SheridanR

Wow. I am more of a procrastinator than I originally, somewhat optimistically, considered myself. For well over a week now I have been back in the U.S., but only now do I feel slightly compelled to compose the final blog entry, putting the seal on my wonderful time in Macedonian in the year 2011. I call it "my" time because I experienced it and wrote about it, but a better adjective for this "time" would be "our" time. I was not the only one who spent five weeks with foreigners; there were seven others who shared this incredible experience with me: four Macedonians and three fellow Tempeans. I am not ready for "our" trip to be over, but writing this does, however, provide some comfort in that I can travel back to the final week in ... read more

This is a strange point in my trip. With only ten hours left before our tear-filled departure from Skopje, nothing has sunken in yet; I am still reeling from thirty-three days in this wondrous southeastern European land, yet I must accept that it's almost over and that yes, I must leave it temporarily. Composing a well-written, clever summary of my last week and last impressions is the last thing on my mind! So without further ado, expect to hear more when I am back in America; I plan to seize my last precious hours here with my mind dressed in full carpe diem attire. Ciao!... read more

I will try to make this succinct because I am sitting on a laptop in an internet cafe and we are only here for a limited time. As the title has already betrayed, I am in Greece right now. GREECE! It still hasn't sunk in yet. As we were crossing the border yesterday in the car, my Macedonian father joked that we will never actually leave Macedonia because the province of Greece we are in is called Macedonia (a cause for bitter dispute between the two countries that I won't delve into right now). How Macedonian of him. The landscape here is actually much like the Macedonia I have already seen: lush, tall, green hills, wheat-looking fields, everything except for the view of the Aegean Sea visible from the balcony of our apartment! Sashka and I ... read more

I am going to start off by saying that I think this is the tannest I have been in my entire life. We just got back from five days in Ohrid, a lake town about two and a half hours away from Skopje and the most popular vacation destination in Macedonia. Hotels are rather expensive there, so most people opt to rent rooms in a house, which is what we did; Natalie and Nina stayed with family, but David, Leo, Sean, Filip, Sashka, and I all stayed in a house with rooms for rent. The days we spent at th beach, for the most part, and at night we went out, sometimes until very late. On some days we slept past one and didn't get to the beach until after four! It was a blast, and ... read more

This was a tiring weekend! Sashka and her parents took me to two different monasteries in two days; I'll begin with Mavrovo. Yesterday we drove about an hour southwest of Skopje to Mavrovo, a village where most of the houses act as summer homes for those living in Skopje. The village is on a placid lake among the green mountains, and there are two other villages across the lake similar to the one we passed through. We stopped at a cafe to eat our breakfast, and I had a Turkish coffee, surprisingly. That prepared me for the twenty-minute drive through the winding mountains on a road wide enough for only one car, which means that one finds oneself in a predicament if one approaches a car coming from the opposite direction. Anybody who has traveled much ... read more

Whew! What a week! I have not been able to post here considering we have not been home most of the week. But onto the subject I have chosen... coffee. Before I arrived in Skopje, I was not much of a coffee drinker. In fact, I avoided it at all costs because it keeps me from sleeping if I drink it after noon. I think that has since changed. My first experience with Macedonian coffee was with the staple, Turkish coffee. One evening this week after, Wednesday I think, I joined Sashka's parents in drinking the daily after-dinner coffee. This stuff makes Starbucks coffee taste like darkened water. It is strong. Making it requires that one boil very fine coffee grounds with water and then serve it-- without any straining. I took mine with sugar, and ... read more

I finally have time to begin my blog! The four of us (Natalie, Sean, David, and I) arrived on Sunday afternoon. We each left with our families and I finally met Sashka and her parents. She lives in a house about ten minutes from the center of the city by bus. Her mother made chicken and potatoes for lunch, saying she would start making more traditional foods the next day. We began the meal with a toast, with the operative word being "na zdravye," meaning "cheers," but you also say that when you finish a meal. I have used that word many times so far. Her mother also makes the best lemonade all the time, adding oranges and grapefruit into the squeeze. That night Sashka took me to hang out with her friends at a cafe, ... read more