Sweet Sawyer

Yummy Burek

We are so grateful for all of your encouraging emails! They help us know we have not been forgotten:)

Our stomachs are still adjusting to our new foods but other than that we have been doing really well! Pepi watches Sawyer three days a week for us. She is wonderful with Sawyer.

I am very blessed to have a great neighbor Ellie. She and I went for a walk tonight with our boys in the strollers. I'm so thankful to have found someone that wants to walk. Ellie showed me an alternate way to get to the river and she showed me another playground for Sawyer that I had no idea about! Sawyer was very happy there playing with the children. He is SO incredibly social! That is the main reason that I am planning to put him into "kindergarten" in September. We have visited the school and I am pleased so far with what I see. I asked the teacher what he will need to bring with him. She said "only pajamas". I learned that they actually change the children into their pajamas for naptime. :) So cute:)

I have to mention a food here that Eric and I love. It's burek. It's a flakey type of pastry. There are different types of burek, like pizza burek and burek with meat, spinach, or cheese. It's hard for me to get through my thick head that burek is a breakfast food! Every day when I want burek I eat it for lunch or dinner. Until this week I did not understand why every time we go to the bakery they are almost sold out of burek. Then I learned that it's a breakfast food so we've gotta go early! Other popular breakfast foods here are boiled eggs, cheese, yogurt, and bread with spreads.

#22

Have I mentioned yet that I have a great language teacher? Well, today Maya really came to my rescue...Let me start from when I left my house this morning. I know every morning that I need to catch the number 22 bus so I walked to the bus stop and started looking for my #22. So along came a #22 or what I thought was a #22. Actually it was a #2 not #22. There were two #2 signs beside one another on the front of this bus so it really looked like #22 to me. I hopped on in and found a seat. Very soon I noticed that this bus was going in a very different direction than the school. I thought "hmm...maybe I am just mistaken and I don't remember these landmarks, but I'm sure this is going the right way since it's #22." So I kept sitting on the bus and after several stops I KNEW I had made a mistake. I went forward to speak with the bus driver to see if he spoke any English. He did not so I didn't know what to do. I rode the bus line to the end (which was about 8 stops) and then I got off. I did not recognize anything around me and I honestly didn't know where I was. I called Maya and explained that I was lost. I told her I had accidently taken #2 instead of #22. She got off her bus and took a #2 to find me! She is SO sweet! She came and helped me find my way! The bus driver said that he would not charge me again because I had had a bad enough day:) So, the lesson I learned....to look at the number on the side of the bus and not just the front of the bus. It seems like I'm learning a lot of these lessons:)

Beautiful Mountains of Macedonia

Sawyer in our living room

We're enjoying our new home. We found great furnished flat in Skopje. If you need our address feel free to email us and we'll send it to you.

Language

I, Jill, have now started language study. I ended up getting a great private tutor. She is wonderful! We are close in age so it is really fun! I've been studying the alphabet and a few beginner phrases. The language is very complicated to me but I hear that many other languages are harder than Macedonian. It is close to Russian or Serbian from what I read. When I've been practing phrases sometimes my teacher will suddenly start laughing at me! I immediately know I must have made an "opa". Some funny phrases I've said without meaning to are "I get burned" and "He's peeing". Of course I was trying to say other things but that is what came out in Macedonian! Yikes...this is going to be an interesting journey! Eric has not started his Macedonian studies yet. The school he is wanting to attend has not started classes yet (still summer break). Meanwhile he is looking for a male conversation partner.
Tonight we went to eat at a local grille. It is only a 2 min. walk from our home, which is great! It's very delicious and the prices are very reasonable. After we ate we went by the bakery to buy bread to have for breakfast. Sawyer and I just returned from a walk by the river. We love and miss you all. We are still without long distance calling capabilities at the present time. We do have a webcam and skype though so please let us know if any of you want to talk on skype!

our front stoop

Here we are standing outside our front door. We live on the second floor flat. Tomorrow I will be meeting with Pepe, the potential babysitter, and Maya, the potential language teacher.

To all of you at Mill Shoal- have a great VBS this week! I'll miss being there.

our yard

We are very blessed to have our own little yard. Since we are living in a large city it was a nice surprise to actually find a flat to rent where we have our own private yard. This is such a treat for Sawyer!:)

found a home!

We have successfully moved into our new home! It is a very cute flat that we are happy about. The washing machine and air conditioner have been delivered and installed! We are waiting still to get internet and phone at home. Hopefully that will come this week.
I have started back cooking after taking a couple of months off during training. I have cooked hamburgers and fajitas so far. :)
I love and miss you all!

We are here!

We're excited to be here in Skopje, Macedonia! Things are going well for us. We had a great sleep last night after an exhausting trip. Today we started looking for an apartment. We have found two great options so far that will be very comfortable for our family. I think we will make our decision tomorrow. Betty says these are our priorities in this order:
1. find a home
2. find a babysitter (there has been a recommendation of a lady that has kept other American children. We will meet her soon. She speaks English so we will be able to communicate well with her.)
3. learn how to best travel the city
4. start language school
Yes, we are actually going to attend a language school now. Before we were just considering getting a tutor but it has worked out best for Eric and I to attend a school for three months of study. Afterwards we will get a tutor to help us as we continue studying the language on our own.
The weather here is very hot but we have a.c. in our hotel room. :) That is a big blessing. Oh and both apartments we have looked at have a.c.
Once we get settled into our new home we will try to get internet. I'm in an internet cafe right now.