The study strike is over!!

Yeah, I finally began to study today for the first time in days.  I was really unmotivated for a number of reasons.  But mostly because I'm a lazy miserable homesick brat.  It's the fourth of July tomorrow, and all my family is telling me there fun plans, and I'm so jealous.  I wish I could go to the barbeque with everyone, but I can't this year.  I'll say, I never really appreciated family gathering so much in the past, but I guess I'm starting to get a little sentimental as I approach my 30's.  Anyways, I've kept busy during my strike.

I baked a cherry pie:

I made my first Зелник со сирење (Pastry with cheese):

I discovered the mysterious hssss that made my husband think the a/c was broken.  After some investigating, it turns out that one of my canned cherry jars didn't make it and started to leak and release gas.  That was the hsss'ing sound.  Well, dummy that I am, decided to help release the gas, so that I could throw away the bad cherries and the jar exploded all over my kitchen.  I had cherries at least 4 feet from the crime scene.  In an attempt to hide the evidence of my housewife failure, I decided to clean the entire apartment from top to bottom.

Which was rather convenient, because afterwards, my husband called and told me that we would be entertaining guests that evening.  Which I did so, very successfully.  I say that, because I've had some rather terrible experiences in the past with entertaining Macedonians.  Like for example, not standing up and greeting the guests at the door, not walking the guests to the door or car at the end of the night, not making sure their drinks were full, not making enough food, or not having some sweet to serve with coffee, etc... And I heard about it from the husband or his mother.  I kind of developed a phobia when guests come over because of the damn formalities.  But this time, I decided that I wasn't going to pretend I was some native Macedonian housewife. Rather, an American who choose to live in Macedonia, that keeps a average clean house, is not working at the moment, is somewhat polite, and will make and serve food if she feels like it.  And it just so happened that I was in the mood for making food, and so I did.  My house was clean enough (actually cleaner than usual, due to the event that occurred earlier that day), I kept the drinks full as best as I could, and the our very small living room table didn't have an ounce of room for more food.  My husband was so pleased at the end of the night, and so was I.  But mostly, for not freaking out because I'm not perfect.  I mean, who set the damn standards in this country for hospitality anyways???  I think even Emily Post herself would struggle here.

Language Journal: I've got the blues.

I haven't studied in 2 days.  I'm not proud of it. But circumstances arose, and I found that everything else in the world was more important than studying.  Really, I just didn't feel like it.  Yesterday, I was feeling kind of down.  I'm a little homesick, and I miss working.  I'm just saying, sleeping in, having no deadlines, and wearing comfy clothes all the time is nice, but I miss interacting with people.  And people that understand me, my humor, and/or language.  It's been a year since I've been home, and I'm feeling it.  :(

Language Journal 3:

I didn't study today.  But I talked for 30 minutes with my mother-in-law getting the recipe for zucchini burgers.  And another recipe that uses zucchini in soup.  It's really amazing that I can manage to go days living in a foreign country and not have to speak the language.  Today, I managed to pay the electric bill, the water bill, and buy groceries without uttering a single word.

Macedonian Zucchini Burger Recipe

Just a week ago, my grandfather was complaining that there were no zucchini and that he wanted to pull up the plants because they were taking up so much space and not producing any fruit.  Well, one week later look what happened.

I started with 11, but I gave away 5 and used one for dinner, and this is what's left.  That tiny little dot is a quarter. All from only 4 plants.  I don't understand how they can grow this fast, especially when last week they were only flowers.  

Anyways, I discovered a new way to cook them, zucchini burgers.  They are so good, and great for a non-meat meal.  I made them tonight and my family loved them.

Serves 4 people.

Ingredients:

• 800 grams zucchini
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 medium onion
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 2 heaping spoons of flour
• ground black pepper
• 1 cup of Italian bread crumbs

Preparation:
1.  Wash, peel, and grate zucchini.  Add salt and leave for a few minutes and then drain the water.  (It helps if you squeeze them out by hand).
2.  Finely chop onion and parsley, add to grated zucchini.  Add flour, eggs, black pepper, and
bread crumbs.  Mix well and make small burgers. (I find that if you shape them into balls first and then press them down once they are in the pan, it helps keep the mixture from separating.)
3.  Fry in preheated oil.

