icup

Ok and here is some random observations:

- Back home people tend to walk with a purpose. While walking behind someone or a group of people you know they will eventually veer off when they come to what they need. Here that is not the case. This culture consists of people wandering from place to place. I don't mean this is any negative way because this is typically what I do anyways. But what I mean is when you are behind someone here, they most likely will stop abruptly or veer off in a direction without looking behind them. If you are moving too quick this may mean you will have to jump out of the way. I have not been able to figure out why people here stop like that. Its like something catches their eyes and they must stop to investigate. Another thing that happens a lot is the small herd mentality. Back home small groups of people move together and again with a purpose. You can skirt past these groups rather easily if you are in a hurry. Here groups of people still follow the wanderer characteristic, and they still do it individually. What I mean is if you come up to a group of 5 people moving slower than you would like, the farthest right person will not walk a straight line. Instead a zig zag has been implemented by he or she and the same is being done by the person on the left. It seems like this has been done to maximize space for the people in the middle so they can do whatever the hell they want (Stop, yell, stare off into space, anything but walk a straight line) To encounter this group and try to get around them WHILE people are doing the same thing coming from the other direction demands a lot of patience and an understanding of your own body. Lastly I will mention elderly people and groups of men. Elderly people I do not chose to pick on you. I love you, one day hopefully I will be you. That being said, I wish that we could have some kind of lane for you (like a carpool lane) where you can enjoy yourselves. Believe me I am usually right there with you, but somedays I fear of me knocking you over by accident. Groups of guys. This accounts for all ages. Not every woman wants you. Not everyone woman needs you to chase them down in the center to harass them. Please wear suites/shirts that are not so shiny, it hurts my eyes.

Well guys and gals and whomever else. I hope you enjoyed another rant of random shit that may give you some insight on to what my day to day is here. On a side note, I did get an actual paying job to go along with helping out at a local magazine this last week but who cares about that.

Што сега кучки

што цега кучки, for all of you who do not speak macedonian means "what now bitch" funny huh?

the reason that I am telling you all this and even bringing up this topic is that I have recently begun trying to learn macedonian at a more accelerated pace. I will be posting words around the apartment to help out and even in the bathroom. Hopefully this means that I will be able to understand every 3 words that people speak here compared to when people say "I am" or "I want" Thankfully my new roommate is here specializing in Balkan languages so if he does not help me out, I will systematically try and kick him out also... jk?

Another thing that I wanted to write about was the alcohol law here. Right before I came back a law was passed making it illegal to sell alcohol after 7 in anywhere except clubs or discos. Of course you can still find places to buy alcohol from but this usually entails the dude looking around for police and charging you a few denari more. Basically the feeling just leaves you dirty and that you have done something morally wrong because you have to keep explaining you wont tell anyone about it. 

Another somewhat confusing thing here is the amount of money things cost. A typical candy bar or pop will cost anywhere between 35 to 50 denari or $1. Going to the grocery store and stocking up for a decent amount of time can set you back about 700-1000 denari or $20 depending on how you buy. What I am trying to get across is the idea of having things on a 10-1000 scale instead of a 1-10 scale. I have always been someone who thinks simple is easier and being here my first month and learning the numbers 1-10 and then realizing that I will almost never really need to know those numbers is a little disheartening. A friend of mine has written about how you will almost always be using 100 denari bills when you are buying something. This is because typically whatever you buy will of course be in this price range. To compare 100 denari is about $2.50. I know this part of my blog contains a lot of ranting and is a bit confusing seeing as I am completely lost myself right now, but what my general thought is is that for awhile I could not understand the money situation a all. 

On a side note. Devet and Deset. I hate you   (this is the words for 9 and 10 respectively)

Lastly I would like to mention that new years is coming up. I hope that all of you will be enjoying yourselves back home and it is my wish that none of you hit a deer. Here in MK new years is THE holiday. People get dressed up, dolled up, fucked up, any kind of up you can think of. From what has been told to me, we will all get very nicely dressed, go to a very nice place for dinner and then to some club to go dancing and partying. A lot of people even take extended holidays to lake Ohrid, which is still one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. But the reason I bring up the new year is that kids here will throw fireworks off here at least once every 5 mins. Today I was at a museum with a few friends and I wanted to start a video of us walking around with the fireworks going off in the background and tell everyone it was actually gunshots. Sitting in my apartment now I have heard at least 10 go off in the last hour. The funny thing about all this is I am told it will only get worse as new years gets closer and will reach its peak after. The other funny thing is that the kids using all these fireworks are about 10 years old. Clearly the regulations on fireworks are about as lax as cigarettes here. 

