My Lucky Birthday

Before I launch into my rant, I want to let all of you know that the two weeks leading up to my birthday have been great. I look forward to coming home to a card or fat envelope (most of which are from Rachel), and almost every day there is something waiting for me. Yesterday it was my electric bill, but usually it's something more exciting. So oodles of appreciation from me on that front!

However, for the second year in a row, I am going to have a less-than-stellar birthday. Last year, my birthday fell on the last day of an in-service training (IST), which was a designated "travel day" to get from the training venue back to our sites, so I spent the whole day on a bus.

This year, my birthday is also the day of local elections. In Struga, particularly, these are very controversial since the municipality borders have been recently redrawn, and now there is an ethnic Albanian majority. Political parties here are ethnically segregated, with a couple of ethnic Macedonian parties and a couple of ethnic Albanian parties. This means that the current Macedonian administration will likely be replaced by an Albanian administration, and everything related to the government is fair game for an employment overhaul. Tensions here are high, and political activities have been plentiful. (I must avoid political activities like the plague, and twice in one day I was almost tricked into "meeting a nice guy...who wants to make Struga a nice place." Interestingly, the meetings were for the political parties that are on completely opposite ends of the Macedionian nationalist-Albanian nationalist spectrum. If I went to BOTH meetings, maybe they would cancel each other out... Just kidding.)

As a result of the potential for conflict, we have been told that we must stay at our sites this weekend, so no fun birthday travel or birthday visitors for me. Also, after witnessing a handful of fights between rival political factions break out, I am going to be spending the entire weekend in my apartment. Good thing that I have some new DVDs to watch! Birthday phone calls are encouraged, for those of you who want to help me pass the time. FYI: we're six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.