Welcome to Macedonia

After an absolutely crazy week, we have finally had some time to ourselves and now that our boss is gone, we can relax for a bit!!!

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We arrived in Macedonia on Thursday at 4:30 pm and it was so dark outside you would think it was midnight.  It’s cold and grey here, but cold air feels nice, compared to the smog and humidity in The Philippines.   It gets dark very early, but lucky for us the winter has been very mild, so temperature is around 5 degrees every day…which is not that bad.  Macedonia reminds me a lot of Bulgaria, but of course much smaller and less developed. Their fashion sense is the same and I will have to take pictures to actually show you how ridiculous it is!   The food is excellent, salads and meat; there is a lot of influence from Greece and Turkey here, so you can see these influences everywhere, in the food, the people, and the landscape.

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Macedonia is a country with so much history, churches that date back to 980 AD, they have found proof that the Renaissance began here. Orhid, is a small town known for one of the oldest lakes in the world, over 4 millions years old!  The same town, Orhid, has 365 churches, one for each day of the year…. can you imagine how beautiful that must be!! Mother Theresa was born here and the Cyrillic alphabet was founded here.   They are so rich in culture, it’s amazing all the stories we have heard!

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Unfortunately we have had no time off, we’ve had meetings since day one.  After we arrived we had a meeting with the Minister of Transport who is 28 years old, (he was very proud to tell us that) having studied in the US.  Actually, this entire Government is very young, they were elected into office in August and no one is over the age of 38, can you believe that!   Most of the Ministers and agency officials are in late 20’s –early 30’s…and most having studied in the US, so far most have MBA’s from Harvard, Wharton School of Business or Dartmouth…….makes me wonder if the foreign guy in class next to you, could have been someone really interesting and you didn’t even know!!!   The Government is very much business oriented and there is a huge campaign to create investment in Macedonia which is causing a lot of media attention in the US.

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Since our manager arrived, we have been working literally day and night, we’ve already met with Minister for Finance, Minister of Economy, the Vice President, as well, and we spent Saturday interviewing the President!!!  It’s been an intense week, to say the least, on top of this, we have had meetings with a few Public companies as well.

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It’s going to be an aggressive report here and we have to move fast, luckily we have made some great contacts! On Sunday we were invited to a big event, Pete Tong, a famous UK DJ was spinning at the largest stadium in Skopje, so we enjoyed some VIP treatment…..which was awesome!  There are not many foreigners here at all so everyone is overly nice and the people are so friendly, it couldn’t be better!!

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Ryan and my manager are in love with Macedonia, it’s very liberal here.  Just walk around and you can see, advertising is very bold and risky, on television you can’t escape it, in this country sex sells, and it is everywhere!   It’s actually shocking at first with the ads and television, but you get used it, very different from all the censorship laws at home!   My manager (newly single guy) was joking about staying here and setting up a regional office…..he likes it a little too much!  So the rumors are true, the women are beautiful, as for the men, I can’t say the same!!  Overall everyone is super nice, they go out of their way to help us and are so proud to show us their country.

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We’re looking forward to the next few weeks in the country.  We are all settled into our new apartment, it’s so spacious, with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, we really lucked out because it was just built and comes complete with new furniture!   This is a great country to be in and we have 2 bedrooms…so just get a plane ticket!!

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We miss everyone at home, hope all is well!!!