Enjoy!!

Language Journal 2: Talking with children & trip to Bitola/Ohrid

I used to really enjoy talking to kids, before I moved to Macedonia.  Joking around with them, getting them to laugh.  But trying to communicate with children in a foreign language is beyond difficult.  Especially when the children speak in dialect.  Today, as usual, I studied Macedonian for 30 minutes, then headed out to run some errands.  I met up with my husband at his parents house, and some close friends of the family stopped over for some coffee.  Amongst the group were two children, ages 12 and 7.  The older of the two is studying English in school, and communicating is only slightly easier than impossible.  But for the little one, I don't stand a chance.  Not to mention, I can't predict the kind of questions that children will ask.  They are completely random, and I usually understand the majority of conversation through context alone.  But children are quite unpredictable. Today she asked me where my cat was.  And I replied, "на прокривот."  trying to convey on the roof.  Then she asked me something I couldn't figure out, but heard "згуби", which I knew meant lost. But I couldn't figure out the rest of the sentence.  Then I realized that she was asking me if I had lost my cat.  See, I wasn't expecting that question.  And what makes it even more challenging, is that children have no patience.  They say something, and if you don't understand it, they will repeat it, and after that, they run away or they look at you like you weird or something.  And if they still really want to know the answer, they will ask someone else the question.  Which is what the little girl did today.  She asked her mother, and her mother translated.

But, at least I can say I was able to practice speaking a little today for the first time in days.  I didn't have a chance this weekend because me and my husband went out of town for the weekend.  Saturday, we headed to Bitola for a Biker Party. 

Then Sunday, to the Претора Beach in Ohrid.  This beach was really beautiful.  It's surrounded by mountains, the water is super clean, it wasn't too crowded, and the prices were reasonable.  I really liked it there.  But the entire weekend, everyone in our company spoke to me in perfect English.  Even the waiter replied to me in English when I asked, "Каде е толет?"  (Where is the bathroom?)  What would motivate me to speak broken Macedonian, when everyone replies to me in English?  And I'm not sure if they are speaking in English to make communicating easier for me, sometimes I think they just want to show off how well they speak my language.  Plus, it's so embarrassing to want to say something witty and it comes out not making any sense at all. But, it was a nice trip anyways despite the language part.

Language Journal 1, and Recipe for Stuffed Zucchini

I have new motivation for studying Macedonian.  I was recently contacted by this woman in North Carolina, who has asked me to keep a journal of my language studying.  So, since I already have a blog, I figured I will just make small posts each day on my progress.

Today, as usual, I studied 30 minutes of the Book2 English-Macedonian, which I programmed into Anki, which is a digital flashcard program.

I didn't get a chance to speak Macedonian with anyone today, but I did watch one of my favorite cooking shows.  I think that should count for something, since the entire show is in Macedonian.



I don't remember the cook's name, but she a really pretty woman with black hair.  She used to have  a cook book for sale on Amazon, but I can't find it anymore.  It doesn't matter, I only wanted to give a reference.  But today she was making stuffed zucchini.  Which looked extra amazing, and I so want to try this one, since I'm growing zucchini in the garden at the country house.  It's really easy, and if your interested here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 4 zucchini
• 3 or 4 fresh tomatoes
• 1 finely chopped onion, 
• 500 grams ground beef, 
• 1 tsp. vegeta, 
• 1 tsp. salt, 
• 1 tsp. (trienna sol???) I need to find a translation for this. But it is a salt that smells like curry,
• 1 tbs. ground red pepper,
•  pinch of black pepper,
•  handful of rice, 
•  3 or 4 cups of boiling water,
•  handful of chopped parsley,
• 2 or 3 cloves of finely chopped garlic,
• olive oil or sunflower oil,
• large frying pan,
• casserole dish

