Galichnik Wedding

On Sunday, July 13, many of us from Prilep rented a kombi in order to enjoy the Galichnik Wedding festival in Mavrovo National Park.  Many of us had heard that this festival is a must-see in Macedonia, and I was excited that I would be able to knock another to-do off my summer list (though I technically did not camp in Mavrovo, I was happy to visit Macedonia’s largest national park).

This festival preserves the traditional ways of Macedonian weddings.  Macedonian couples from all over Macedonia apply to have their wedding in this traditional way, even though it is publicly displayed to tourists and national media.  This year, two couples were awarded the honor of being wed thus, and so their families and friends joined them at this festival, dressed in traditional clothing, to experience this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We left Prilep at 5AM on Sunday morning to take the long cruise to Western Macedonia.  Once we started to travel through the park, we ascended past the tree line, and it felt like I was in Montana on my way to Yellowstone National Park.  As soon as we arrived in the small village near Lake Mavrovo, we walked about a mile before we descended into the center of the village.  I had read online that Galichnik is a village with only one resident, which is an elderly woman.  However, as we walked through the village, it was evident that that rumor was not true, since many of the houses seemed recently renovated.  The town was filled with tourists from within and from outside Macedonia.  We all explored the church, and then found a seat in the adjacent amphitheater to watch the ceremony. 

It all began at 10AM when the two grooms were joined by their families in the center.  Returning from the cemetery to commemorate their dead relatives, they shave the groom publicly in front of the amphitheater, and then the families go to the “brides’ houses” to ultimately ask for the bride’s hand in marriage.  After permissions are given, presents are exchanged, rugs are spread out, and the couples and their friends are splattered with leaves of basil soaked in water, they make their way to the church to finally tie the knot.  Like all great things in Macedonia, the ceremony ended with a traditional dance.

I felt happy to witness such an important part of Macedonian history through this ceremony.  Honestly, before I arrived, I thought that the festival would be more “inclusive,” with a wedding buffet available for purchase by tourists, and with dancing all over the village.  Instead, this ceremony really focused on and preserved the traditional way these couples were married, and thus the ceremony kept changing locations all over the town.  Eventually, I got tired of following the wedding party and decided to just enjoy a beer and salad with a few others from our group in the center.  However, after the ceremony ended, we enjoyed a great meal in Kicevo.

Dolls dressed in the wedding costumes

Mavrovo National Park

Crowds waiting for the festival to begin

Grooms about to be shaved

A lot of back-and-forth proceeding

Meal at a restaurant in Kicevo

Трескавец

On Saturday, all of us PCVs in Prilep decided to make the long hike to Treskavec, a monastery located near Prilep.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had always wanted to hike to this monstery, so this was a great opportunity to knock another to-do off of my list.

The hike is about 7 km one-way (about 9 miles round-trip), and most of the trail runs high up in the mountains.  The hike itself was gorgeous, yet not too taxing.  But as we arrived to the monastery, I was a bit disappointed.  The monastery had mostly burned down about a year and a half ago, so its remnant was just an charred shell of what it used to be.  I had seen the monastery in a movie (Before the Rain) before coming to Macedonia, so of course my expectations of it did not match what I saw this weekend.  If you are interested in seeing what the monastery looked like before it burned, feel free to watch the following Youtube clip from 6:49 on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f9asp7IBqE

I never looked into the history of the monastery, so I cannot share any fun facts about the site.  However, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Starting from the cross in Varosh

Looking back on Prilep

Finishing our day with a Krali Marko pizza at Leone

PlanCo 2014

From July 5 to July 9, all of the AIESEC committees in the Republic of Macedonia were summoned to meet to discuss the strategic plans and budget of the organization for the next year and a half.  Thus, we all met in Velestovo, a small village in the mountains near Ohrid, and held out meetings at the mountain cabin of Red Cross.

Almost all of the committees were in attendance (the Specialized Unit President of AIESEC Tetovo was unable to make it since the conference was being held during Ramadan).  We arrived to the lodge ready to plan all of the major activities for AIESEC Macedonia for the next year.  The lodge itself was much more modern than I thought, and we had a beautiful view of Ohrid Lake to serve as our backdrop.  Macedonia’s Galichika National Park was also in our backyard, so we sort of felt like we were on a natural retreat.  However, these days were hampered by a few rules that prevented us from relaxing too much so that we could concentrate on the meetings and the strategic planning of the conference.  For example, even though Lake Ohrid was within sight’s distance, we were forbidden from descending to the lake to enjoy a swim.  Also, alcohol was prohibited during the duration of the conference.  Finally, meetings were held continuously from 9AM to at least 9PM each day.

The beginning of the conference was theoretical in nature.  We discussed again the “Clarity of Why” of our organization, and we painstakingly designed mission statements for our exchange and team member programs.  All of the delegates were also bifurcated into smaller groups to create business canvas models and SWOT analyses of AIESEC’s major programs.  Even though the first days were inspirational in context, it was also frustrating that we were unable to devise concrete plans for our committees.

