Nina Boe in the Balkans

Update T-minus  30 days!   I kind of had to move the posting schedule a smidge, becauuuuse.... I got information about staging! I will be in Washington, D.C. for staging on September 21st. Given that I'm on the west coast and can't fly in in time for stuff on the day of, I'll be arriving in DC on the 20th, leaving Seattle around 8am.  Staging activities will take place on the 21st, and then on the 22nd... we fly to Macedonia! - via Vienna, it looks like. I started drafting this portion of my blog last Monday when I got the information, and I honestly have not stopped grinning like an idiot since I got the email.  Countdown! More Miscellaneous Macedonia OK, I realized perhaps some categories are harder than others - I don't know much about nature and fauna of the Balkans in general, so I'll try to add things when I can, but I don't want the lack of those to hinder my posts from coming out when I intend them to. If I can't necessarily hit 10 facts ...

Update T-minus 40 days!  Soon I should be hearing about staging and related logistics. So far, I've done a few online courses via our virtual training space - some stuff around safety & security regulations, as well as some general ideals and expectations of the Peace Corps. Of course, me being super excited, it didn't take me long to get them done (okay....if I'm honest, same day!)  In the meantime, here are another 10 interesting things about Macedonia. Countdown! Today's Ten Macedonian Things Language : As mentioned in a previous  post ,  Macedonia has six minority languages. One of them is Turkish. As the name suggests, this is the national language of the Republic of Turkey, a matter of hours away from Macedonia. Overall, there are an estimated 71 million native Turkish speakers. It has official status in Turkey, as well as in multiple provinces in both Kosovo and Macedonia. According to Macedonia's 2002 census, Turkish is spoken by ar...

Update T-minus 50 days! Apparently 60 was the magical number. I had prepared my last post and shared it already, and lo and behold I received a couple of emails later that Monday and then the next day. The first one had a number of on-boarding tasks: life insurance, direct deposit, some permissions (media, etc), generating some forms I might need for finances and other things, amongst others.  Tuesday's email was from our training manager in Macedonia. It contained a link to a survey (to gauge our comfort with some of the skills that will be useful in our time of service), information about upcoming conference calls (to gain some more information and ask any questions, if so desired), as well as letting us know about upcoming emails that will advise us of our online training platform for pre-departure and pre-service training.  Countdown! Today's Ten Things Keeping with my idea, here are ten more things I've thought about. I realized last week it was a bit harder th...