Winter has arrived in N Macedonia. There is slushy rain. Soon, I’m sure the snow will stick. Also, I have been re-diagnosed with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, which means I have had to have multiple tests run to rule out other things. This is sort of a scary situation, as it doesn’t really have a cure. However, it tends to fade away after a while, so perhaps there’s nothing really to do but wait and see how it settles. (Also, having an MRI and EKG, along with other medical procedures done in a foreign country is always a little nerve-wracking. But every professional I came into contact with was amazing.)

This Friday is our swearing-in ceremony and Saturday we all move to our sites. Since I’m staying in my training site, I feel like I will be losing friends that I have made over these three months. I’m sure there will be a period of adjustment for all of us as we meet new families, learn new routines, and basically settle into our two years here in N Macedonia.

One of the things that I’m learning here is that ethnicity and national pride are sometimes very separate things. My training site, the dual language community, is stable and the friction amongst ethnicities is fairly low. This has not always been the case, but there have been moves in government as well as in other places to bring these ethnicities together. My school is Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish. I don’t know how well the population of students mix. I’m excited to learn.