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A 21st Century Pilgrim in the Balkans cont...
Then they get so worried about me carrying a 10
kg pumpkin back to my house a half mile away
that they find someone to drive me home. [No
worries, Goce - I sat in the back just like women
are supposed to in Muslim communities. The
pumpkin got to ride up front though. Nothing
quite puts your life in perspective like finding out
that squash gets to ride shotgun over you.]
So a couple of days later, I figure it's time to put
the great pumpkin plan/fiasco into action. I still
could have backed out – and just used the pumpkin as a decorative door stop or something, but
NO, I have to go forward with it. Yep, I really
am that stubborn. So I set to work. I sharpen my
good knife, an eight inch long, three inch wide
carving knife that would make any butcher or
serial killer proud. And then I set in. I carve and
carve, swear repeatedly, throw down the knife,
walk off in a huff, and come back and repeat
steps one through four. An hour or two of that
gets me enough slices to fill my Macedonian
oven (which is the size of an American toaster)
five times over. So in the end, this activity involved two days of roasting pumpkin, setting off
the fire alarm three times (before I wised up and
removed the battery – sorry Goce but I told you
putting the fire alarm in the kitchen was a bad
idea with my cooking talents), finding out that
burned pumpkin is darn near impossible to get off
a cookie sheet, and deciding that perhaps I should
have gone with something smaller than a 20 lb.
pumpkin. Because now I have enough mashed
pumpkin in my freezer for eight pumpkin pies, 7
liters of pumpkin soup, three loaves of pumpkin
bread, and a ton of pumpkin cookies. But I’ll tell
you – that pumpkin pie I made for Thanksgiving
was the best damn pumpkin pie ever. As will be
the ones for Christmas, New Year’s, Bajram, Valentine’s Day, Personal Assistant’s Day, International Badminton Day, Cinqo de Mayo, and Guy
Fawkes Day. By the time of that last holiday, I’ll
have hopefully run out of pumpkin.
So in the hopes of continual self-improvement,
here are some of the lessons I learned:
Pumpkin pie is completely overrated. Who ever
thought a pie made from vegetables was a good
idea?
I am too darn stubborn for my own good – and
should realize that I'm neither too good nor too
proud to be defeated by a vegetable.
Squash is, in fact, the devil. Really. It says so in
the Bible, the Torah and the Q’uran. Look it up.
PCVs should try to win Macedonians over to the
idea that the only good use of a pumpkin is as a
jack-o-lantern.
If anybody wants pumpkin pie next year, the next
group of PCVs have to do it. Hopefully they won't
know any better than I did and won't try to get out
of it. Maybe there is a way to trick them into
thinking it’s their own idea.
The inventor of canned pumpkin should be sainted
(I don't know his or her name, but please include
him or her in your thoughts this holiday season).
My Bonnie
Here’s an easy song you can teach your primary students and have them practice recognizing the “B”
sound at the same time. It’s also great for camps and
other youth development settings. My students love
songs with actions.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
My Bonnie lies over the sea.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
So bring back my Bonnie to me.
Bring back, bring back,
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me, to me.
Bring back, bring back,
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me, to me.
Actions:
Stand up on the first word with a “b” in it, and then sit
down on the next “b” and so on. The whole group
should end the song sitting down!
Submitted by: Todd Shealy Mak 10