Well sorry that this post consists of mostly random rants and strange topics. Maybe next time I will tell you about the Albanian "mafia" dominoes bar I want us to go to soon or the new wine bar my friend Seth wants to become a local at. But of course those are for future posts. 

I leave you with this. 

- Never trust a beautiful linguist with an amazing rack. She will be a ghost.  

11/30/08

         11/30/08

 So I come up to my building and there is a key left in the entrance door. I look at it and then I smell the faint smell of pot coming from somewhere. I come in, lock the door and place the key on the alarm box right next to the door and start going up the flights of stairs. As I am coming up to my landing I see that my door is wide open with Lulis keys stuck in it. Standing in the living room is my roommate in nothing but his boxers, drunk off his ass with a joint in his hand. This is what I get to come home to. So he tells me that his university is having a party for all the teachers and I should come. I decline and he begins to explain how much he cares about me and how when we moved in together he wanted to take care of me to make sure no one was causing me any problems. I look at the joint in his hand, which causes him to look at the joint in his hand and he says… yeah. Its like he has no common sense. 

11/26/08

11/26/08

Strange observation I made today. People here do not believe in lines. You can be standing right behind the person talking to the serviceman at the counter and people will come up right beside you and cut in front. This is not the strange thing that I observed though. What I observed is that people do not jaywalk here. I have never seen people cut across a road unless there are a few strips of white paint underneath them. Its kind of humorous really. 

11/18/08

11/18/08

So yesterday when I was talking to Luli two funny things happened. First he threatened to see if I can fly out the window. When I asked him if he was threatening me he said “no no just to see if you can fly” so anyways that was an experience. The other thing that happened was he brought up toilet paper again. He has a very weird idea about toilet paper and has a fascination with it that does not seem healthy. While we were arguing about everything he brought up the point that he bought toilet paper and that I have used four rolls already. He has not used any of it and I started laughing. I told him that if I have used it, it is because I have been taking shits (this is typically what tp is used for) what is crazy though, is that he does not feel this is a correct answer and I am somehow using toilet paper in other ways. When I asked him what else I can be using it for he said he didn’t know but there was no way I can be using tp just for taking shits. I wonder if he thinks I have some kind of toilet paper mummy that I am constructing in my room somewhere. Interesting… very interesting.

11/17/08

 11/17/08

So a funny thing just happened. I have been trying to pay my bills to my landlord and after I gave him my money he calls me up and comes back up the stairs. As he walks in he is laughing and telling me that English mathematics are wrong. He starts crunching the numbers with me and as I am watching he keeps scribbling in new numbers and changing them. I point out that water and electricity is split so he splits the water but not the electricity. I go and get my computer and show him again how the numbers are split and how we can figure it out. It was a pretty funny experience and eventually we got back to the original numbers that I gave him earlier. He was all in good nature about it and there was no hostility like I was trying to screw him or he screw me it was just funny. 

11/12/08

11/12/08

So last night I heard one of the best quotes I have ever received from my roommate so far. I left for a few days and when I left I know that we were out of toilet paper, like completely out. Well I asked him to pick some up before we left and he said of course he would and got mad at me for asking. Anyways it ended up that he never bought any toilet paper in the last 4 days and I do not want to know how he has been living here without it. Last night when we were talking he asked me to buy the toilet paper because, “I am just too tired after I get off work and I cant” this quote is an exact quote from him and the funny part is, is that he just got back from having coffee for a few hours with some girl (not his girlfriend) 

Some of the crazy shit that has happened in the last week 11/11/08

-       and I went to a small unique coffee shop here called “new age café” the place is pretty cool as it has a literal pond, which is pretty dirty, but still they have a nice outside area that even allows you to sit on top of the water in some nice seating areas. The leaves are dropping now also so it adds another aspect to the place. The funny thing was though that there are 2 geese that seem to live there and they were hungry. They started hissing at me and flapping their wings, Sonja gave them some cookies but instead of throwing them a safe distance away she put them pretty near to us and this made the geese know we would give them food again. So after a bit they came back and started getting closer and closer, there were a table and some small stools to keep them back but that did not mean they would not hiss and quack at us. It was a little unnerving seeing them do this and continue to get angrier and angrier. Finally I had to get up and grab the bill so they started nipping at me but after a quick move of my foot they took off.

