Emerging from the Shell, Part 4: In the World...

After a breakfast of what soon became a beloved culinary routine (reinforcing the fact that the British just can't make bread), Wednesday saw the beginning of our integration into the Macedonian academy. As I mentioned before, every member of our group is or recently was a graduate student at Oxford. For Kosta and Nada, founders of the Balkan Institute for Faith and Culture, this presented an ideal opportunity to launch their organization into a new level of exposure and depth. Accordingly, Kosta linked different members of the team with corresponding members of the faculty of Saint Cyril and Methodius University (did I mention that those guys are big?), and on Wednesday and Thursday our Oxford members delivered papers relating to their research--all dealing, at least implicitly, with faith. The talks were just the beginning of a series of BIFC events at which we featured, coordinated by Olympja--the institute's invaluable intern-in-all-but-name--and officially titled, "Oxford Connections." They covered an incredible variety of topics, by virtue of the fact that God has brought together a remarkably representative group of students. While Christian was giving a talk at the theology faculty, I attended Matthew's talk, on the psychology of gambling.

Amongst other "firsts," this was our first experience with "Macedonian time." Now, it is not quite as elastic as African time, as my much-beloved South African roommate Bonolo daily demonstrated (I'm afraid my OCD-punctual self can get rather annoying when late for group departures from the hostel foyer). But neither is it as precise as British or American or even college time, as Matthew learned. At 9:30am, he was scheduled to begin. At 9:45, most people started arriving. At 10:00, he could actually start.

This wasn't a huge deal, but it did render gauging English competency a little problematic. None of us had any idea of what to expect from the students. It was a fairly safe guess that Deborah, giving an untranslated lecture on Milton in the English department, would not have too many difficulties, but social scientists, psychologists? Matthew was quite cunning, I thought, in using his pre-talk meet-and-greet to ascertain the language skills of the half dozen or so listeners present at 9:30. But this may not have been a representative sample, as he ended up presenting to an absolutely packed lecture room! They positively ate him up, especially when he played his computer simulation through which he evaluated subjects' gambling habits. Gambling is a particularly pressing concern in Macedonian society, Kosta explained; in the last few years, he has witnessed one street transform from a line of businesses forced into bankruptcy by economic recession into one long stream of gambling dens. I think Matthew's Macedonian listeners were particularly interested, therefore, to hear his talk, particularly when he described similar concerns in the UK and the potential uses of his data. He talked about how gambling addiction is often rooted in a conscious or even subconscious belief that one's actions can change the outcome, perhaps by blowing on the dice or taking more time to roll.