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Sup everybody! In Macedonia now, and I'm getting towards the end of my journey (I only have Albania left) and I'm actually a little worn out. Don't get me wrong, this trip has been... well...indescribable. My new hotel, for instance, it's wierdly cheap, and I can't figure out why. This place is great! Sure, it's a little small, but it's really clean and homey. But there's something missing from the trip.I mean, I've been travelling all across Europe looking at all sorts of historical artifacts and sights and quite frankly, I'm a little sick of it. I just want to do something fun. It doesn't have to be a lot, just one fun little excursion, and then I promise I'll be a perfect, cultural little angel. Before I had to deal with my girlish desires, I neede food. This started with a big breakfast at a delicious restaurant called Destan. The service was great, people were always asking if I was alright or if I need anything even though the place was packed. Thinking back that was probably because I was a lone kid at a five star restaurant. Funny, no one else seemed to notice. The food was good, definitely better than Polish food, but nothing can compare to France. I had a couple of sandwiches made of a sausage like meat called Cevapcici. In my sandwich, I added some eggs and onion, which I guess isn't that uncommon. Since I am a thirteen year old girl on an unsupervised trip in Macedonia, I tend to do the things that I want to do, and at that time, I wanted to go Paragliding. To do this, A permission slip signed by a parent was required(you don't want to know how I did that) so that in hand, I went paragliding. There were two tours available, one hour and three hour. What can I say? I chose the three hour one. The equipment was fairly simple and I got into it easily, and then we were off. The paragliding sight was situated on the edge of a caramel cliff that was about... well, it was... around... look it was really tall, okay? I don't know if you know this, but in Skopje, it's windy, really windy, like Chicago windy. That was very helpful considering we were paragliding. I sat in a chair-like contraption while my guide stood behind me, in a harness. We started about twenty feet before the cliff and both started running, me awkwardly with the chair bumping at my legs. I forgot this as soon as we jumped. All previous thoughts were lost in the sea of adrenaline that wiped me over that cliff. And as soon as I recovered from that, my breath was taken by the sheer beauty of the view from that tiny chair. As soon as I thought that, a giggle escaped my lips. I'm almost positive that the guide rolled his eyes. Either way, I'd just realized that I was looking at this amazing view from a tiny chair that was hanging from a group of thin wires attached to a length of stretched out canvas. Oh, and there was a slightly annoying guy hanging from the back of it. Huh. We swung about for another three hours, though it felt like three seconds, and I could tell that Mr. Grouchy was enjoying himself too. I saw sapphire blue lakes that literally sparkled, purplish hills blanketed in blue-green grass, small, snow covered villages and sharp glass cities. When we landed, I was very proud of myself for unbuckling myself from the equipment. That is, until I fell flat on my face. Needless to say, I left that place pretty quickly. After my extreme adventure, I was ravenous. I went to a tastefully decorated stone building called Skopski Merak. The waiter reccomended a bunch of stuff, and I finally settled for a three course meal(plus dessert of course.) I started with a Shopska salad, which is something my neighbor has been making for years. It's basically tomatoes, onions, cucumbers all diced up and mixed witha white cheese. It's all drizzled in a creamy cold sauce. Then, I had a примерок ,or sample, platter. This was an assortment of breads and crackers with a lineup of sauses, creams and cheeses. The bread was bread, generally uninteresting, but I got three different types of Kaskaval or goat cheese, all of which were delicious. I also got a salsa like sauce that is made of red bell peppers. It was called Ajavar. After the platter was my last dish before dessert. For this course, I had something called moussaka. This is really, a lot like a hamburger. It has meat, usually beef or chicken,(I got chicken) which is layered with eggplant. Now came dessert, I got a serving of Tulumba. This is similar to the Hindi dish, Gulad Jamun. It is a lump of dough sweetened with a soak in sugar sweet syrup and deep fried to a golden brown color. After lunch,(yes that ws only lunch) I took a quick trip down to the Memorial House of Mother Teresa. This wasn't techically a historical sight, but the architecture was quite regal. It had a base made completely of small rounded stones. The doors and windows were circled by a repeating square pattern, and there was a folded glass top that bant inti a deep triangle that cut into the stone like a knife. The centerpiece was a stone cross mounted in the glass part of the building. After reading a few plaques about Mother Teresa, I took off for my hotel, Villa Vodno. A couple hours later, I had a mound of Shopska salad for dinner. Honstly, now that I think about it, I'm just a little bit homesick. Oh well, I've just got Albania left. I'm gonna finish this trip with a bang!
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