Birthday Celebration- Macedonian Style!

One of the more challenging parts about being in the Peace Corps is being away from friends and families on holidays and important events, like birthdays. Lucky for us, we have such amazing friends here that my birthday was one I will differently remember fondly for years to come.

Macedonians traditionally invite people out for their birthdays and treat their guests to a lovely dinner. They are also typically responsible for bringing a cake to work to share with their co-workers. We took this as an opportunity to bake some yummy peanut butter Reese's cookies for my co-workers and go out to our favorite pizza restaurant. (For all you pizza lovers: this restaurant is the only one we have found so far in Struga, or Macedonia for that matter, that uses tomato sauce. Instead, ketchup is used; even as a lover of all things ketchup, I can't get used to it.)

The pictures below are from our celebration after-dinner when we treated some of our closest friends, including two Peace Corps volunteers, my co-workers at Poraka Nova, and our FAVORITE ladies from the American Corner, to drinks.

In other news, the weather is warming up here and we are training hard for our marathon on May 6!

Shelley