We were being sooo lazy yesterday... just left Seth's long enough to get cheese boorek and bread. I was pretty proud of ordering it on my own, even if Seth had written it out phonetically on a slip of paper for me. Mmmm, burek is one of the things I will miss most about Macedonia. It is this fried pastry thing with a feta-type cheese in the middle, all crispy and dripping with grease. You can get one of them for forty denari, about a dollar, and of course it is a portion that will easily substitute for a proper healthy meal.

It was lovely just lounging around Seth's and the internet cafe downstairs that is always buzzing with serious gamers. We were just recooping and retreating into an Americana bubble is nice when you've been traveling in foreign countries a lot. I called my mom and sister on Skype which was great despite the fact that the audio connection kept getting overwhelmed with static and I had to tell my stories by half-yelling at the computer in English, attracting the attention of many of the other people in the cafe. Still, it's amazing to be able to talk to people back home "face to face" while in another country.

After my two hour internet ticket ran out Seth came back from dinner with both his friend Erik and plans for the evening. Now imagine you've been invited to a birthday party for someone you don't know, and you don't know any of the other guests at the party except for the people you came with. A little awkward right? Now imagine that everyone is speaking another language and that was our Saturday night. Erik's friend was having her birthday party and we were invited along by proxy. I probably would have been a little apprehensive, but Erik is such an excitable guy and his happy mood was pretty infectious so I just went with the flow. The nice thing about being the only ones at a party not speaking the native language is that you attract attention and soon all the Americans, myself included, were off chatting with new friends interested in why we were in Macedonia. The girl I was talking to was planning on going to New York this summer for work and to improve her English. When talking about the differences between our two countries we got on the subject of public displays of affection and the openness of Macedonians, probably because of the couples that were passionately kissing each other in the middle of the room. We agreed that Americans are too "cold" and need to show a bit more love. She was a psychology major and so advised me that "you need to hug your parents and your siblings and your friends at least twenty times a day, twenty times to keep them healthy". So whoever might read this: give at least five hugs today. Who knows, maybe more hugs is all this unhappy world needs.

The party was such a fun time, primarily because of the friendly people but also because all the music they were playing was really great nineties music, the kind that has been forgotten by most. I still can't believe how willingly many people will open up to us foreigners, it just blows me away every time.

Jena and I with new friends!

I'm now on a train heading to Thessolaniki, Greece with Jena. We've got the compartment to ourselves and successfully passed through the border control so now we're just chilling out for the next couple hours. We're actually very lucky to be in Greece now. For the past five days the farmers of Greece have staged a nationwide strike, driving and parking their tractors to block the border crossings and the major highway between Thessolaniki and Athens. The borders of both Macedonia and Bulgaria had been shut down during that time leaving us in an awkward position without a way into Greece. Luckily the tractors were not able to block the trains--the police told them the rails are electrified, which may or may not be true--and the Macedonia border was opened up again just today.