Site announcement! Kriva Palanka!

Today was one of the most exciting days of my life! I found out where I will be living for the next two years of my life, God willing. Just to report that all of us from Negotino are pleased and we are totally spread out throughout the whole country!

If you have a really good map of Macedonia, you might be able to find it (wink, this means it’s a small village in the mountains, just what I always wanted!) The name of the town where I will be working is Rankovtze (pronounce it as I wrote it). It has less than 3 thousand people living there. I will be working in the elementary school there with my counterpart (who I will meet next week when we have a counterpart conference in Veles and then have a site visit!) There are 7 satellite schools from this small school, and I will have the chance to work with students in many small villages around this area. For now, they say I will be living in the closest town, called Kriva Palanka, and hopefully later I can find a place to live in Rankovtze.

Ok, to find Rankovtze (keep saying it until you memorize it so you will know how to say where I live, ok!), look for Kumanovo which is a large town just northeast of Skopje, the capital. Then look for Kriva Palanka, which is just near the Bulgarian border in the northeast corner of the country. Rankovtze is directly in between Kumanovo and Rankovtze.

Three other volunteers from Mak 10 (my training group) will be living in Kumanovo. That will be Nancy, who is 54 from Michigan, Cheryl who is 23, and Lindsay who is 23. And there is a Mak 9 volunteer in Kriva Palanka named Darci. Hopefully I will meet her when I go next week for my site visit.

Next week, we don’t have language classes and we won’t be in Negotino (my homestay community) very much. On Monday we have a free day! And Tuesday we will go to Veles (the training Hub) for counterpart conference (note: my counterpart will not be in Veles because she has a small baby. In exchange, the secretary from the school will come to be with me! That is good because it shows how eager the school is to have a volunteer. They have never had a Peace Corps volunteer before and are very very excited to have me!). Then on Wednesday-Friday we will travel by bus, taxi, and train (whatever) to our community and see it, and meet people, and probably drink a whole bunch of coffee and get stared at a lot!! : )

By the way, tonight, lots of us are going to Chashka, one of the small training communities for a party for site announcement and then I’m going to visit Skopje with my language teacher, Elena! I’m excited. We’re going to an Indian restaurant and to see a movie, wow!!

(Thanks Mom and Dad, both packages arrived safely and are perfect!! Great job!! Call me sometime, people!!)

Only five more weeks until we officially swear in as volunteers! I got the highest midway score of all our group for my language proficiency! Everyone was proud of me. Things are going great, and I’m really happy about my site placement. It’s right smack dab in the Balkan mountains!! Start planning your trips to come visit me!! (Flights into Sofia Bulgaria will be best).

Want to see more pictures?

Maybe it's going to be easier for me to use Yahoo! Photos, so here's the link if you want to check out more pictures:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/swimmersara/my_photos

Photos

above, me in class
below,my host mother making sarma, (stuffed cabbage)