Wrap-up & Enjoy

Me as the Apple Fest Princess--Read On...

Things are slooowinnng doowwnnnnnnnn.  The hard and fast reality is that I only have 5 more weeks left in my service, so the name of the game is "wrap-up and enjoy."  In the wrap-up column, I handed off leadership of my baby, the Environmental Committee that I helped establish, and attended my last Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting.  With great relief after straining my brain to estimate how many people I have worked with over my service, I turned in my last activities report to Peace Corps.  And the American Corner asked me to present about my college experience, which was a fun trip down memory lane and I think there are some potential Huskers here. 

As for enjoyment, I took a wonderful hike led by the intrepid Robert, another volunteer living in the southeastern corner of the country who patiently endured all our dental care questions (he's a dentist) on the 9 hour trek.  Check us all out in more of those famous "glamour shots."

Robert, Kerry, me, and Jane at the summit

You don't want to know how I got up there

Pensive pose between Bulgaria and Macedonia (with Greece behind me)

Then I traveled to nearby Resen for its apple festival, which had the cutest kids selling delicious baked goods and lots of musical performances.  And, of course, there were apples--apples to eat, apples on costumes, apple growing awards, all that good stuff.

How can you resist their charm (and the quarter/cookie price)?

Hane (Helene's son visiting from America), Helene, and Michelle (volunteer in Resen)

Trying the goods

Singing group in traditional costumes

Though sadly and strangely, there is no Macedonian version of apple cider.  I think I'll drink a gallon of it next fall, to make up for missing out on that deliciousness for the last couple years.   Increasingly my mind is creeping towards the realization that all my food and drink cravings may soon be satisfied and in anticipation of that, I've started counting calories (awesome online program for this--Lose It) to try and return to my pre-Macedonia weight.  And how soon will I be home?  In 100 days! 

Nothing Better than Pleasant Surprises

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"--in thinking of how to summarize my day yesterday, this line from A Tale of Two Cities immediately came to mind. The "best" part was that I was doing one of my favorite activities, hiking. I climbed a mountain peak with the great hiking club Pelister, whose members are always patient with my language skills and careful not to leave me behind (which is good because seriously, I think two people from our bus got left behind). Since I had done this hike last year, I was not expecting it to be all that different but there were some pleasant surprises like...

Being one of the first Pelister members at the top and not the last

Seeing these people who carried their baby 4 hours up to a mountain peak

And stranger yet, seeing this house cat carried up the mountain (held by my Pelister buddy, Stevo)

Kerry and I proving there's nothing more American than making trail mix

As for the worst of times, that was the bus ride home where instead of singing pleasant folk songs like last year, people decided to scream them instead. Seriously, two hours of yelling inside a bus. I try to respect cultural differences but this was literally painful, inducing a big headache. I told my seatmate that the ride home was my worst experience in Macedonia and he chalked it up to Americans being cold and not embracing the Mediterranean celebration mentality. Perhaps, but I think I wasn't the only person on the bus not enjoying the "entertainment." Thankfully it was a day where the best outweighed the worst and that's about all a person can ask for, no matter where she is.

Yes, it's another blog about hiking

If you're thinking to yourself, "Are you kidding? Another post from Katie about hiking? I can't be bothered," then go ahead and stop reading now. So, recently I got to go hiking in two new areas, each different but with their own charms. First, I did a weekend trip to a village near Struga in southwestern Macedonia near the Albanian border. Jane's friend Irena invited her and told her she could bring a friend--lucky me! Irena is an amazingly talented photographer who is usually accompanied by her sidekick, Chica the dog. The picture above is from Irena and you can see more of her incredible work here. Irena's nephew hiked with us the first day and his parents were our hosts, kindly feeding us all weekend at their cute village house.

Our first hike that weekend was 6 hours up to a church perched way, way high on a mountainside. In my photos here (with some more from Irena too), you'll see its crooked cross which was about all Jane saw last time she was there when there was snow up to the roof. Ironically, and completely accidentally, Jane and I wore almost identical outfits. Maybe we've spent too much time together...

The second day, we arose at 4:30 AM with the sun and started hiking up, up, up, as hikes here tend to begin. The wildflowers were incredible, such great hues, and I guess that makes up for the pesky pollinating insects that we dealt with. We encountered a curious shepherd who abandoned his flock to lay down and watch us ascend one of the mountains and otherwise saw nobody else. Except for panicking Irena a bit when we got separated and the aforementioned insects, it was an exquisite day of hiking--nothing like finishing an 8 hour hike by 1 PM. I felt really fortunate that Irena invited us, it's an area that I never would have seen otherwise.

One thing I will definitely miss about Peace Corps is saying hey, let's go hiking on a Thursday and getting 7 friends to come along. About a week ago, we did just that and surprisingly we began hiking from the capitol, Skopje, taking the brand-new gondola up to a huge metal cross on Mt. Vodno and then walking a ridge to Matka, an artificial lake. For most of the 5 hour hike we were in the sun, so it felt great to plunge quickly--really quickly--into the icy river and then have some beer at a lakeside cafe. Then the cherry on top of a great day was eating at the Mexican restaurant afterwards. It's no Chipotle, mind you, but I'll take what I can get.

