Activities at the American Corner

     So to wrap up the rest of this week, I have been going to school each day and it is going well. I am still watching, but with the younger kids I like walking around and helping as they are doing their class work.  I feel more comfortable with the younger kids and think that those will be the classes that I attend.  Even though the middle school students are nice and like having me in their classes, I can help with certain activities, but I don’t know what else besides talking to them that I can do to help them improve their English.  We shall see what happens. 

     On Friday, I attended the Youth Conversation Hour at the American Corner.  There were about 10-15 teenagers that showed up and our topic was Christmas.  It was interesting to hear, from their point of view, how Macedonians celebrate Christmas compared to how Americans celebrate Christmas.  We both have a decorated tree.  Live trees are not as common here as they are back home.  You will mostly find stores filled with fake trees.  BUT there are stores all over the place selling Christmas decorations, which definitely helps getting everyone into the Christmas sprit.  I have seen many balconies and windows with lights in them, not many houses fully covered in lights but that also has something to do with electricity here being so high and no one would be able to afford covering their house with Christmas lights.  One thing that the teenagers told me is that they do not hang stockings.  Ashley, another volunteer, and I explained what we do with stockings, where they are normally hung, and get them some ideas of gifts that we have received in our stockings.  I knew that the day they consider Christmas is different then ours, January 7^th, but something I did not know and learned was that Santa comes and visits them on New Years Eve. So New Years Day is when they open their presents.  The also do not leave anything out for Santa.  The teenagers found it funny when Ashley was explaining what her family leaves out for Santa and what they find on Christmas morning: cookies gone, milk drank, and bits out of the carrots left for the reindeer.  This weekend is when some Macedonians start decorating their tree because it was the day to celebrate St. Nicholas.  Over the years, there are many Macedonians that put of their tree before this date, just like we have many Americans that start decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.  As time goes on, families start breaking away from the old traditions and start coming up with their own new traditions.  I am still a little fuzzy on some of the details and dates about what they do in Macedonia for Christmas, but as the days come hopefully it will become clearer. 

    On Saturday, I attended a GLOW Club meeting. Since I will be working with GLOW, I wanted to see how a club meeting was organized.  All of the clubs organize themselves differently, some are totally run by Macedonians, others are getting there but still receive help from a volunteer, and some are still new and are fully depended on a volunteer.  At this meeting, the GLOW members, teenagers, where running the meeting.  Only girls over 13 years old can attend the meetings because some of the topics they discuss are age appropriate.  This meeting was again about Christmas because they were going to be working on their GLOW Christmas tree.  They made it out of green poster paper and printed out lights that said Club GLOW on them, and ornaments that they colored and glued on.  I am sorry that I do not have a picture of it right now. I had to leave before they were finished working on it, but next time I go back to the American Corner I will take a picture and post it.

     Today is full of relaxation.  I made mom’s famous potato soup.  There were some substitutions, dried leeks for celery, since finding produce is mostly a seasonal thing, and I could not find celery here in Resen or in Bitola.  I also used кашкавал (kashkaval), the popular yellow cheese here, instead of cheddar cheese.  It turned out very good, and tasted very similar to moms.  I now have left-overs for the rest of the week!!! My cooking is slowly coming.  I think that is going to be one of my personal goals: becoming more comfortable cooking.  Cause just making the soup was stressful, because I did not want to mess it up.  Now having to cook more, and not rely on Trader Joes, I will start becoming more comfortable in the kitchen.  My new cooking adventure is chocolate chip cookies, and they do not sell the bags of chocolate chips so I am going to have to use chopped up chocolate bars.  One thing that I had to buy at the big grocery store in Bitola, that I could not find in Resen, was vanilla extract.  Sometime the simplest thing that we see as a staple in American grocery stores is hard to find here.  But yet other things that I would not expect to find, like peanut butter and curry powder, I can find.

    Sorry that I do not have any pictures this time.  Mom had suggested that I take a picture of the grocery store, since I said it was like shopping in one back at home.  My response was “sure (sarcastically), then they will really know who is the American in town”.  I knew you all like the pictures because you can see the places I am talking about.  I was going to at a picture of the grocery store, but forgot my camera when I went there this afternoon.  I promise next time I write I will have some, especially since Christmas is right around the corner.  I will write again on Wednesday!!!