Two days down, three to go

I have made it all the way through the first and second days of the conference, with 15 pages of single spaced notes handed to Mickey and then I walked home from the university while he stayed talking to the other organizers. It's a different world out there today, the first day we have been here since the four-day Easter holiday has ended. Amazingly different: the streets were hard to cross, and the university students packed the hallways. Yugos (still around here!) and other small cars are all you see in the streets, other than an occasional motorbike.

Dragena (from Bosnia) and I managed to dress almost identically and we laughed about it. I love these three women from Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are so smart and pleasant. I left the conference while the participants were doing a cognitive mapping exercise and I was not needed. A long day from 6:30 until 5:30, with two hours for lunch, which was walking around and eating Macedonian "fast food" near the university (a spinach and cheese quiche-like thing), much better than McDonald's -- which BTW, there is one just down the street. I will, if I can think of it, take a picture of the inside for comparison.

Tonight Cvetanka and I will go shopping for my souvenirs, while Mickey goes yet one more time down to the square. I've now been there three nights in a row, and I'd like to see something different. I am really tired of taking notes and need a break from thinking about the conference. It does look like we might be able to take the half-day on Friday and compress it into Thursday so that we can go on a field trip to Ohrid Lake, which everyone says is spectacular. It is several millennia old.

The phone just rang, Cvetanka will meet me in twenty minutes. If there are great pictures from tonight, you will see them tomorrow!