When you play a game of thrones…

This weekend was spent in constant motion. It was a lot of fun, but I feel like I need another weekend to recover from it.

Friday I spent the day with Kyle to document the first event of the environmental clean up project he’s been working on. He worked with two village schools to organize a day for the kids to clean up the community, and he’s been working hard on a grant to get trash bins for every house in the community so they have an alternative to burning their garbage. I’m really proud of all of the work he’s done and how committed he is to making the villages cleaner and healthier. The students were really into it, and the elementary schoolers played a quiz game before their trash pick up that was a lot of fun to watch. Some of the kids are really competitive! It made me remember how much I like being in the classroom.

Stork nests are basically like apartment buildings where they live in the penthouse, and all of the other birds live down below

Seesaw!

Giant Kyle attacks toy train!

This is really how bees collect pollen. With baskets.

Church in Erhdzelija

More goat portraits!

Alfalfa season

Quiz time!

Kyle with the school director, Maja

Teamwork!

More teamwork!

Cleaning up Mustafino

Total beverages: 4

Saturday we went to Kumanovo to help with the regional spelling bee! Students from all over the region who had passed their local spelling bee competed by grade level to spell words in English, and the top five from each grade will move on to the national spelling bee in May. I worked with the sixth graders, some of these kids were SO SMART and I was really impressed with all of them. It killed me to see how disappointed they were when they got something wrong (they came up to the chalkboard one by one to spell a random word I gave them off of a list), but some of them had funny little victory dances they did when they nailed it. Afterwards, we went out with other volunteers who were in Kumanovo to help with the bee and I ate way too many kebapi, which I then followed up with ice cream and beer. We ended up having to sit on the floor of the bus on the way back because it was so full, and I haven’t felt so carsick in a long time.

Sunday we got up super early to go with my organization on their semi-annual excursion! We visited two monasteries outside of Prilep, stopped by Tikvesh Lake, and had dinner in Kavadarci (where we ran into some of our host family from Vatasha!) It was a really busy day with lots of driving, but we got to visit some sights I don’t think we ever would have seen otherwise and the rain held off, so we had a great time. It was also a really appropriate day to visit because Game of Thrones was filmed there, and the first episode of season 6 aired yesterday! The best gift from my counterpart this morning was a text that I should come in an hour late, so we had time to watch it before work instead of having to wait in suspense all day.

Amazing view from the monastery

Most of the monastery was destroyed in a fire two years ago, but the church was saved

Look for these rocky hillsides in Game of Thrones!

The caves under this monastery date back to the 4th century

I snuck a picture of the painted church since it wasn’t technically allowed, but the paintings were so beautiful!

New monastery built on an ancient site

Tikvesh lake has so much more water in it now than in November!

Cool clouds

Stork!

Finally, the kittens have come out of hiding! They’re starting to walk all over the place and are adorable little love bugs. Gina should be having her puppies soon too, but in the meantime she loves watching the kittens play.

Staying close to mama

Captivated by kittens