Macedonia!!

- Started out semi-early with not knowing what to pack! :) So, I decided to wear some insane layers: Iina’s long sleeve, a t-shirt, a tak top, and a ¾ sleeve! With Matt’s fleece and my coat! I was veeeery warm :) I thought it would be much colder than it actually was :)
- We took a coach (aka van) to the border, where we stood in a queue for wuite some time (which was okay since people were getting over nausea from the coach and exhaustion from an impromptu snowball/ice fight :)
- From the border, we taxi-d to the hostel that had been recommended, but when we say how far it was from the city, we decided to try somewhere else- a place our taxi drivers knew about! It turned out to be really nice and not far from shopping and sight-seeing! Hooray :) We dropped our stuff off and went to find a place to make reservations for dinner that evening.
- We booked somewhere right on the water- it was so gorgeous, and with the sun shining, it was quite tempting to just glory in the moment… unless you were Lana, who was VERY anxious to find food.
- Tori, Lana, and I (and a few others) wanted to spend our first day shopping, but first we went to find some grub :) We first went to a fast food place. No English 2-Pizza place. Slow and no service. 3- The Pink Panther! An American-inspired restaurant that had okay food :)
- During our meal, I changed my decision to shop and wanted to go sight-öseeing instead. Since it was such a gorgeous day, I wanted to capture everything I saw on film (or memory space, or whatever :) ) Out the restaurant’s second story window, I saw the group going to the Fortress aka Castle. So I left some dinar [SIDENOTE: exchange rate= 60 dinar to 1 dollar; not the easiest to figure out in your head!] with Tori and Lana and ran to catch up :)
- We first went to the Colloseum. It was so weird to think of the people who sat in those seats almost 2,000 years ago (well, not quite). Later on, I learned a bit of the history. Originally, it was just for plays and such, but then it got re-furbished and designed to be a gladiator arena… I found out that 100s, probably even 1000s of Christians were killed there… so much history.
- From there, we trekked up some CRAZY hilly streets (where we almost god mowed down by a little car speeding down hills=. We slowly made our way to the castle at the top. It was so pretty, and it was fun to look around and explore the [mostly renovated] walls. We even got serenaded by a guy with a Macedonian-version bagpipe (it was a sheep stomach I think).
- After the castle, [including some forbidden wall-scaling escapades with Lauren, Iina, Jo, Matt and I], we walked down to see the church and basilica (a place where public meetings would have been held, ect.)
There, we met a theology dude, who became our impromptu (and VERY willing) tour-guide. We joined the 2 young guys (who, if I understood correctly, are training to become electricians! What they were doing there, who knows!) in learning about lots of the deeper meanings of the things around. We also got to go into a church and see some of a Greek Orthodox service.
- Then, I went to a café with Gab, Lo, Jo, Bec, and Paul… instead of going to a library thing with our new friend.
- Then we looked around a bit and asked about getting piercings…. some of them got their ears pierced and then we went to dinner. It was kinda scary how fast it happened. They went in to ask a question, and came out 5 minutes later with their ears pierced- no paperwork required!
- At dinner, I saw waves breaking on the dock and it made me miss home, and the ocean.
- Back at the hostel, there was some goofing off, but we were mostly calm and went to bed soon. It was sooo, so cold, but Iina and I got to sleep after we put our beds together to be warmer.