing Macedonian is great and here are ten reasons why:

1. I can feed myself. Knowing at least some basic food words means I can buy food at the market and restaurants. This is closely related to number 2…
2. Sometimes I can not feed myself. It’s hard to talk a Macedonian out of giving you food, but it is sometimes possible with the right phraseology.
3. Getting directions. If I get lost or can’t find something, I can ask for assistance and *hopefully* understand the response. I can ask for all the important locations a Peace Corps volunteer needs—the bus station, bank, and hospital.
4. Understanding jokes. When someone is making fun of you (or better yet, someone else), it’s good to be in on the joke.
5. Making friends. It’s hard to strike up a conversation with someone if you don’t speak the same language—obvious but true.
6. Fun words. There are some real tongue twisters in Macedonian but there are fun words too. My classmates I are especially fond of “wait, wait” checky checky and “tsk, tsk” lei lei.
7. I can refresh myself. Sometimes you’re, you know, thirsty. I’m pretty good now at requesting the appropriate beverage for my mood and the occasion.
8. Exploring differences. Macedonia is quite different from America and vice versa. It’s good to be able to point out how and discuss why. For instance, why don’t Americans usually go visit friends and neighbors on the fly but Macedonians do?
9. Most American’s don’t know it. Even if my Macedonian is terrible, most American’s don’t know any Macedonian (or that it’s even a language that exists), so I’m well ahead of the curve.
10. It’s just not English!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Is It Still Eggplant Parmesan If There’s No Parmesan?

Ever since I moved in with my host family, I’ve been promising to make an “American” meal. If you think about it, this is harder than it sounds. For one, what’s American food? I know at home in the states I eat pasta, stir-fry, soups, etcetera on a regular basis but they tend to originate from Italy, Thailand, Mexico, and many of the other cuisines Americans have embraced and made our own. The second challenge was identifying a meal to prepare with ingredients available in Sveti Nikole. Ultimately I settled on making eggplant parmesan, “American” salad, garlic bread, and brownies.

I set out with my host mom, sister, and nephew to scout out the ingredients for our American meal. The first stop was the open air bazaar where we got eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, walnuts, eggs, and spinach. My Macedonian family doesn’t usually eat spinach, so there were several jokes about turning into Popeye (which is shown on TV here, dubbed into Macedonian). Next we moved on to the challenging items, namely parmesan and mozzarella cheese. After stopping at four grocery stores, we found one package of what claimed to be mozzarella (but upon tasting it later while cooking, that claim seems dubious) and a pretty passable parmesan substitute (but no actual parmesan). The other hard-to-find ingredient was tomato sauce because Macedonians typically put ketchup on pasta (and yes, it’s about as disappointing as it sounds, particularly when they do the popular ketchup-mayo combo). I did locate two jars of tomato sauce, unfortunately not of the same flavor combination, but I didn’t let that deter us from buying them. Once we got everything home, my host sister Katerina cryptically said the meal “would be interesting” and left me to the cooking.

Eggplant parmesan (or whatever kind of cheese it is that I used) is pretty labor intensive and I’d never made it before, so I’m sure that didn’t help. It took me about 4 hours to crank out the entire meal and dessert. All told, that’s a very fair tradeoff for my host parents cooking every other meal for 10 weeks.

The surprise hit of the meal was the salad. I thought the spinach would be a deal breaker because Macedonians usually eat either “chopped salad”—tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and feta—or shredded cabbage with olives, both salads topped with copious amounts of oil. For my "American" salad, I doctored up my own dressing and my family polished off the whole thing. I can’t say the eggplant parmesan was as well embraced—I think the tomato sauce was too much for their ketchup palates. They did like the eggplant sans tomato sauce and I think they might do just the fried breaded eggplant on their own again. The garlic bread definitely fell flat—I guess it’s an acquired taste. But luckily I ended strong with the brownies, with half the pan polished off in one sitting. At my family’s request, I translated the brownie recipe into Macedonian (as best I’m able) using our Friday language lesson vocab on cooking. I also made my shopping list in Macedonian so cooking, like watching TV, is something I’m calling “studying.”

Friday, November 6, 2009

Winning the Lottery

Joining Peace Corps takes a gambling spirit. When you apply, you do not know where you will be sent. Even once a country assignment is given, trainees wait several weeks to know where they will go and what they will be doing. I would say that I hit the jackpot by being assigned to Macedonia and then to working at National Park Pelister in Bitola. I got to visit my new home and office this week and everything looks great. All volunteers are assigned a counterpart with whom we work and partner with in what are known as our primary sites (Park Pelister, in my case). My counterpart is named Aleksandra—she’s in her mid-twenties, has worked for the park for 3 years, and like me studied economics. I had a very leisurely lunch with her and another colleague my first day in town. They both have excellent English, so I will have to push myself to work on my Macedonian at the office. There seem to be about 10 people who work at the office itself and then other staff in the park. I will be sharing an office with Aleksandra once I start in December.

My second day in town, I got to visit the park itself. It was an overcast, not particularly pleasant day in Bitola but in the park, we drove out of the clouds into beautiful sunshine. Ironically, it’s almost as if Peace Corps placed me in my home state of Colorado for 2 years. The topography of the park reminds me a lot of home. Not to mention there were trees in their fall colors and snow on the ground, a classic Colorado combo. Afterwards, I got to see my new apartment. It’s a nice one-bedroom deal in the same building as another volunteer who is doing a final 6 months on top of the 27 she’s already completed. You know Bitola is a good assignment when people voluntarily stay longer. The apartment’s location is hard to beat, near the market, close to the pedestrian mall, and walking distance from work. Plus, there is a washing machine for our apartments and that’s an amenity not to be underestimated.

I have to be careful around my fellow trainees not to rave too much about my great assignment. There are several people who have more of a “traditional” Peace Corps site—a small village without any other volunteers in the same place. I completely recognize that they have a much more challenging situation because they may not have easy access to food, transportation, and the like the way I will. The best I can do is offer to let them visit me in Bitola (and I’ve had lots of people express interest in visiting). I have a feeling that I won't mind playing tour guide in such a wonderful locale.