I’ve been in service for some months now, so it’s time to update everybody on what I’m doing. For those who are new here, I’m a community development volunteer in the Peace Corps. I’ve been assigned to two workplaces: the Language Center at South East European University and the Center for Equal Opportunities “Mollëkuqja” (“Ladybug,”)… Read More »
I stopped running back in September, shortly before I left for Peace Corps staging. I didn’t do it during pre-service training, in part because I was planning to use the gym at the university (one of my workplaces) after I completed training. I learned embarrassingly late that the university doesn’t have a gym. Since it’s… Read More »
Here’s a word that seems to be awfully confusing to native speakers of English, Macedonian and Albanian: “corps.” If you are starting a new organization or agency, I’d urge you to avoid using the word “corps” in its name because I guarantee a lot of people will get the name wrong. I’ve witnessed many instances… Read More »
An interesting thing about Albanian is that the names of occupations all seem to be gendered. (At least I haven’t yet learned of any exceptions.) A teacher or professor is “profesor” if male and “profesoreshë” if female. An accountant is “kontabilist” if male and “kontabiliste” if female. It got me thinking a bit about how… Read More »
Until my swearing-in on Dec. 7, I’d been studying Macedonian exclusively. Now I’m studying Albanian, which is the main language of the area where I live and work. It’s a challenge. There are a number of issues that create challenges. For one thing, I was getting about 16 hours of instruction in Macedonian each week… Read More »
Well, I made it. It took more than three years after I first accepted an invitation to serve, but this week I took the oath and officially became a Peace Corps volunteer. And now I’ll share some information about how I got this far and what you should do if you want to do it… Read More »
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in an Albanian-speaking area of the country. So far, all my language classes have been in Macedonian, which presents some challenges. For one thing, I don’t get practice in the language I’m studying; for another thing, I have trouble understanding the words spoken around me when I go out. I… Read More »
OK, this is weird, but I finally understand why people in many countries are amazed that Americans don’t have electric kettles. Shortly after arriving, I got a small pot that I could put on a hotplate to heat up water. I poured that water into a mug with some instant coffee in order to get… Read More »
Studying Macedonian isn’t easy, but I’m making progress. Most weeks, we have four days of classes, usually about four hours a day. Our classes meet online via Zoom, which is less than ideal, but it’s working fairly well. One major challenge is the alphabet. Macedonian uses a Cyrillic alphabet, so the letter forms are like… Read More »
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 »