Nothing Better than Pleasant Surprises

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"--in thinking of how to summarize my day yesterday, this line from A Tale of Two Cities immediately came to mind. The "best" part was that I was doing one of my favorite activities, hiking. I climbed a mountain peak with the great hiking club Pelister, whose members are always patient with my language skills and careful not to leave me behind (which is good because seriously, I think two people from our bus got left behind). Since I had done this hike last year, I was not expecting it to be all that different but there were some pleasant surprises like...

Being one of the first Pelister members at the top and not the last

Seeing these people who carried their baby 4 hours up to a mountain peak

And stranger yet, seeing this house cat carried up the mountain (held by my Pelister buddy, Stevo)

Kerry and I proving there's nothing more American than making trail mix

As for the worst of times, that was the bus ride home where instead of singing pleasant folk songs like last year, people decided to scream them instead. Seriously, two hours of yelling inside a bus. I try to respect cultural differences but this was literally painful, inducing a big headache. I told my seatmate that the ride home was my worst experience in Macedonia and he chalked it up to Americans being cold and not embracing the Mediterranean celebration mentality. Perhaps, but I think I wasn't the only person on the bus not enjoying the "entertainment." Thankfully it was a day where the best outweighed the worst and that's about all a person can ask for, no matter where she is.