The Last

Today is my last day in Bitola, which I cannot believe no matter how empty my apartment gets as I give away anything that will not fit in my travel backpack which, believe me, does not hold nearly enough.  Really this is just one of many "last's" this month, such as my last...

Visit to Gostivar / Running Race in Macedonia
At the Harvest Festival 5K run planned initiated by Peace Corps Volunteer Candy and her counterpart Luli, I defended my title as the fastest lady over 20 years old--wahoo! 

Peace Corps Runners, courtesy of Phil Lampron

Clean sweep by the Americans--me, Kerry, & Joany, courtesy of Phil Lampron

Also I drank my last one of these drinks, salep. 

It's a hot drink from Turkey made from orchid root and I hope someday it finds its way to an American coffee chain near me--we non-coffee drinkers should have some options too.

 "Na Gosti (Visit)" With My Host Family
I made one final visit to Sveti Nikole and bid farewell to my awesome host family.  Now at the end of my service, I can really appreciate how fortunate I was to have them take me in.  They helped me get a solid base in the language and they always welcomed me back with open arms.  My baba (grandma) knit me a pair of slippers practically overnight, worried as she was that I didn't have adequate footwear for the winter.  Finally, now that he's 5 years old, I can talk with my host nephew and we understand each other and his little sis is more darling all the time.  My host dad called the other night just to check in, which seems like no better sign that we're really family.

Baba Genka working on my slippers

My "niece" Kijara wearing my running medal and her big bro, Mario

 American Corner Events
It's sad knowing that soon things like playing kickball, overseeing pin-the-wart-on-the-witch, and teaching line dancing can no longer be considered "work."  Then again, I'm still job hunting, so maybe...

Kickball in the city park

With the boys, awesome fall colors in the backdrop

Pin the Wart on the Witch

The Four Seasons--Michelle, Lauren, Helene, and me

Awesome costumes of kids from my sports club

Lauren teaching the moves, courtesy of American Corner Bitola

Cotton eye joe-ing, courtesy of American Corner Bitola

Ana from the American Corner and me with the poster everybody signed for me

Time Mopping My Bathroom
A common quirk here, my entire bathroom floods after every shower.  I will not miss mopping it up every morning.

Appearance on Live Macedonian Television / YMCA Training
My counterpart at YMCA, Viktor, and I were invited to be an hour-long, live TV program to discuss a training we put together on my favorite subject, projects.  Only unlike last time, on this program I had to speak in Macedonian.  People here are pretty straightforward and the consensus from friends who watched the program is yeah, my Macedonian is still rough but it's understandable.  Even better though was that 28 people came to our training, literally filling every seat available.  Happily YMCA is getting new Peace Corps volunteer from the new group, Karli, and her visit coincided with all this excitement.  During my last weekly YMCA meeting, I brought American treats and the tortilla pinwheels were a surprise hit--my job is clearly done. 

In the TV studio which was freezing!

Viktor & me at the training, courtesy of Karli Reyes

Listening closely at the training, courtesy of Karli Reyes

 Coffees
"Having a coffee" is what it's all about here and in this aspect, to use Peace Corps parlance, I've "fully integrated."  Luckily the weather here has been mostly sunny, allowing me to do most of my coffee dates sitting out on the Shirok Sokak pedestrian street, staring at the passersby just like a real Bitolchaka. 

Introducing Karli to drinking coffee on the Shirok Sokak with Viktor

Strolling the Shirok Sokak with my friend Ivona and her daughter

 In addition to the goodbyes with my local friends, I also have bid adieu (or here, ajde ciao) to my volunteer buddies.  They are, I must say, crazy like me--they will sacrifice two years of income for something they believe in, will crash on the floor just to visit a new place, and laugh when others might cry--and it is hard to have them dispersing near and far.  I know I'll see some folks back in America which will surely be fun but different without Macedonia as our backdrop. 

Macedonian Meals
The Macedonians, they know their roasted peppers and grilled meats, among other deliciousness.  Pretty soon my hamburgers won't look like this, with the fries right on the burger (then again, my burger will also probably be 100% beef and that is something to look forward to).

Yum Yum

Days as a Celebrity
Bitola is not a huge place and when I'm out, especially on my runs, I see people I know who wave, stop to talk, give me a high-five, etc.  One of the YMCA members attended our training not in small part because she loves my accent, which I told her will definitely be under-appreciated back home.  Soon I will not be "the American," just "an American." 

A few more last's are yet to come, including my last visit to Skopje, last language exam, and last Macedonian pizza with the side of ketchup topping.  After that, I'm off to Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, India, Thailand (flooding permitting), and Laos!  My sunscreen is indeed packed, so dispatches on these adventures coming soon. 

Syria: Souqs, Sweets, & Sheep

Entering Syria, I felt like I drank two Coca Colas back-to-back and was all hyped up because my group got into a verbal and physical fight with a rude Dutch-Syrian couple about whose turn it was at the one window for foreigners entering Syria. Ironically we couldn’t escape these same people in Damascus, running into them at least 3 times in the souq (shopping corridor). As much as I would like to say that we just ignored them, I think some sneers were exchanged by both parties.

