Macedonian days...

OK, a few have asked what a typical day is like here.  Unfortunately I spend the majority of M-F in language and culture class (for the first ~3 months) - so, not too riveting.  But here's a photo recap of (most) of what I did this past weekend.

Friday, after hiking with my 3 PC classmates in the afternoon, my host family kicked off Ajvar weekend. Ajvar is a traditional Balkan pepper sauce that every family makes together.  It begins with roasting a *!&^-load of red bell peppers, then manually peeling, de-stemming and de-seeding them.
Friday night ~11:30...

Saturday morning I woke up still smelling of peppers so I decided to go for a run, otherwise known as my time to speak English with myself.  Unfortunately Kratovo is situated in a mountain valley, thus the only way outta town is UP:

After that beat down, it was back to Ajvar-mania.  The next step was to grind the peppers and soak them in sunflower oil:

Then it was stew time... (check the bad-axe)...

That's my host dad sweating over the HOT stove, this went on for nearly 6 hours.
So while this was going on I moseyed on over to the bazaar...

*just a sweet pic I took of my village on the way to the bazaar.
At the bazaar I scored some sweet Turkish house slippers.

After only a couple more hours of roasting, it was time to jar the Ajvar...(note the sweet slippers)

Saturday night it was time to experience one of the Macedonian passions - Handball.  So, at the local gymnasium:

(we lost)
...Then I went out to the disco with my host sister and friends (sorry, no photos).

Sunday was more hiking - it's the thing to do in Kratovo, Macedonia!

Here's to a more exciting next post.