We end this week’s adventure on the Balkan Peninsula with a celebration of Vasilica, an “old new year” holiday, a tradition continued primarily by Orthodox Christians in Serbia and Macedonia, as well as by Muslim Roma. The holiday falls on the 14th of January, which is the date to which the new year on the old Julian calendar corresponds on the now globally accepted Gregorian calendar. The three day holiday actually kicks off the evening of January 13 with a Phari Rat, a “heavy night” feast, and consists of days full of family visits, and, most prominently in the Macedonian village of Vevchani, a raucous masquerade parade.
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site — the information you’re seeking may still be here, but a lot of links are broken and details may be out of date. We are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our class offerings, our “pen pal” program and how to become one of our teachers, and will eventually be moving all the goodies from here over to there. So, GO TO THE NEW SITE!
