4:00 am: Woke up, packed a day-bag
4:15 am: Made a cup of tea and a bowl of oatmeal, showered
5:15 am: Went downstairs and caught a private van (�kombi�) to the capital, Skopje; had a moment listening to the birds chirp while standing outside waiting and thinking the sky over Pehcevo momentarily looks a lot like the sky in �Vanilla Sky�
8:40 am: Dropped off by van driver at the Peace Corps office
9 am: Ate a spinach pastry, checked e-mail, massaged my 4-day old headache, talked to Peace Corps staff
10-11 am: Wrapped up budget for our �Eco-Active Camp� (this summer in Stip) with PCV colleagues
11:45: Called a taxi to head over to Community Self-Help Initiative (CSHI) instead of asking Mila, who was sitting there, to do it for me
noon: Had a meeting with CSHI Regional Representative for Stip area to secure camp funding � Camp is approved for funding!
1 pm: Had confusing conversation with van driver about where to pick me up when the van is ready to return to Pehcevo
1:15 pm: Celebrated with PCV colleagues at our favorite Skopje sandwich shop, Amati
2 pm: Took a cab to the Holiday Inn, the only known location I could verbalize to the van driver over the phone (I don�t know Skopje landmarks that well and I suck with directions)
2:30 pm: Picked up less than ten seconds before a brief pouring rainstorm started and returned to Pehcevo with 21 people (at least) in a 20-person van
6 pm: Arrived in Pehcevo and made dinner, checked Peace Corps e-mail
7 pm: Called the boyfriend
8 pm: Watched Melrose Place
9 pm: More Peace Corps e-mail, yoga, maybe stay awake until 10 pm to see the last episode of �Sex & the City� � if I make it!!
Interesting things today:
As I was standing outside of the Peace Corps office, I looked over to the left and there is a large, rectangular, dirty-looking student dormitory. I saw a girl walk out onto a concrete balcony, throw a giant yellow bag of trash down to the dumpster about nine stories below. I couldn�t see if she made it or not, because some scraggly trees were in my way. She stood there for a minute watching it fall, looked in my direction, and then turned and walked back inside.
I tried three staplers in a row in the Peace Corps office; to my exasperation, none of them worked.
I saw several children eating pizza on wax paper at 8 am.
A cab driver in Skopje who was taking me to meet my van for Pehcevo said, �For you, American, I will drive you to Pehcevo for ONLY one hundred euros!� (This is about 400% more than the regular price.) I told him, in perfect Macedonian, I�m not stupid, and I�m not a rich American � I�m a Peace Corps Volunteer!
This morning on the way to Skopje as we passed one small village, a man was standing in the middle of a field with several items all around him in the grass � I can�t for the life of me now remember what they were. I couldn�t tell if they were for sale, or if he was waiting for someone � he stared hard at our van as we went by.
A tall, beautiful, heavily made-up, impossibly skinny, well-dressed lady with a good haircut finished a soda while standing nearby me, and then turned and threw the bottle into the grass and lit a cigarette.
I saw two girls walking arm-in-arm in the pouring rain with an umbrella, smiling, gesturing, and laughing exuberantly, and they were the two happiest, most carefree people I saw all day.
Driving through one village I saw a flock of sheep on a hillside so steep I had to squint to see if they were really sheep or if they were actually those bee boxes that beekeepers have posted on hills all over the place. (They really were sheep.) I also saw there a lot of little goats kicking up their hind legs and bouncing around on a dirt lane.
I went into a public bathroom that was reasonably clean, had a real toilet, toilet paper, and two different kinds of hand soap! Only the obscene naked girl calendar on the wall reminded me that I was in a Macedonian gas station.