"Old" New Years

According to the Old Orthodox calender, New Years is celebrated on January 14th. So I went with my friends Milka and Robert and 2 of their friends to Vevchani. We hiked in the snow to visit the famous Vevchani springs and also joined a crowed of masked gobblins for a concert to ring in the "Old" New Year. It's a Macedonian tradition to wear a costume on New Years eve. No one really seems to know how this tradition got started, but they carry it on. It felt a little like Halloween but without the candy.
One interesting tradition which is also similar to Halloween is on Christmas eve, children go door to door with little wooden hammers starting early in the morning to collect candy. This is also to remind people that Jesus is born. Sadly, we didn't have any kids come to our door :(

More Snow! Ah!

Snow Cream!

So last night we had our team Christmas party. It has been snowing non-stop! So we decided to look up a recipe for snow cream. snow+milk+vanilla+sugar=delicious icecream-like goodness! yumm!! Mandy and I went out to collect snow off the car (which we though should be relatively sanitary) and then Brian stirred it all together like a mad-man haha.

Snow Day!

Wow! It started snowing last night and snowed ALL STINKIN' DAY!! It was so much fun! It's supposed to snow all weekend. Thankgoodness we have that wood-burning stove in case the power goes out and we get snowed in!