By Tuesday, the second-to-last day of the conference, we were ready to put our theory into practice.  Much of our planning was centered around a new system that is being developed for AIESEC called the Global Information System.  Thus many of our procedures from the past years required remodeling so that we could adapt our business model to the new system.  While we started our planning for the Outgoing Exchange teams at 5PM on Tuesday, we did not finish discussing the activities, budget, and process for this part of AIESEC until 3:30AM that night.  Not only were we going crazy from the lack of sleep, but the room in which we were working was filled with flies, so it was its own version of hell.  However, we knew that we could not look back and steadfastly pushed through the planning.

Overall, PlanCo was a great opportunity to bond with all of the other AIESEC committees within Macedonia while coordinating our planning for the next year.  Even though we painstakingly planned our activities and processes to the most minute of details, now we are all aware and prepared for our responsibilities for this next year.  PlanCo has really set all of AIESEC Macedonia on the right foot for the next year, and now I feel more confident for these next few months ahead.

Haiku

In the latest Pauza magazine, (the PC Macedonia magazine put together by and for the volunteers here), there was a neat article on the YMLP camp.  One of the classes during the camp required each team of campers to write haikus.  They did not share the haikus with us during the camp, so I saw my team's haikus for the first time in the Pauza article.

Unbeknownst to us, each team wrote a haiku about their counselor.  This is what the White Team had to say about me:

Short and slim, he is
Leadership he does show us
Good at it he is

It was very heart-warming, and I take this haiku as one of the greatest compliments that I had received during the my time here in the Peace Corps.  Peace Corps work can be frustrating at times because some of the most impactful work we do here cannot be measured, so we are seldom aware of how we are making a difference.  I do also like how they devised their haiku in a Yoda-like narration.  And I am amused that the first descriptor they could think of for me was "short" (three or four of the other counselors are shorter than I am, but oh well).

Each team also wrote a haiku on Justin Bieber, and here was my team's poem:

Justin has nice voice
He is the best in pop songs
but he still sucks ass

I also liked Blue team's haiku:

Oh my baby, yeah
My hair is so awesome, bro
I got arrested

The World Cup

So I am not going to lie- I really looked forward to being in Europe during the World Cup, and so far my experience with watching this amazing competition has not disappointed.  Four years ago, it was somewhat tough for me to watch the games, since many of them would air around 5AM, especially during the group stages.  Also, the games would be played on some random channels like ESPN46 or Comcast Sports Network Alternative, or something crazy like that.  Luckily, Macedonia has its priorities right and airs the games on their national networks, so it is very difficult to miss a game here.

At first I thought that we would have a big fan base for the World Cup among the PCVs, but so far the level of excitement experienced during the Super Bowl has not been reached for a World Cup match.  But each match is aired throughout Prilep, and it is comforting to hear the commentary from the matches bellowing from each bar from within the center.

The World Cup also helps to accentuate how international Prilep becomes during the summer time.  As I mentioned in earlier posts, there is a group of five EVS (European Volunteer Service) volunteers in Prilep.  Three are from France, one is from Italy, and another is from Romania, so each became die-hard fans when their respective nations played in the World Cup (as for the Romanian, she studied in Portugal at one point, so she put her weight behind that team).  My host brother also recently returned from Poland for the summer, and he brought with him his friends who herald from different countries (one is Polish, the other two are South African, and today another woman from the Netherlands will come to Prilep).  Thus, not only is the World Cup building on the international aura of serving in Peace Corps, but over the past three days I have sat in rooms while people had conversations in English, Macedonian, French, Polish, and Afrikaans. 

Just before the World Cup began, I was curious to see whom most Macedonians would support for the competition.  Unfortunately, Macedonia did not make it out of the qualifying rounds for the World Cup, but I thought that maybe the HCNs here would be supportive of one or two teams for some arbitrary reason (ie. just as I support the Germans, due to my German ancestry, when/ if the Americans are knocked out).  However, Macedonians have no clear choice when supporting a national team.  Two former Yugoslav states were playing in the World Cup (Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), but despite their former ties, I have heard little support among the Macedonians for their Southern Slavic neighbors.  Two of the main scorers in the Swiss team are ethnically Albanian, so it is possible that the ethnic-Albanians are supporting the Swiss national team in their feat.  And while I am somewhat surprised that there is not a national “choice” for a World Cup team here within Macedonian, I am not very surprised that hardly anybody here supported the Greeks (given the political strife between Macedonia and Greece).

Today, at 10PM local time, the US national team will play, and I really hope that I will be able to witness a win from our boys at least once during this World Cup.  But either way, it has been a privilege to experience the most exciting sports competition on a continent where soccer (here, football) reigns supreme.