Spring Bouquet

Ok, I'm calling this the spring bouquet entry because it is a wild collection of random happenings from this spring.

Ashley and I visited our friend Ivona who had her first child, a baby girl. By tradition here, there is a mandatory lock down for about 6 weeks after a baby is born where mom and child do not venture out and nobody visits. Then, after that period, there is sort of an "open house" where people are encouraged to come by and meet the baby. Here we are holding baby Ilina.


I went hiking yet again, this time a group hike to an area about 30 minutes outside of town called Mariovo. Jane and David joined me and about 150 locals participated. The low point of the hike was when we saw a guy chuck his granola bar wrapper down the hillside. I told him (in Macedonian), "Don't throw your trash on the ground," to which he responded, "There's no trash can." Well duh, there's also not a prodav (store) selling granola bars but somehow he had one. Anyway, I actually responded, "You have a backpack," and when he just kind of shrugged and I called him a budala (fool). Luckily the hike ended on a higher note with a local specialty, tavche gravche (baked beans), served at a monastery and a nap in the sun before we hiked back to the buses. David and Jane dining at the monastery pictured below; more Mariovo photos here.

That Macedonians are perhaps the kindest people on the planet was proven yet again for me on Friday. I needed to get my stitches removed and rather than trek to the capital, Peace Corps found a doctor in my city to do the procedure. Well, as is typical here where it's all about who you know, Dr. Alekandar is actually a classmate of a doctor that worked temporarily at the Peace Corps office. He lives just down the street from me and he drove me to the hospital, took out my stitches for free, and drove me home--all that for a complete stranger and on a holiday, no less. I didn't think getting stitches removed could be enjoyable but when Dr. Aleksandar told me his first stop when he visits family in Ohio is Papa Johns pizza, we got into a great conversation about America's best fast food. Maybe I should open a Papa Johns in Bitola, since pizza restaurants are very popular already. The hard part would be deciding whether to serve the tomato sauce on the side (as is done here) or serve it American style, right on the crust.

And finally, here are some pretty pics from around town. I am obsessed with the hand door knockers like the one pictured, they are all over town. I have one that I bought in Syria, so I'll always have a reminder of calling this area home.

Go hiking like it's your birthday

Churches and monasteries, hiking and friends--you know, just another birthday celebration in Macedonia. Like last year, I spent my birthday weekend outside enjoying nature and happily the weather was cooperative (mostly--more on that shortly). First, I finally crossed off my to-do list a hike to a monastery called Treskavec with my volunteer friends Jane and David. There is a monk who lives at the monastery and we saw him driving up in his jeep. For the common man though, it's about a 3 hour hike so the monastery has plenty of solitude. We nearly had the monastery to ourselves and it is quite picturesque, so I encourage checking out these pics. The monastery dates back to the 14th century and they just don't build 'em like they used to. On the way back into town, we made a new friend Spiro who gave us his phone number, his wife's phone number, and encouraged us to call him anytime we were back in the area. It just gives me a warm feeling when people here are so welcoming, I will really miss these types of encounters after I leave Macedonia and that time is not so far away anymore, just 7 months from now.

Maybe the monastery visit helped my prayers for good weather and on Sunday morning, I happily met up with about 10 volunteer friends and 6 locals for another hike. My colleagues at YMCA helped organize a hike going between 3 villages bordering the national park. Following a rather un-detailed map provided by the park, we visited churches and monasteries located in the villages (photos up on Picasa).

We began in the village of Trnovo, which had a church with some images that I had never seen in an Orthodox church before like Adam and Eve and Noah's ark. About 20 minutes later, we arrived in the village of Magarevo. This time, we had to ask around the village for the key to the church and monastery. Usually whoever lives closest to the church keeps the key. Up until this point, everything was sunny and easy but...

Despite asking in Trnovo for directions to the next village, Rotino, and asking a cow herder along the way to confirm our path, we got lost. This might not have been so bad had it not led us to be on the side of a mountain hacking our way through scratchy, dense underbrush. To my friends' credit, they maintained good spirits and we distracted ourselves playing a guessing game. Of course, then it started to hail a little. This was more of less the point where I became frustrated with thrashing through the brush and started emphatically calling in English and Macedonian for us to go, "Down! Долу! Down! Долу, долу, долу!" Then I set off and indeed got us off the mountain. The sun came out again and everyone was happier. We decided to press on to Rotino...

Then the dark clouds rolled in and it hailed again, this time pea-sized pieces for about 5 minutes. Also, we still didn't really know where we were going. Some farmers rolled by in the their tractors and we got more directions. Eventually we got to Rotino and a really sweet baba loaned us the monastery key, even giving me a kiss when I asked to take her picture. Luckily Peace Corps volunteers are almost happier when things go awry because they can flex their survival skills and have another good story to tell, so my pals had a great time. I'm less certain about the YMCA members' enjoyment level but they claimed to have fun, although they did say they'd take a path they knew on the next group hike. After hiking, the volunteers came back to my place for a pasta feast and Jane demonstrated making Amaretto sours completely from scratch, assembly-line style, a very nice birthday treat. I'm not sure how my 30s became the decade for pushing myself with demanding hikes on my birthdays but I'm kind of liking it.