The majority of my time in Damascus was spent in the aforementioned souq. The souq ceiling is covered, but you can see light coming through the bullet holes created by French machine guns flying over during the nationalist rebellion in 1925. The first night, we listened to a storyteller at a café and despite being entirely in Arabic, it was a delight because he was so animated and the café had a great atmosphere. The courtyard of the Umayyad mosque proved quite picturesque, with its golden mosaics and shining marble floors. The girls paid 50 Syrian Pounds ($1) for the required hooded robes to enter the mosque grounds. I had an interesting time waiting for an old courtyard to open, miming with an old man sitting in the spice row about the operating hours. He invited me to sit with him and gave me some tea, which I watched him prepare with about one part tea to three parts sugar so of course it was delicious.

Prices in Syria are even better than in Macedonia and somehow being surrounded by salary-earning group members made me forget that I have volunteer wages, so I indulged in some souvenir shopping. I invested in some wonderful food as well, including the legendary Bakdash ice cream shop in the souq with salep-flavored ice cream rolled in pistachios. There were wonderful little pizzas for less than $1 and falafels for the same price.

From Damascus, we took a very fume-filled van to Palmyra. We drove within 100 miles of the Iraq border, which may be the closest that I ever want to get to Iraq, but it felt strange to see highway signs to Baghdad. The attraction in Palmyra is the ruins, which are the first that I’ve seen with dual language inscriptions, in Greek and the local Aramaic. There was also an interesting astrological carving in one of the temples. Katie Travel Tip #3: When traveling in the desert and around ruins, khaki pants hide dirt the best.

From Palmyra we took a tiny but better maintained van to Crac des Chevaliers (Fort of the Knights). The fort was originally a small Kurdish outpost but was expanded by the Crusaders, and eventually turned into living quarters for locals until the early 1900s. Our hotel was perched on a hillside directly across from the fort, so it was a tremendous view to wake up to.

From Crac des Chevaliers, it was back in the cramped van to the city of Aleppo. Luckily we were able to add two stops, seeing huge wooden water wheels in Hama and then a “dead city” called Sergilla. We arrived at Sergilla just at sunset, so the abandoned stone buildings had a beautiful hue. At our van driver’s advice, we went in the “back entrance” i.e. over a crumbling rock wall and paid the entrance fee on our way out. In the Sergilla parking lot, a local family was using the pizza oven, an intriguing process. Basically they rolled the dough, put sauce on it, and then used something akin to a catcher’s mitt to slap the dough against the oven wall. Once it was cooked, they would peel it off the oven wall. They gave us some to try and I liked it.

Our arrival in Aleppo was the night before the beginning of Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice, called Kurban Bajram in Macedonia), a three day Muslim holiday celebrating the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son, before God offered him a ram to sacrifice instead (at least that’s what Wikipedia says). Our hotel was directly in the souq and carrying our bags in was like salmon swimming upstream. Insanity is the word that comes to mind to describe the souq that night and the next couple days were carnage. Sheep carnage, that is, as sheep butchering in all its stages went on day and night. Coming and going from the hotel, we were forced to dodge piles of discarded sheep parts, rivers of blood, and the live sheep milling about before their demise. If you don't want to see such things, don't look at my photos on Picasa. Apparently all the women and girls were home cooking the sheep because the first day of the holiday, only men and boys were out. I felt like the last woman on the planet with all this testosterone surrounding me. Almost everything was closed for the holiday and the KFC that I searched out closed two months ago, so my main memory of Aleppo will be sheep.

Exiting Syria, our shuttle bus operator filled the empty seats (and let one guy sit on a drum in the aisle) and we slowly made our way through all the requisite fees and windows without any throwdowns. Overall Syria was great because there were very few tourists and it was inexpensive. I think it would be a difficult place to live though, with websites like Facebook and Blogger banned and the President’s picture splashed up everywhere. Now I’m in Turkey for the second time, heading towards more geological wonders and marketplaces.

Golden Gostivar

The last sporting contest I won was in hula hooping and as for running, I have always just been in competition against myself. Then came Saturday, the inaugural Gostivar Harvest Festival and 5K race. Volunteers Candy and Kerry from Gostivar worked with the local sheep breeders association and many other sponsors to celebrate the community's healthy agricultural bounty and also threw in a fitness aspect with a running race. They did a tremendous job promoting this first-time event and got 130 people, mostly teens, to run the 5K.

At 10:30 AM, we all lined up at the start and then took off through the streets of Gostivar. The kids galloped for the first kilometer and then started to drop back until I was left racing a handful of boys. The spectators seemed to have mixed feelings about this, with some cheering me on and others egging on the boys about letting a girl beat them. In a bit over 21 minutes, I crossed the finish line in first place for the women and 10th overall. Surely this is the one and only time I will ever win a running race but it was great, especially when some of the little girls came up to me after I got my medal (yes, there really was a medal) and congratulated me. The Americans also swept the silver medals, so kudos to Natty and Jane for their excellent runs, along with the other volunteers who ran.

Other than running, I helped with race registration and did the 3 things everyone must do in Gostivar: go to the gourmet cheese shop, eat baklava, and drink salep. Salep is a hot drink made from orchid root and it is served in a lair-like Turkish cafe that I love. Between getting the gold, seeing many friends, and treating myself to delicious eats, the weekend was a winner all around.