Project: Developing a Language learning Lab in my school.

We made bookshelves for our library (for all the books that were graciously donated) out of old desks. We put styrofoam boards all over the walls and hung up visual aids such as the alphabet and maps all over the walls. We bought a magnetic white board, laptop and LCD projector, and a casette/CD player. The school put in a cabinet for all the crayons, markers, stickers, stamps, and other things that many of my family and friends have donated. We put a lock on the door, painted the walls a cheery color, and now we're starting to teach more creatively and students are more enthusiastic about learning English. (Those are the goals...)

Today is "Prochka" Sunday. And this coming week is "Prochka" week. The following Monday is "clean" Monday. This week, in Macedonia, (and probably many other societies of similar belief structures) people are supposed to ask forgiveness for the ways they've crossed others as well as forgive those who have transgressed them. The 'holiday' (if we can call it that) is celebrated in a very interesting way. On Sunday, the young married couples are to go visit their parents-in-law, asking forgiveness for any way they've crossed them during the past year. Later, in the evening, family units gather around huge bonfires lit all over town, drinking homemade brandy. The smoke is so thick you can hardly breathe. All week, people should be going to each others' homes--neighbors, family and friends--asking for forgiveness. If you have irreconciled differences with anyone, this is the week to clean things up. Then, on "clean" Monday, all the housewives are to clean their houses. A spring cleaning of sorts. Wash the windows, wash the curtains, those types of things. Then, on Tuesday, the Lenten season begins, I suppose, because people are to fast from meat-derived foods. I don't know anyone who actually does this, but that is what they are to do. Finally, in the week before Easter, a full fast is to be assumed in anticipation of the death and resurrection of Christ (a diet omitting animal derivents, oil, and yeast). Yet, in a society poached by the atheism of former communism, the rich traditionalism assumed by Eastern orthodoxy, and the Islam of a 500 year Ottoman occupation, the cocktail of behaviour is indeed mystifying. As I celebrate alongside my friends during these bleak snowless months, I continually marvel at human beings' desire to go with the flow. I don't know how to end this, so I'll just say that I'm very much looking forward to returning to a society where so many different streams of thought flow together, that going with the flow is the most creative thing to do.

The things that really hurt me today.

• I was just thinking of taking out my trash as I was walking into my aparment building when glanced over at the dumpster and saw that thin, middle-aged Roma man digging through it. “What is he looking for,” I wonder, every time I see him over there with his stick. I have, on a few occasions, thrown out entire jars of conserved fruits and vegetables, home-canned gifts given to me by co-workers, thinking that because I’m not getting fatter, that I’m starving for the winter. I wonder if he found those. I’ve thought of setting useful things beside the dumpster to make them easier for him to find. I have a few pairs of worn-out slippers, some chipped cups. I wonder if he’s looking for food, or other things to use to patch up his roof or decorate his house or something. He always looks drunk. I wish he had some other option for sustenance than burrowing through human waste.

• I was just standing at the bus stop waiting for something… anything to come by and transport me home, when two of my favorite students walked by, each opening a juice box they had just gotten at the little store next to the school. I was just admiring how cute and innocent they both are, fourth graders, when the littlest one opened his straw and just let the plastic wrapper fly in the air. Something inside of me, instilled there by my parents and teachers growing up, just wanted to run after him and teach him that same lesson, but I just stood there and watched the plastic fly into the wind, destined to roam the earth for the next million years or so.

• I was just entering the classroom this morning to set down a poster. I felt so satisfied with myself for making such a nice poster for my third grade beginner English class. As soon as the students saw me, they rushed up to me, hurriedly telling me of the latest incident. Apparently, a box of markers had been stolen from our cabinet, markers which were bought in the U.S.A, likely in Wal-Mart, and shipped over the Atlantic Ocean, finally arriving in our little village, bought with the supposition that some unfortunate children would have some quality markers with which to color and draw. All day I kept returning to the cabinet to search for the stolen markers. They were very nice, permanent markers of all colors. I hadn’t even tried them out yet. I’d been pleading with the director to put a lock on that cabinet all year.

• I was sitting in the break room, pondering the day ahead when the ex-director of the school came in. I greeted him politely and asked how he was doing. He told me he was treating everyone to a coffee on account of the fact that they had replaced him with a new director. “What?” I thought, “That’s no reason to celebrate.” Then the director proceeded to tell me how he was replaced. The state secretary of education called him at home at 8pm last Wednesday. They asked him to come immediately to the municipality, to discuss an urgent matter. When he arrived, the man shoved resignation documents into his face demanding that he sign them. The director asked for some time to think about it and understand the situation, for reasons why he should resign. But there was no one there to defend him. He told me that he would rather have been dead that to have had to be in that situation. He wished that he hadn’t even gone there. I didn’t know what to say so I said, “I’m sorry.”