A Foreigner Turns 30

Believe it or not, I actually spend a fair amount of time thinking about what I want to write on my blog. Usually it's when I'm in motion--on my morning run, walking to work, a long bus ride, etc. Right now I have a couple things to say and thought about breaking them into several blogs but I don't want to lose the ideas so apologies if this entry is a bit all over the map.

First off, if you look at the comments section from my last post, there is a request from a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga, Farfum, who is trying to get postcards from all over the world for his students and he will teach lessons based on the locals in the postcards. It seems like a really cool idea and I plan to send a postcard from Bitola. I encourage others to also send something from your corner of the globe; you can read more about the project at http://farfumandtonga.blogspot.com/.

April 1st is a bit like Halloween in Macedonia--kids dress up in costumes and adults go to masquerade balls. There are some cute pics on Picasa of the kids in Bitola picking up Easter eggs. It's tradition here to color eggs, just like it is at home, but they don't do egg hunts. You'll read below what they do with the eggs.

As I inevitably had to, I turned 30 this weekend on Easter. Another volunteer, Justin, also turned 30 a day earlier and we planned a hiking weekend with about 8 volunteer buddies. Unfortunately Justin got sick at the last minute but the rest of us soldiered on for a glorious weekend outside. Led by 4 Macedonian friends of fellow volunteer Zach, we walked 1.5 hours to a village called Dracevica in southeast Macedonia (about 3 hours by bus from my site). We stayed in the old schoolhouse which doesn't have running water or plumbing but does have tables, dinnerware, and bunk beds. You'll see in the Picasa photos that we washed dishes in the village fountain, and there was a doorless outhouse. The weather couldn't have been better so we spent most of our time sitting outside in the sunshine (me with my sunscreen, of course), interspersed by indulging in delicious food and drinks.

This year, Orthodox Easter overlapped with Christian Easter and the Orthodox celebration here includes going to church at midnight. The village church was opened up and we got to see the terrific paintings on the walls. We lit candles with the other weekenders in the village and then walked around the church 3 times while they rang the bell. Then, as is tradition, people tapped colored hard-boiled eggs against each other (head to head or butt to butt) and the goal is to have your egg stay uncracked the longest. It was, suffice to say, a memorable way to start a new decade. The next morning, we had to rise early so everyone could catch their respective buses home but I was serenaded with happy birthday on the hike down and that was another first for me. Once I got home, I relaxed, got more birthday greetings online and by Skype, and just savored the wonderful weekend.

I've been asked how it feels to be thirty, whether I'm freaked out about being older, etc. I did have one mini-meltdown, essentially because I'm not doing what seemingly most people do at this age and got myself wondering if I've got life all wrong. I don't have a spouse, a house, or a kid. Heck, I don't even have a car or a bicycle anymore. Sometimes I want these things but if I thought about that too much, I would 1) drive myself crazy and 2) not enjoy what is going on in my life that I've wanted forever. The Economist (which I borrow free from the American Corner) had an interesting article recently on being foreign and it really captures the path that I've chosen (or has chosen me, I'm not exactly sure). For instance, it says, "Foreignness [is] a means of escape--physical, psychological and moral. In another country you [can] flee easy categorisation by your education, your work, your class, your family, your accent, your politics. You [can] reinvent yourself, if only in your own mind. You [are] not caught up in the mundanities of the place you [inhabit], any more than you [want] to be. You did not vote for the government, its problems [are] not your problems. You [are] irresponsible. Irresponsibility might seem to moralists an unsatisfactory condition for an adult, but in practice it can be a huge relief." The article goes on to say, "All other things being equal, foreignness is intrinsically stimulating" but counters later with, "Beware, then: however well you carry it off, however much you enjoy it, there is a dangerous undertow to being a foreigner...somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastasises over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia...it is not the possibility of returning home which feeds nostalgia, but the impossibility of it." The article really hits home at the end by saying, "But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another...the homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them." So right now, I am a foreigner--irresponsible and nostalgic perhaps but choosing the pleasure and the pain because I can't expect to have it all ways.