Oh gnome you didn’t

I should have known it wouldn’t take long before Macedonia found me in costume(s).

I love any excuse to dress up.

I’ll let this small collection of some recent costumed adventures speak for itself.

Dressing up as Rosie the Riveter was part of the reason I cut all my hair off two years ago. (Only partially kidding)

I’m a 27-year-old with a dress up box. (That’s normal, right?) I already owned everything we wore this night for a last-minute event.

 

I haven’t been Keeping up with the Kardashians since moving to Macedonia, but Kourtney and Scott was one of the greatest dual costumes to date.

Google maps was super easy, and so clever. I just needed my friend Danielle to fly to Pennsylvania from Iowa with her half of the directions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s only now that I’m thousands of miles and several time zones away that I realize I should have made room in my bags for a few costume accessories. (What I wouldn’t give to have my dinosaur mask.)

The first opportunity was a surprise. Our language teacher told us two weeks ago that we would be able to dress up for Halloween for a Hub Day. It was a week before Halloween and a Macedonian holiday, so the stores were all closed and we had limited resources.

Luckily, we’ve been watching Cила.

Our favorite Turkish soap opera, dubbed over in Macedonian, has a new episode almost every night. (Cила and her husband Boran, have rekindled the flame after she ran away with her boyfriend to Istanbul. Boran was in jail last week, accused of shooting Cила’s old boyfriend, but they just cleared his name. Phew!)

My friend Rachel signed on to play the part of Boran and I practiced crying on command to capture Cила.

It looked like this:

We tried to stay in character all day, which basically meant yelling either, “Why?!” or “Forgive me!” in Macedonian whenever we saw each other.

  

The next chance to play dress up came at school this week. We had our first chance to see Macedonian classrooms during our practicum (student teaching week) and I helped teach a lesson on Halloween, on Oct. 31. I’m already adapting to the limited resources that I’ll face for the next two years. I made these two masks out of the cardboard from a box of granola bars.

(Spider-Man started out as an elephant, but it took an ugly turn. It’s better not to ask.)

That night, a friend hosted a Halloween gathering, after asking permission from his host parents of course, which meant a third chance at dressing up. I was too tired after a long week to dust off Cила, so I googled “Halloween in your closet.” (An incredible search for last-minute, easy costumes.)

All it took was a pink shirt and the right poses to become a sassy emoji.

Finally, because Halloween deserves multiple costumes, our Sveti group decided to storm another Hub Day in costume. Even our language teachers got involved.

Sveti Nikole became Sveti Gnomele, beards and all.

Have I mentioned how much I love my training community?