70 days out | an idea

Hey everyone! I know it's been a little quiet, but some of that is due to little to report at this point in time.

Updates:

• As posted previously, I've received medical clearance, so now it's all systems go!
• I did receive a few additional tasks that I've already done - tweaked my resume, wrote an aspiration statement about my expectations for my time of service, and a headshot for helping facilitate my in-country ID card.
• Pre-training orientation (or staging) is going to be on 9/21; location TBD - likely east coast. That's 70 days from today!

Since then, I've been enjoying a beautiful Seattle summer! I've been perusing new (to me) Macedonian musicians on Youtube (I'll share a new one at the bottom of this post if you're interested) and also been working on studying some Macedonian!

I have a copy of one of the only English language textbooks for Macedonian, and I have to admit, it is super comprehensive and really useful for self-instruction. It has 16 chapters and I'm currently on chapter 6 - I hope to finish it before staging. As mentioned briefly in a previous post, Macedonian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Thanks to my studies of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) in undergrad, I already learned Cyrillic as it is also used in Serbian. In the same post I also shared a little Slavic language family tree -- as you can see, BCS is closely related to Macedonian, so there's a lot of my studying of Macedonian that is really similar to what I've already learned! However, Macedonian has a number of unique qualities in both grammar and vocabulary, so I've definitely been taking notes as I go along.

I've printed off a PDF of the textbook, and have notebooks for both notes as well as the book exercises. It's fun to see what's different about Macedonian! 

What's Next? 

Since I know it might be a little sparse on content going forward until more things happen, I came up with an idea for a fun way to help count down (and keep my impatience at bay, haha!) Every 10 days, I'll make a post with 10 things - either things I've learned about Macedonia, random fun facts, or things I'm excited to do in Macedonia or during my time of service. I hope you enjoy hearing about them!

And to close, as mentioned, here's a new bit of Macedonian music for y'all. I randomly came across Vlatko Lozanoski - Lozano while I was perusing Youtube for Macedonian stuff, and really like his voice. I've since added a fair few of his songs to my playlist, but this is one of my favorites! "Oči što tajni krijat" or "Очи што тајни кријат" means "eyes that hide secrets." I think it's catchy, so take a listen if you'd like!

Until the next post, have a great one!