I *heart* hiking

If you get up at 3:15 AM, it should be for something really good. Fortunately I feel like this was the case when on Sunday I got up at that ungodly hour for my second hike with the Pelister Hiking Club. Kaylee and I were surprisingly not sore from the previous day's Ultimate Frisbee (or maybe it was just that 4 AM shot of whiskey from our fellow hikers that dulled the pain) as we piled into the van for the 3 hour drive to the mountain.

Dreading a repeat of the previous day's rainy weather, I was pleased to awake to a day that couldn't have been more perfect for hiking. Kaylee and I teamed up with Pelister hiking club member Igor and a friend of his from Skopje who I will call Tommy (because his name was something that sounded like Tommy but not quite and then I forgot it). Reaching the summit took us 4 hours and about 3 of those were uphill hours. I took 70 photos, in part because the scenery was gorgeous and partly because it was an excuse to rest. A selection of my shots is up on Picasa.

Kaylee and I wore matching T-shirts that say "I *heart* MK" and people got a big kick out of them on the trail. They were also a bit confusing to the Pelister club members because they had trouble telling us apart since we are the same height, similar coloring, both from Colorado, and our names in Macedonian are only one letter different (Кејти vs. Кејли). Okay, so admittedly we knew matching shirts would cause some confusion but it was fun confusion.

2.5 hours later, we were back at the trailhead eating snacks and drinking what seemed like the most delicious Coca Cola ever. Somehow all that exertion yet again barely phased the seasoned club hikers, who drank beer and sang songs the whole van ride home until we returned to Bitola at 10:30 PM. I myself slept most of the drive back, so I guess that I need to keep working on building up my "endurance."

Wild for Wildflowers

After what Heather told me was "unseasonably cool" weather, summer seemed to arrive this week with high temperatures approaching 90 degrees. In the last few weeks though, I took advantage of the pleasant weather to slather on my sunscreen and see more of Macedonia's beautiful scenery.

I took a weekend trip with the Pelister Hiking Club to do an annual hike. We left on a Saturday morning for a bus ride punctuated by 2 coffee breaks and a stop at the market for provisions. I'm still frankly perplexed by how groups in Macedonia decide how to get food for hiking trips. It seems to involve each person randomly buying what the want, including lots of vegetables, and then everyone puts their stuff together and making seemingly bottomless salads. We stayed at a hotel in a village, eating said salads and drinking rakija. Lots of other hikers descended and we spent the evening chatting and dancing oro--the hand-holding, going-around-in-a-circle dance done at most celebrations here.

On Sunday, the hike began at 6:30 am and I think this is the time to note that when people say hiking here, they really mean mountain climbing. In fact, the word for "hiking" comes from the word for "mountain." This isn't surprising I guess, considering 80% of Macedonia is covered by hills and mountains (according to Wikipedia), but suffice to say every hike here seems to start up an incline. In fact, we hiked more or less uphill for 4 hours and then 3 hours back down. The scenery was incredible and well worth the inclines, occasional blustery wind, and a bit of rain. I especially liked the wildflowers, seeing all the people who participated, and taking photos at the top. Also I had a lot of fun getting to know the Pelister Hiking Club folks who put up with my shaky Macedonian and made sure I had a good time. There are pictures on Picasa in the Hiking with Pelister Mtn Club album.

The next day provided a whole slew of new beautiful scenery in and around Struga, a lakeside town in the far southwest corner of Macedonia. In Struga I reunited with the rest of the volunteers from my group for a week of language training. Before things kicked off though, I took an incredibly lovely walk with Kerry and Zach to two villages near Struga. Our destination was several cave churches, dating back to the 13th and 15th centuries. The churches were definitely incredible, tucked up into these rock cliffs right along the lake, but the journey itself was just as enjoyable as we took in more great wildflowers and watched people tending lakeside gardens. The third church, dedicated to the Archangel Michael, was my favorite, not the least of which because you have to pick up the key to it at a restaurant below it and there was just something funny about being given a church key with an angel keychain. Look on Picasa under the Struga Language IST album for the pics.

Full up on natural beauty, I threw myself in to trying to pick up some new words and phrases. Although I took many interesting courses like animals, stereotypes, basic Albanian, women's talk, and men's talk, it seems like the words that stuck in my brain best were the slang--things like how to say something is really boring and that pretty girls are not "hot chicks" here but rather "good fish."

Now I'm back in Bitola and spent a good share of the week on grants. I'm helping Pelister National Park to write a grant application and for the Small Project Assistance (SPA) Committee that I'm on, I "championed" an application with fellow volunteer Lillian. As a champion, I provide feedback to Lillian as she puts together a SPA grant application and when the SPA committee meets to evaluate the applications, I present the application. I put an album on Picasa of some summer scenes from Bitola, so you can see why focusing on grant applications can be tough.