Day to Day

I've talked mostly about my job and work related things, so I thought I'd mention a few things about my day to day life and then a quick update on work at the end.

NEW ROOMMATE

I have a lovely new roommate now. Her name is Nivedita (Nive for short) and she is a 32 year old grad student in development studies in Brighton, UK. Since she got in on Sunday we've been able to get to know one another quite well. She seems really great and I look forward to having her in the apartment for the next few months while I'm here! She has a had an incredibly interesting professional life since graduating from undergrad, so it's great to see where I could be in ten years-- and also fun to hear what her friends are doing to see all of the other options there are out there!

We cook dinner every night, I haven't gone out once. Partially due to the fact that I've enjoyed cooking and know that most of the meals I enjoy would be difficult to find here, but partially because going to a restaurant is incredibly difficult with the language and alphabet barrier. Unlike countries where the alphabet is shared and most things are at least recognizable, it would take me hours to translate the menu and most likely would be much more trouble that it was worth! Having said that, we often go out to eat for lunch, which is actually quite nice because then I learn more vocabulary every day. Today, however, I brought some soup that I made on Saturday, because although most stuff is quite inexpensive (A full meal out is often 3-4 USD), the rent and costs associated with our housing situation are turning out to be more expensive than I originally anticipated. It's not super spendy, but we think we may be being a bit taken advantage of, being foreigners.. :( One of our coworkers is going to call our landlord and talk to her, so that's nice.

MACEDONIAN

I'm still learning quite fast: I make flashcards at night and study what I can. I can now put together very simple sentences like, that is beautiful, and you are boring. I have even learned the past tense of "to be"... Although my German has helped me in absolutely no way here- even hurt me, since they keep trying to get me to roll my r's and not use my throat!- but i do think that having learned, or at least started, three languages before this one, I know the basics of what I need to know to start teaching myself... Of course, with Spanish and French, I rarely had a problem guessing things!

One of my coworkers also gave me some of her daughters books to try to read. We'll see how that goes.. :) It's hard because there isn't an internet dictionary to help me out.

WORK

The rest of the this week may be a bit slow for me because I'm waiting to visit the schools with Milica next week to start implementing my evaluation system. I did write a statement about the Green Schools yesterday for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was pretty cool. I have no idea where its' final destination is or if it will be published, etc, but it's neat to have something to slide into a portfolio! I just got it back from Keith (The COP- Chief of Party- of the Project here) and he said that he made a few revisions, but that it was really good work! --> You can read this directly to the right of this post on the side column.

Next week I will also start creating the Project Profiles for each individual school. I'm excited to start this project because it's partially artistically creative, which I'm excited for. I'll definitely learn a bit more about how to use WORD...

I'm still doing really well and enjoying everything.. Nive and I may join a gym this weekend because our nights are rather sedentary as are our days, and I'm definitely not used to it... And it's hard to motivate ourselves to go out into the city (a good 30 minute walk) after 5 when we get off work and it's already dark...

Oh one more thing, just to end with. Milica, the woman I'm working with at the partner organization, said that she loved all my ideas so much she would hire me immediately! And Nebo, my immediate boss complimented me on my work (and speed, I think, that's normally where I get compliments) and joked that they needed me for another 10 weeks. I'll write later about what I'm thinking about doing post-graduation, but how neat would it be to do a Rotary or something here?... Food for thought at this point.

Hope you're all well.. I especially send out love to my fellow IDIPers-- I've so enjoyed reading everyone's blogs and seeing their photos.. I love how different all of our experiences are shaping up. Can't wait for Spring (If I ever come back)..

Lots of love,
Tess