-       I went to Bitola on Saturday to meet up with Patrice and see the sights. Sat night I ended up going to a peace corps party and meeting many members who are here in MK and they gave me tons of advice. It was an enjoyable experience. Also I was able to see Hera Claya. This is not the proper spelling but it is the place where Phillip the II built and he is the father of Alexander the Great. It was really interesting to see such a historical sight and Patrice was good friends with the guide working there and allowed me to come in for free and see a lot of the place. O and I just remembered that Patrice captured a Finnish guy who was about my age.

-       Lastly the thing that just happened tonight. I bought some groceries at the local Vero and was walking back with Sonja. I had one bag and she was carrying the other. As we were coming out of the mall I started to get swarmed by a bunch of gypsy children. These are not nice kids that I met in Bitola. These kids tried to steal stuff from my pockets which later I found out they were able to relieve me of 20 denars so not much. While they were yelling at me Sonja kept laughing because I was being so nice while I was still pulling their hands out of my pockets. One would try and grab my wallet and while I was yanking his hand out of my back pocket the other would reach into my front right  pocket and try and grab some cash. Eventually one even grabbed my entire arm and tried to hold me in place while the others were working my pockets. I kept yelling NO at them but of course this did nothing. I would never mind giving these kids money but I know they are the same kids that are huffing paint every day. It is a sad state that they live in, but stealing from me is something that I do not enjoy.

11/4/08

Today I sat in on the Macedonians meeting with one of the members of the red cross/crescent. It was kind of funny because I had no idea what was going on the whole time and a few times she just looked at me and I could do nothing back to her except stare. Other than that, today is also the voting day to determine who the new president is in the united states. I can not vote since I am here and was not registered before hand as an absentee voter. That is too bad but I feel that I should not be voting because I am not educated enough on either person to be voting. From what I hear, there is a good chance that Obama will win and with that there will be a definite change in the US. It will be an interesting time the next four years either way. 

11/1/08

Last night was Halloween! It was funny because my roommate and I went up to this irish pub owned by this irish guy and all the peace corps people were there. It ended up being a good time and I made a lot of contacts. Anyways I wanted to talk about something else. The cultural difference between Luli and myself has made some things very difficult and makes things hard to adapt. When I ask if I can have something, like some of his bread or use his shoes, he considers it rude that I even ask. When he takes those same kind of things without asking at all, I consider it rude that he doesn’t ask. We do these things trying to be a nice guy but when we do it, it actually comes across rude to the other person. Its somewhat humorous that way. I did have a big discussion with him about all that and hopefully things will get a little better about it. From what I have noticed he likes to bullshit. He has told me that when he was about 17 he would go out every night and do drugs and spend about 100 euros a night. How his family could afford that I have no idea. If I was doing things like that back home I would get my ass kicked and here that just doesn’t seem possible. I may just start writing about all the shit he tells me so I can write my book. Also yesterday he told me that he was one of the biggest DJ’s in all of Macedonia and they wanted him to play all around and he was the person that started the people to dance the way that they do. So I guess he invented rave dancing here in Macedonia… good times 

10/14/08

                                                            14.10.08

So there are a lot of people who lie here in MK just like anywhere else. I have been trying to get internet now for over a month and still nothing. I moved to a new place, got a new roommate and the new boss said that we can get internet on the first day. Unfortnately he was also stealing internet at the same time and was lying. So now Luli and I are stuck trying to get internet from any other source and it is still causing problems.

 

I continue my job search, but without internet it proves to be a bit more difficult than I imagined. Of course the NGO’s here are not just standing around with large billboards on them and I have no proper means of introducing myself or a use of contact to get in with them, except for Ivanna. Of course the day I was supposed to meet with her boss I became sick and I am still sick 4 days later and even worse than before.  

Yeah sometimes I miss home. I think about the time when I get to come into my front door and bruce will be running at me full speed and wanting to bite me. sure I think of that. I want to see my parents again and give my mom and dad a hug. I think about these things and then I think about what I came here to accomplish. People say “take a year off” and go to Europe and shit. Maybe that is what I have done here in the back of my mind, but I know I don’t want to take this time off. I want to work, I want to help. I keep trying and trying and nobody is here to help me. I should correct that statement. There are people here to help me and I know eventually I will be able to do these things. Unfortunately it just takes a really long time to get the ball rolling here. This place is completely different. I used to think all people were the same. Now I know that all people are the same in some regards and completely different in others. I could go home right now and enjoy my bed with my parents and my dog. I could get a job and move on from this place. I cant leave here yet. I don’t know what I exactly mean by that. 

