This past week my town celebrated Богородица, also known as the Day of the Miners, the Day of Opstina Makedonska Kamenica, and the Day of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Leading up to the main event was a week of cultural performances including pop concerts, traditional music, and traditional dancing. The main event, held on August 28th, was a popular Serbian singer. People came from near and far to celebrate here including about 90% of the neighbouring town of Delchevo. This meant I got a visit from the two Americans, Jenny and Alastair, who live there as well as Jenny's boyfriend Vlatko, his cousin, and his cousin's girlfriend. It was the first time they have come over and it had been quite a while since I had seen them. We weren't into the concert so much because we had no idea who the guy was, but we had fun walking around, seeing all the people, and even got to enjoy some mini donuts!
While the actual day was fun, my favourite part was the traditional dancing the night before. There were groups from all over Macedonia as well as Bulgaria and Slovenia.
Pictures are far more fun that text, so here ya go!
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| The Kamenica Oro group |
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| The women of the Kamenica Oro group |
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| The Slovenian/Kochani Oro group |
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| A Bulgarian ballerina |
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| Another Bulgarian ballerina |
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| The Istibanja Oro group |
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| Not a very good picture, but the boys jumped over the fiery pot. I like how everything is blurry except the pot. |
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| One of the two drummers was this little boy |
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| The Istibanja Oro group |
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| Outside the church in my town is this cute mini church |
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| My town has bumper cars right now, except people don't bump. The goal is to drive as nice as possible. Jenny convinced her boyfriend Vlatko and his cousin to bring some American style bumper car driving to the ring. |
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| We had fireworks and I discovered my new favourite camera feature might be the firework feature. |
