Jen's Birthday Surprise!

Today is, obviously by the title of the post, Jen’s birthday! So I decided to surprise her with a trip to Tetovo. Her co-worker Vesna (the lady who drove us to the Ambassadorial reception) was going to be in Skopje and offered to drive me back to Tetovo to surprise her!

I met Vesna (late) at 2:30pm and we made a few stops in Skopje before heading to Tetovo. One place was a pet store and a super nice kitty came out to greet me and tried to convince me that she needed to be in the car exploring rather than on the ground or in my lap getting petted. Needless to say, we disagreed. However, I got to pet a cat for a bit which made me smile.

There are a lot of homeless dogs and cats around here and there is only so much you can do (like if you have some left over food give them a bit at dinner). And you can’t really pet them because you don’t know what they might be carrying.

When we arrived on campus at South East European University (SEEU/”Sthoul” in common knowledge for the guy who founded it) where Jen is teaching and began walking (in a tour-like way) to the language building. At one point, we see Jen in front of us going to the little mini-market. We quickly duck to a bench and pretend to not see her and hope she doesn’t see us! (She doesn’t).Vensa then goes and clocks out, and we walk back to Jen’s dorm room. We see her walking towards us, so we just keep walking. Jen later told us that she saw two people smiling at her and was like “Those people are smiling at me!” because it is weird for people to smile as often as we do in the States. Then she realized who it was. Lol.

We went out to Bela Mia (Бела Миа) for dinner. It has traditional Macedonian food as well as the staple of pizza! We shared a Greek Salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, white cheese, olives, and onions). I had pizza, Jen had a hamburger thing (ground beef patty thing, but not a burger), and Vensa had some sort of fried meat (yea, real descriptive on that stuff I don’t eat, huh?).

Afterwards we went to Jugo, a “Bed, Bath, and Home” store. Basically it was just a Bed, Bath, and Beyond because Jen needed (well, I needed) sheets for her extra bed. I was even able to take a picture for a friend, who knows who she is coughashleycough.

And had dessert at this café at the mall, called Exclusive Café! They had ice cream, but I was too cold for that and ordered a cherry cake and hot chocolate (forgetting that their hot chocolate is like melted chocolate not “real” hot chocolate). We sat there enjoying our desserts. This is some of the views from the store area.

Then it was off to this art show/reception thingy as part of this culture week. They had some really cool hard carved wood work as well as this:

We thought it looked like “the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree” but figured that was NOT the intention of the artist.

Then back to Jen’s place where we just hung out and tried to get the internet to work for me. It never really did, until this awesome guy who works for the university came over and fixed it for me. I then said, I think I know how to do it now.

And then he deleted it and made me do it again!

But he helped when I had problems, but it was still good. And now I can help people who come over to Jen’s try to figure out the settings.

If you guys have ever been to my house, you know there is a cannon in the front yard. Well, my Gramps (mom's dad) was on this kick of building old looking guns awhile back and we got a cannon out of it. But Did ya know that you can by a pre-fab cannon for your house for the simple cost of shipping from Macedonia plus whater this cost? (It had no price tag on it)

See you around the globe!