Hello -- Finally!

So we arrived in Macedonia over a month ago! It has been a whirlwind and we have much to share. Our hope is to be able to post a series of shorter entries on more specific topics, rather than one extremely long and rambling post in order to bring everything up to date. Briefly however, we are two of 34 trainees in MAK 13 -- the 13th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to serve in Macedonia. We have an extremely diverse group in a number of regards, including age; our oldest volunteer is 78 and our youngest is 21. We spent the first five days together in a hotel in Kumanavo for orientation. At the end of that first week we were whisked away to homestay communities with our homestay family.

For these 10 weeks of training we are living with an Albanian family in an Albanian village, Cherkeze, outside of Kumanavo. They have two girls, 12 and 10, a boy 7, and many, many extended family members living close (some next door). There are two other volunteers in our village and we have four to four and half hours of language class together each day. Mondays and Tuesdays we learn Macedonian and Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays we learn Albanian. We'll post more on language shortly, but needless to say, its somewhat insane trying to learn two languages simultaneously!

We will swear in as actual PC Volunteers on 12 December at which time Kacey and I are off to Tetovo in the Northwest corner of Macedonia. Kacey will be working as an english teacher in a small village, Teartse, outside Tetovo and I will be working for and NGO stationed in Tetovo.

It's great to finally have the adventure underway and we have so much to share. Hopefully we'll get that info posted shortly, but please don't hesitate to email us!

Conor and Kacey