The move!

It has now been two weeks since I moved down from the mountain to the center of town. I am now just about 50 meters to my work place at the municipality and minutes to everything else I might need. No more mile plus climb every day. My knees were really starting to feel it too. I will still get plenty of walking in here. A volunteer form a nearby town had one of his friends, a taxi driver, bring him over and they both helped with my move. The guy only asked for 100 д (denari) which is just around 2 bucks. He would accept no more than two hundred. A real bargain and we made it in one trip. Three men along with all my worldly possessions in a very small car…it was quite a sight but we did it.

 I spent the entire afternoon on Friday and most of the day Saturday shopping. I needed just about everything. Plates, cups, glasses, spoons, forks, etc. for the kitchen plus a broom, cleaning stuff, soap etc. I am sure I will be adding to the list as I discover I don’t have it. There is one store here, owned by a real nice guy and he has just about all of the things I needed. The trick is getting in and out of there without sharing any of his homemade Rakia or Mastika. His is the first store I shopped with when I arrived and he offered me a welcome drink of Rakia. He now takes out the glasses every time I go. I insisted that "no" really meant no last week as it was 10AM.

 All this shopping is what is called “settling in” and the Peace Corps gives an allowance for doing just that. However, I had that allowance last year so “settling in” is on me. This, in fact, is actually my third time “settling in’. I only needed a couple of hundred dollars of my own money this time. I also needed two trips to the supermarket which is about ½ mile away, but the walk back to this place is all level ground so I cannot complain. I am still discovering things that I need. Unfortunately the bathroom does not have a shower curtain. So, the room gets a good soaking. That needs to be remedied or I need to get a pair of the rubber shoes they seem to sell just about everywhere. I prefer the curtain. Problem is there is no bar for a curtain as there are no towel bars either. The young guy that owns this place is very accommodating though so I think all these things can be remedied. He told me that he will be taking out the wood burning stove and replacing it with a unit that heats and air conditioned. That will be more than appreciated when we get the 100 degree days in July and August.

 After two weeks, internet service has finally been installed. I now realize just how much I rely on the internet here. Communicating with the rest of the world, news, and even entertainment all comes from my laptop. I should have bought at “wide screen” model. There is cable TV service connected and I will keep it and pay the 300 Den per month for basic cable. Unfortunately it does not have CNN or ESPN International but there are a couple of discovery channels and they show movies in English with subtitles on a couple of stations also. Of course, there are the usual 3 soccer channels and 5 or 6 Macedonian music channels as well. I actually have a bedroom! That is a first for me here. Neither of the previous places had one and this one even has a good sized bed with a new mattress. It will take some getting used to as the mattress is hard as stone. Luxury indeed! Not only a bedroom, but a second room also. That is great for drying clothes. I can hang them on a rack there and with the small yard area being all dirt, it works out well. As for the clothes, I now have a washing machine. That means no more bringing the dirty stuff into the shower with me. After a few loads and attempts at translating the instruction manual, I think I have figured out how to properly operate the washer. With the first load, I could not get the machine to go through the cycles and finally gave up. I missed an opportunity when it spun dry as it started washing all over again. Finally, I shut it down and wrung the stuff out in the sink. Some of it was still drying two days later. With the second load, after almost four hours in the machine, I finally heard the unit start to spin. This time I waited right at the machine and shut it off when it stopped spinning. I now just set it and it goes through the cycles and stops on its own. So, I have more clean clothes than any day since arriving. In spite of the few glitches and the wet bathroom issues, this place is great. By Peace Corps standards it is huge. On top of all that it is actually cheaper than my last place… 500 д cheaper. Not a lot by American standards, just 10 dollars but for perspective,the total rent is only $130 per month.

    It is the location that makes me go on about it like it is a luxury sweet. I can now go out for coffee with another volunteer that may be in town and not think about that horrible trek up the hill. I even now can help out at the adult English classes offered by the city and taught by the local teachers in the evening. Some of the students have asked me if I will offer them a separate class on another night as the city course does not allow for enough conversation. I am meeting with five of them this week and we will decide on a day, time and place. I will probably just invite them to my place.

 The four day Orthodox Easter Weekend was last week and I went to Greece for the day. Yesterday I went to a town near the Bulgarian border that has an annual celebration at a monastery with traditional singing, dancing and a ceremonial meal.

 Next post will be about those two trips…one was great; the other was a bit of a fiasco.