Last Friday marked the end of week 26 of my Burmese program. Now 59% complete, we’ve shifted from everyday topics like our biographies, weather, and travel to work-related themes such as peace and security, bilateral relations, human rights, natural disasters, and the global economy.
Just weeks ago, my biggest challenges—less individual instruction time after our class merger last November and preparation for our upcoming PCS move to Burma this summer—felt significant.
After returning from our 10-day, whirlwind 2,000 kilometer road trip around the former Yugoslavia last summer, we only had one full day remaining in Macedonia before our flight home to Virginia. My husband V and I decided it made no sense to return the rental car to the airport, only to turn around and take a taxi back to the airport for our early morning flight less than 36 hours later. Instead we skipped going to the airport twice and paying for taxis in favor of just keeping the car and leveraging it for a short visit to my former Peace Corps homestay family.
They lived a couple of hours south of the capital city, Skopje, in the town of Demir Kapija. We knew paying them a weekday morning visit was probably not ideal; we were on vacation but that didn’t mean anyone else was. Fortunately, (a) it’s Macedonia and (b) we had already been in touch with them to align schedules. We certainly couldn’t visit everyone we wanted on this trip because of time constraints; for the first time, I never made it to the far east, back to the site where I had served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. But as they had once opened their home to me, I did not want to leave without seeing them. It seemed apropos that 20 years after first coming to Macedonia I was returning to where it all began.
On our second full day at the beach house, we woke up early, took a quick swim, and ate breakfast on the patio in preparation to go to old town. Initially the plan was for me to drive us the 12 minutes to the old quarter and find a place to park, but as I was dealing with some extreme vertigo out of the blue while getting ready, V and A – after lingering a while in the hopes I wouldn’t be delayed – were eventually convinced to take an Uber there without me. I had been unsuccessful in averting my head-spinning situation, and ended up vomiting several times, taking a Dramamine, and lying down. My head felt like a yo-yo on the end of a string, and as I lay still and miserable I had to keep one foot on the floor and a hand on the wall to avoid zero gravity sensations. But as is typical and hard to explain, my stomach did not hurt at all. After about a 90-minute nap, I reawoke in the silence of the empty house to the waves crashing outside. I sat up cautiously and ate some fake Pringles. The dizziness had subsided and it was as if it had never happened. I was going to old town.
For the first five days of my trip to the Balkans, my husband V, my stepdaughter A, and I stayed in Macedonia’s capital city, Skopje, at his childhood home. We enjoyed quality time with his mom, and took over the upstairs portion of her home. V’s niece, the eldest of his brother’s six children, usually lived upstairs alone, but was away on extended holiday in Greece with a boyfriend.
We went shopping, hung out in cafes, visited with old friends, and spent time in the city center and the Turkish part of town known as Stara Čaršija, or the Old Bazaar. Sometimes A hung out with us, and sometimes she hung out with friends she’d made on her many prior family visits, including five years before while doing a summer internship at the Peace Corps Skopje office. During those days we also finalized the tentative plans we’d been discussing to rent a car for a 10-day road trip around Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Croatia. Our itinerary was still a little flexible, but the purpose of the trip was twofold: to visit V’s brother who had settled in Kragujevac, Serbia with his wife and younger children, and to treat A to a couple of countries she hadn’t yet seen, albeit not for as long a duration as we would have liked.
I have written about my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Republic of Macedonia (2002-2004) on this blog on quite a few occasions. In particular, I’ve written about departing for service, my own challenges with resiliency, how I initially struggled to learn the Macedonian language, excerpts from letters I sent home, the intense joys of getting a washing machine in my village, and even some things I was later grateful for about working at Peace Corps Headquarters (2010-2014). And of course, Peace Corps’ difficult and historic decision to evacuate all PCVs worldwide and suspend its operations earlier this month.
However, this post isn’t about any of those things. It’s about the heartbreak of losing your home when you finish your service unexpectedly, and the joy of one day getting it back. When a PCV says goodbye to their service, no matter the circumstances, it is a loss. But later you come to realize that the home you created during Peace Corps is never truly gone. It will welcome you with open arms for the rest of your life. So this post is in honor of the 7K+ evacuees tonight.
I was heartbroken to wake up yesterday morning and learn that for the first time in its 59-year history, Peace Corps would totally suspend its operations and evacuate thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) worldwide due to the coronavirus outbreak.
As the end of the Foreign Service bidding cycle came to a close, all of the waiting and ambiguity I thought would end upon that long hoped-for handshake instead deepened into more waiting, frustration, bureaucratic entanglements, and medical clearance issues. I am working on it and hopefully will be able to announce our onward assignment in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the feeling of getting very close to a good outcome, only to keep getting further away while jumping over unexpected obstacles in my path has been dogging me. Someday I will tell that story.