1.  Remove the center of the zucchini, but not all the way through, just enough to put the mixture in.
2.  Over medium heat, cook onion until soft, about 5 minutes, add the ground beef, cook until no longer pink, than add vegeta, salt, trienna salt, red ground pepper, black pepper, and rice. Cook for a few more minutes.
3.  Place the ground beef mixture in the zucchini.
4.  Chop up 2 or 3 tomatoes (depending on the size of casserole dish, you just want to have a even layer on the bottom), and add to casserole.  Add to the top a pinch of vegeta, salt, and olive oil or regular cooking oil.
5.  Add stuffed zucchini to casserole.  In between the zucchini, add parsley and garlic.  Add boiling water to each stuffed zucchini, and fill the casserole about half way.
6.  Then add a slice of tomato to the top of each stuffed zucchini.
7.  Bake in a preheated oven 200C or 375F for 30-45 minutes.

Serve with a vegetable salad, hot pepper, and kiselo mleko (cottage cheese, I think??)

Enjoy!!!!

Thanksgiving in Macedonia

There are so many things that I will have to adjust to while living in Macedonia.  Not recognizing American holidays is just one of them.  It's not Thanksgiving here, all the stores and banks are open. I guess I can consider that a plus because I need to go to the bank today, but it's really not that big of a deal, because if I really needed cash in the States I would just hit up any random ATM. But I'm trying to stay positive.  And I don't think I will ever adjust to the random speaker system set up around the city that randomly plays Muslim music. I don't understand for the life of me, how that is legal here.  How the city allows a group of people to install a public broadcast of religious music. Ha! I'm not even sure there is a city that has a speaker system that publicly broadcasts anything other than maybe a siren for tornadoes.  I heard that go off once when living in Cleveland.

Last Thanksgiving was pretty rough here...My family sent off the ridiculously expensive turkey (no joke it was like $30 for 7 or 8 pds.) to be cooked somewhere where they cook pigs, and it came back flattened and dry.  My mother in law put the dough for the apple pie in the freezer, when I told her to put it in the fridge (communication error). And then she also kept turning off the stove that was keeping the vegetables warm, every time I turned my back.  I swear she was out to sabotage me, but of course my paranoia was high that day. And she made three salad's in addition to the my side dishes, which were not put on the table until after the main course.  I'm still a little bitter about that, which is why I told everyone that today wasn't that big of a deal and I wasn't planning on making anything special.  But I'm not going to lie, I'm a little disappointed that there won't be any turkey or apple pie.  :(
What can I say, it's not Thanksgiving in Macedonia!

11 Macedonian Woman and 1 American

The other night, I went to a dinner party, held in my honor with my mother-in-law's colleagues to celebrate my recent wedding.

She told me she had worked with these women for 30 years, and they were more than just co-workers, they were family.  It amazed me that anyone was able to work at the same company for 30 years, but even more amazing that they were all friends for that long as well.  I only worked for the government for three years, and I wasn't very close with anyone.  But this group was different, they had shared every important and significant moment in each others lives, and now they were sharing their children's significant life events.  And while all these women chatted and laughed, shared stories about their children, I did what I do best, and observed.

Macedonian Icons for Sale at ROMStore11

Jesus-Christ-Christian-Icon-from-Ohrid-Macedonia-Wood-Wall-Plaque

Item has sold!!!

Items has sold!!!

My first knit sweater

After a over week of hard work, and new challenges with knitting, I finally finished my first sweater.  I made it for my dog, Max, and it turned out amazing.  I was so excited to put it on him, I didn't even get a chance to take a picture of it, but this is what it looked like.  It ended up being a little big on him, so me and my mother-in-law sewed on some elastic so it would fit him better.  Max loved it!! He was so excited, that I decided I let him out so that he could show it off.  Then 15 minutes later little Max came back, but the sweater didn't.  I looked everywhere for that sweater, walked down every street in the neighborhood, for an hour with no luck.  It's gone forever.  All that work for only 15 minutes of wear.
I hate to say it, but I just have this feeling that someone took it off of him.  It couldn't have been that easy for him to wiggle out of it, could it? So sad.  :(