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oh, to be so young and thin again. it was the summer of 1995. a month at lake ohrid, ostensibly studying macedonian. but also having an awful lot of fun in absolutely glorious weather.

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these were some of my fellow students from arizona state. that guy on the left was from alaska, but i'll admit i can't remember his name. the other one, whose name also escapes me (bob?), was the one who taught me the phrase, "it always comes back to me." the one is the cap and sunglasses is my friend dmitry, him, i remember very well and he's still a friend.

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those high-waisted shorts are almost going to be in again. i don't know if i was pretending to be spiked on that spikey thingy or what. it was the balkans, after all, and those probably usually had a head on them in ottoman times.

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another beautiful summer day on gorgeous lake ohrid. it was this wonderful summer that lured me back there on a fulbright in 1997. i have no recollection of who those girls on the left were. memory is funny like that.

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at the foot of the statue of cyril & methodius. cyril was the guy who came up with the cyrillic alphabet. and they were scholars right there in the beautiful old churches of ohrid.

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this guy was the owner of a place we found for my friend from belgrade to stay when she came to visit. it was a private home and he actually took us around on the lake in his boat and we drank quite a lot of rakija with him and ate some small silvery fish whole, heads and all. they were grilled and salty and really quite delicious. it all resulted in a toast to milosevic at one point, but we were young and we had to be nice to him because dajana was staying there. and then there was the rakija.