Today, I’ll tell a different story in the same vein, about a day in March 2003 during my first couple of months as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Macedonia. Originally entitled, “All For a List,” I wrote this piece about trying so hard to do something simple and being foiled, and foiled, and foiled some more. I silently raged against the machine, I almost lost patience, I almost let it get my goat. When the most straightforward situations devolve into total clown shows, it is the ability to laugh when you want to cry that keeps you resilient. I meet much bigger challenges more easily now, but for me that day in 2003 still marks how far I’ve since come in learning patience, thinking on my feet, and innovating on the fly. It is a snapshot in time of learning to build resiliency, and finding the calmest path to the destination you want. Don’t miss the scenery along the way!
This month I am marking 13 years of federal service, and reflecting on some of the professional and personal lessons I’ve learned since coming into the federal workforce.
Between November 2002 and August 2004, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Macedonia doing environmental education and management. At that stage of my life, I was in my mid-20s, single, and a recent San Diego State University graduate who hadn’t seen much of the world outside of California, Nevada, and northern Mexico. Every few years, I take a look back at some of the emails and letters I sent to friends and family during that time. Even though some of the writing is spectacularly convoluted and would have benefited from thorough editing, I do see glimpses within of the person I would become. Some of the letters, while not a complete perspective on my service, are also a heartwarming reminder for me of my young resiliency, hope, and the struggles I had in adapting to my new home. Although some days I succeeded better than others, the prevailing legacy of that time was an openness to seeing life through others’ eyes. I’m sharing a few excerpts of those letters home here.
It’s a little hard for me to believe, but November 11 marked fifteen years since I left my home in California to become a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Republic of Macedonia. Me and 19 other trainees attended a two day Staging workshop in Washington, DC before heading overseas, arriving in Macedonia’s capital, Skopje on November 15, 2002. I had pursued my PCV candidacy at that point for about fourteen months: during my senior year in college, beyond the September 11 attacks, and through a bewilderingly bureaucratic set of recruitment hurdles. Being brave enough to get on the plane and leave for the Peace Corps started a process that forever altered the trajectory of my life.
This evening when I came home from the embassy, I directly attacked a pile of laundry that seems to multiply like mushrooms in the dark. Why can’t I be arsed to keep on top of this? I asked myself with annoyance. All I have to do is let the machine do the work. And yet the wash cycle is 90 minutes. And my closet is on the third floor while the laundry room is in the basement. And I hate folding. And I am not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds. And my foot and leg are numb and I have a recent history of falling down the stairs. And, and, and. But then I inadvertently took a trip down memory lane: I looked back at a journal entry from March 2003 when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Macedonia. After I read it, I smiled ruefully and felt a little ashamed.
The day before yesterday marked eight months since I arrived in Tashkent, which technically means that my tour here is one-third complete. (The obvious question that comes to mind is When are you leaving and where do you go next? I am slated to be in Tashkent until May 2017, and should find out my next posting in a few months.)
One year ago today, I wrote my first post on this blog, called Something Blog-Worthy…Maybe. Now, 52 weeks and 40 blog posts later, I am amazed to report that Collecting Postcards has received a staggering 10,957 page visits from readers in 97 different countries! I counted the list of countries twice, just because I could hardly believe…
Last weekend I came down with a cold. My husband was out of town and it was snowing outside, so I got busy with one of my most popular tasks since last fall: sorting items in preparation for my upcoming move to Uzbekistan. While conducting another epic scan-and-shred fest, I came across the journal that I wrote during the Pre-Service…
In the last four weeks since my most recent post, it seems that a lot has happened, so this entry will probably be less thematic and more of a mixed bag.
foreign in my own country
World Traveler and Consular Officer
A record of worldwide travel
My personal blog
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!
A Millennial's Musings of the World.
A senior project travel blog
Stories from a mid-west girl in Macedonia
This blog does not represent the US government, Peace Corps, or people of North Macedonia.
Live well & Enjoy.
Exploring the World Diplomatically
some stories from a life in the foreign service
My rocks are the memories from different adventures. I thought I would just leave this bag here.
A soulful explorer living an inspired life
Time for adventure
My Life As An Expat Abroad
My thoughts.
Tales from a Serial Expat
Detroit --> Angola --> Chile --> Cambodia--> India
the doings of the familia Calderón
my travels, my way. currently exploring eswatini and the rest of southern africa as a peace corps volunteer
Foreign Service Officer and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
Short Fiction by Nicola Humphreys
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls. – Anais Nin
Foreign Service Blog
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." - Helen Keller
just another story
Experiences of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Macedonia
My Journey to the Foreign Service
A Diplomat's Life Abroad
A little ditty about our adventures in the Foreign Service
a peace corps memoir
Our Expat Adventures
We are a foreign service family currently posted in Windhoek, Namibia!!
Perspectives of a Trailing Spouse, etc.
Staying in the Honeymoon Phase
A trailing husband's vain search for cookies in an unjust world
CLS Korea, Fulbright Uzbekistan, TAPIF in Ceret, and everywhere in between
My life as a trailing husband of a Foreign Service Officer
Our Adventures in the Foreign Service
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” -Cloud Atlas
Defining Global Citizenship
Our family's adventures in the Foreign Service, currently the USA
Tales from My Foreign Service Life
Chasing two kids around the globe
Collecting Postcards 