So, I’ve closed out the only full calendar year I’m going to see in Macedonia. New Year’s and the attendant powerful firecrackers/my fear that one of my siblings would lose an eye, or worse, are gone. This has been a weird past month to close out the year, and the not the best; I keep getting sick (three times. Three times.), and last night just couldn’t do it, so came back to my house to fall asleep after a couple hours with my family.
Still, I guess I got some stuff done this past year.
Work:
* Made alphabet books with 37 of the third-graders (spring 2010)
* Ran a school spelling bee (June 2010)
* Worked as an instructor at Camp GLOW (July 2010)
* Started the “English Stars” program for the fourth- and fifth-graders at my school; it’s mostly now done by my co-workers since I’ve hardly been in school for months (September 2010)
* Began working on building a school library of English books (fall 2010 – present)
* Ran regional spelling bees in nine schools, and a final spelling bee with the winning students from the regionals (November – December 2010)
* Applied for a grant for my school’s library (December 2010)
Personal:
* Visited Albania & Greece
* Parents visited
* My host sister J’s wedding
* Taught my sister Z. how to make an American “cake” (a giant chocolate chip cookie)
* Made baklava
* Made yufki
* Took the GRE subject test
* Made Christmas cookies with A.
* Got sick a lot
I guess this stuff is okay. I’m leaving on vacation in a couple days, so I’m trying to pack and get things ready for that, and I also promised A. we would make more cookies today. (Trying to use up all the butter I bought for the Christmas cookies.) Sitting here breathing through my mouth, I am really, really relieved that this year is over. Something about the spelling bees took it out of me; I got sick during the semi-finals and haven’t really felt normal since then, heading from a major cold straight into a bizarre bleeding lesion in my insides (which I chose to ignore because we were dealing with the final spelling bee and I was trying to finish the grant; good choice), straight into the flu.
It’s the illness and tiredness talking, but right now I’m exhausted of Macedonia and my work here. I should come back from vacation recharged, because I have a lot going on in the spring. There’s this Model UN thing I was tricked into doing, a Flat Stanley project, doing the alphabet books with this year’s third graders, starting English Clubs back up, deciding whether I want to do my adult ESL class again, a schoolwide reading program… but right now, I’m tired and pretty happy/hopeful that this time next year I should be celebrating New Year’s in the states.
Ellen in Macedonia 
What’s yufki? A Google search turned up a bunch of non-English gibberish. In case you are wondering, I realized that I never added your NEW blog address to my Google Reader and am catching up now.
Yufki is kind of like pasta. Doesn’t taste the same, so if I’m here when they make it this year I need to see what they put in the dough (which they made a day before we rolled the dough out – I was too lazy to help on that day last year). Here’s a photo of Macedonian yufki, looks like it’s got cheese on it which is a normal way of eating it. My family also sometimes makes sweets with the yufki, I think by “baking” it (they’ll usually make yufki by putting it in a pan, with water, in the oven) with sugar water.