Vineyeard in Kavadarci
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Day: Both the most nerve wrecking and exciting day of Peace Corps Training.
Sweaty palms, butterflies in your stomach and a million thoughts running
through your mind. This is the day that determines your life for the next two
years. Everything changes after this point.
Veles was the last community to find out their placements
and the suspension was killing me. Imagine having to endure 4 ½ hours of
language class when all you can think about is finding out your future later
that day.
Finally the time had come and the 12 volunteers from Veles
met in the classroom along with the homestay coordinator, Corey who is head of
Macedonia Peace Corps and our site director. They gave each of us folder full
of papers.
After counting to 3, we opened our packets all together.
Mine read: KAVADARCI or Кавадарци in Macedonian! I had no idea what this meant, whether it was a good or
bad thing. I looked at the population and it said 38,000 and I was full of joy
to see that I would not be living in a small village!
Corey, Head of Peace Corps Macedonia
After reading more in my packet, I discovered I would be in
the wine capital of South Eastern Europe and also only 1-1 ½ hours from the Greece
boarder!!!!!!! This means I am in South Eastern Macedonian in the Vadar region.
I will be teaching English at a primary school which is
grades 1-9th. I am the first volunteer the school has ever had and
they said they are looking for a volunteer who would be a great representation
of their school. I am so incredibly excited to begin working with my new school
and new counterpart.
After everyone in our group and went around saying where we
are going, I discovered that one of my fellow trainees, Jasmine, is also going
to Kavadarci and she will be working in a Non-Profit since she is in the
Community Development sector. There is so much joy knowing I will have a site
mate! We found out that there are a lot of EVS there, which stands for European
Volunteer Service so we will be meeting European volunteers from all over Europe
but mostly France, Ireland and the United Kingdom. If you know me, you know how
much I love London and Ireland so this was the best news! Oh and I found out they have a SWIMMING POOL! It's only open in the summer but knowing I can get in the pool and swim some laps was icing on the cake!
My fellow volunteer Jasmine
3 volunteers will stay in Veles as their permanent site! I
can’t believe they won’t be moving. My good friend Susie got places in Skopje
and I am so happy for her and secretly jealous a little bit!
Veles Group Photo with our placements! Pictured back row left to right: Andrew, Monique, Bill, Steve, Andreya, Jarred, me, Susie, and Sydney. Front row L to R: Audrey, Katy Jasmine and Corey!
After much anticipation and waiting, I am so excited to
finally know my placement. I will be living with a 63 year old woman and her 26-year-old
son. Apparently she wants to become a vegetarian with me because she is worried
about her health! Also my family doesn’t smoke. This is huge because almost
every family in Macedonia smokes and they had to search extremely hard to find
one that doesn’t. I feel so incredibly blessed by this small gift.
So proud of my placement on the map!!!!!
Yesterday, we had our Hub day in Skopje, which is training
with all of the volunteers. Did I mention that this training is at a 5 star
hotel in Skopje with a fabulous lunch?! We eat a feast when we go (this may be
my favorite part of the day!) They brought a huge map of Macedonia and we
filled out papers with our picture and site placement and placed this on the
map so we are able to see where the rest of the volunteers will be living. Then
they served us cake! It was chocolate chip cake with some sort of berry in the
middle. We may be spoiled, just a little bit!
This has been a phenomenal week and I am so thankful for the
prayers and support of my family and friends! I will keep you posted on
Kavadarci as I go for a site visit in 2 weeks and will stay with my new host family!
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