10/12/08

10/12/08

I have been neglecting this for a few days. Maybe neglect isn’t the correct word and what I should be saying is that I have been extremely sick the last few days. Also I wouldn’t say that I am extremely sick its just that I have been exhausted from the most minor things possible. Well I have been living with Luli the last week and it has been an interesting time. I have realized that he loves to drink nearly every night. I don’t know if this is because he wants me to have a good time and worries about me or if he really just likes to drink. Last night he showed up at 5ish in the morning with six other people who were all considerably fucked up. At first I just tried to go back to sleep but eventually they started cranking up the music and I forced myself to go out there. Its not that he is not a nice guy but I doubt that if he was the same and back home in America I would not spend as much time with him. The truth is he is an extremely nice guy and always wanting to make sure that I am ok. He looks out for me at all times the only real problem I have with him is that he has slept with 4 different girls in this one week I have been living with him. In some ways that is impressive and in others it is a sad show of how things are around here. From what I have gathered Luli is a well off rich kid whos dad pays for a lot of his things (not unlike myself) and very forward with women. The women here will do things with him for either that reason or because he keeps trying. I felt bad for my old neighbor because he took her virginity only a few nights ago and he told me she cried until 8 that morning. The sad thing is he was not feeling bad about it but what was even worse is that she came back over a few days later to have sex again with him. To me this is another really strange thing is the aspect of relationships here. O yes I forgot to mention that Luli has a girlfriend who works on an oilrig for 3 weeks at a time in the Netherlands. The girls that he sleeps with when they are away know about this too. It makes me wonder if his girlfriend is fucking guys when she goes away also but who knows and truthfully who cares. I just hope that soon I can get a job here and then get internet regularly. When that happens I can spend most of my day time at work and then the nights I will just deal with it. I wont care if he things that I am lame or need to go out. I don’t like spending money on getting fucked up anymore and especially when I go out the girls here try to get with me, not because they like me but because I am an American. 

my birthday

so today I moved into my new apartment. I am living with an Albanian named Luli and it is setting up to be something interesting. He is a very, very nice guy and has always been willing to help. It will be a very interesting few months with him as my roommate and im sure we will have some interesting events unfold in the near future.

 

                                                            7.10.08

so my birthday was an interesting experience. I ended up going to this concert for Tose Proeski. He died about a year ago and there is no understatement when I say that he was the balkins elvis. The entire place was packed with crying people and I would say it was a great time but right when I got there my back started tightening up and my knees started killing me. I think I was dehydrated because my mouth was screaming for water right away also. This did not help and the fact that the entire thing was in Macedonian really made it a bit long after a bit. I will say tho that it was a great experience and something I will never forget. Defiantly one of the most interesting birthdays I have ever experienced. 

a promise

i have not written on here at all. really i dont care for blogs, i see people write them and they are peoples opinions on how if they were to do something they would do it better or some peoples observations on how things are done in a certain way and how this way is not as good as someone should do things. truthfully when i think of a blog i think of a new term being thrown around now that i am in macedonia much more than i heard before... elitist. i have the idea that people dont really care what i think, sometimes this is for the best so why should i write about it. then i figured that most of the people who will take the time to read this may actually like to hear what i think about here. or the may actually like to hear some day to day things that i do. or they may like run on sentences or bad grammar. well for all you lovers of bad grammar and crazy eastern european stories i will try to write more in this lil page on the vast internet. so now begins the mass posting of things i have already written about... 

A bit of patience

Well I have just began this blog after two months of procrastination. Chances are you will not have cared these last two months or have already spoken to me a bit of facebook or possibly even skype. Truthfully I am just too lazy to get back to you. Probably because you are not really my true friend. I will say that the last two months have brought many experiences that I would never have thought about going through before. It sounds a bit narcissistic but for coming to a country with the idea to help and then finding a government and economy so ingrained with a networking philosophy that they only will hire their friends and family it is mind-boggling. I am not the only person that has been trying to do this here. I have encountered more than one americans living here who have repeatedly had doors shut on them. As a matter of fact, one nearly got deported because he tried to file for his visa while in the country. So to sum up, this is an easy way for me to talk to all of you and if you care enough for you to find out what exactly I am doing here. Clearly I am new to blogs and I don't really like the fact of telling people to read your ideas and thoughts, but I figure I'll give it a shot. Also lets hope there is not too much bitching and actual good information for you all.