Here’s something that I found rather surprising about life here: There’s a lot of English in use, and in many cases, it appears to be used to avoid showing favoritism to any of the local languages. Take, for example, this can of Del Monte peeled tomatoes that I bought in a local supermarket. The front… Read More »
On Friday, Oct. 7, we checked out of the hotel where we had stayed for almost two weeks and met our work counterparts and people from our resource families. I have two work assignments, so I met my counterpart from one of them. He’s Fisnik Xhelili, a co-founder of the Center for Equal Opportunities “Ladybug.”… Read More »
I got my assignment today. I will be in the Tetovo region of the country. My work will be divided between two places, which isn’t unusual for community development folks in the Peace Corps. One will be the Language Center at South East European University; the other will be at the Center for Equal Opportunities… Read More »
For those who are interested in the English language education part of Peace Corps service here, check out Joe Dodson’s blog, To MAK and Back. Since I’m in community development, his work will be substantially different than mine. (Also, I’m a little surprised that he has a blog since I thought that was something only… Read More »
We learned where the sites of service are going to be, though we still don’t know who’s going where. (For those new here, I’m one of several community development Peace Corps trainees who recently arrived along with English education trainees to serve in North Macedonia.) For community development, all but one of us will serve… Read More »
My Peace Corps cohort landed at the airport in Skopje, North Macedonia, at about noon local time on Monday, Sept. 26. After we were tested for COVID-19, we went through passport control, which went smoothly because they’d made arrangements for us to go through a special line. A bus took us to our hotel and… Read More »
I’ve met my Peace Corps cohort at the hotel where we had our staging. This is essentially one evening plus one full day of orientation before we get on the plane for North Macedonia. Among other things, we went over a whole bunch of scenarios that Peace Corps volunteers have been through and discussed how… Read More »
Medical clearance is all done except for one final COVID-19 test, so I’m preparing to go to a hotel in a suburb of Washington, D.C, on Friday, Sept. 23, to meet my cohort going to North Macedonia for Peace Corps service. We’ll get a bunch of information Friday evening and Saturday, then board a bus… Read More »
I’d managed to avoid it for well over two years, but I finally got COVID-19. Thankfully, I’m fully vaccinated and double boosted. My symptoms are really mild and it’s been treated with a phone consultation and a prescription. It was weird. On Tuesday, July 19, I was doing great. I ran 5 km on the… Read More »
Following are the details of the assignment I’ve accepted in North Macedonia. They emailed them to me in three mega-paragraphs. For easier reading, I’ve broken those up and added boldface lead-ins, but I haven’t edited it otherwise. I’m posting this here because these details don’t appear on the website linked to above and in my… Read More »