My bank balance is currently negative 330. I'm no longer a home owner. I'm at the tail end of a second failed marriage. I'm almost $50,000 in debt. My only equity is the car and various personal belongings. The money from selling the Plymouth house is long gone. So is the inheritance from Mom and Dad.

I'm 46 years old, starting over. Again. I don't know how I'm going to do it this time. I haven't figured out why I want to. What's going to happen in the future that's going to make all this worth it? Where is happiness? Who will I have in my life?

I tried making a social life after moving out from Kat and have had a growing string of disappointments. I wasn't looking for romance with anyone. I just wanted reasons to get out of the house. Let's just say... that's not going very well, either.

I still have a glimmer of hope for the future, but it's doing everything it can to fade fast.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

The lesson was a blast. Rebecca definitely knows how to teach. I'm going to enjoy this immensely.

Next lesson in two weeks.

	I miss my mom and dad.
And my dogs.
	I miss family trips to the north shore.
And my youthful innocence.

I miss the times when we all -- to lesser or greater extent -- defined ourselves by the music we listened to.

I miss late night talks with close friends; and I miss those friends. (You know who you are, Deb, Michele, Molley, Nan, Katie, Casey and Tom.)

I miss the days when it was safe to eat the fish from the lakes and swim in the waters. I miss the winters when it actually snowed so deeply you could build snow forts that seemed like they were a mile deep.

I'm actually quite excited about it. I'm meeting a lot of fabulous speakers, which will help me hone my own speaking skills.

Stay tuned.

So it actually pains me when I have to throw something away that is still serviceable. For instance, I bought a new iPod shuffle last week. The shuffle comes in this very nice packaging. It looks actually expensive to produce -- a few dollars of packaging.

Waste not, want not.

So of course, I kept the packaging. It's been sitting on my desk for over a week. I finally just threw it away, but it was hard to do.

I can't even imagine what I'd need the packaging for. I suppose there's a vague chance that the iPod will break and I'll want the packaging so I can return it. But I suspect Apple would take care of me, with or without the packaging.

But every time I looked at it, I thought, "This could be used again to sell another iPod." Yeah, because Apple has a program to recycle their old plastic boxes. Right.

it's in the trash. With any luck and determination, I won't fish it back out, thinking there must be some use for that plastic box.

Of course, having a fort is no fun if you don't have someone else to hide from, so we would try to taunt the neighbors into throwing snowballs at us. I remember one year we added holes in the fort with ramps down to a snow ball cache basin. If someone actually hit the fort right in one of the holes, our theory was the snow ball would roll down the ramp and into our supply bin.

We never did get any free snowballs that way.

As one gets older, of course, what was once a fabulously deep pile of snow turns out to be not so deep after all. Either that, or we get a lot less snow than we used to.

But still, this has turned out to be a white Christmas. It's beautiful out there right now. I don't even mind plowing the driveway. Over and over. Fresh snow every few days has been fabulous.

But January approaches. I'm sure we'll all be freezing our tushies off soon enough.

The trip ended too quickly.

The most poignant moments...

• Hugging Natasha and meeting Nenad at the airport
• Roksanda crying as we entered her home
• Long conversations with Sanja
• Trying not to cry, overwhelmed with emotion while my "daughter" was being married
• Ohrid lake trout
• My new earring
• Hugs goodbye

What struck me the most about Risto is what a fabulous host he is. Jillann and I didn't always know what the foods were or what to expect. Risto took care of us, and appeared to take great delight in the process. At the various restaurants, he either helped us order or -- more likely -- ordered for the table. The foods were always wonderful. Many of the restaurants serve family style, so Risto also would dish everyone's plate for them, making sure we all got to try all the goodies and pointing out when you would use a particular sauce with a particular dish.

Risto's English is not as good as Natasha's or Sanja's, but he manages to make his point -- sometimes asking his wife for help. When the concepts got to be too complex, Sanja would translate back and forth. But for the most part, Risto did okay.

Risto spent several days driving Jillann and I all over the place. He picked us up at the hotel, dropped us off at the hotel, took us to a variety of places, and even drove us out to Lake Ohrid. He put up with our shopping and other oddities.

Whenever we wandered to a church, Risto also bought candles, passing them out to each of us, then explained the custom.

Our trip to Macedonia was made deeply richer through his efforts. Thank you, Risto.

Sanja is a thoracic surgeon. I knew this before we met her, so I was expecting someone very bright. And from the pictures that Jillann saw, she said, "Sanja looks very elvish."

Jillann's description is pretty good. Sanja has thin, delicate features, with short, pixie-ish hair. Her hands are also delicate, and I could see how this would help her as a surgeon. The two sisters don't look at all alike.

I was most struck by Sanja's intelligence. She and I chatted quite a bit during our trip, and I was often amazed. I'm used to talking with people who I consider "as intelligent as I am". I'm quite unused to talking with people I'm pretty sure are distinctly smarter. (I console myself knowing I'm older and more experienced.)

She speaks in a soft, careful voice when speaking English, and I don't think she's as used to speaking English as Natasha is. But she seemed to understand everything I said, and I wasn't always as careful with my words and pace as I normally might be when speaking with someone for whom English is not their first language.

Sanja is rather playful and seemed to enjoy quietly teasing me. I told her about how I used to try to teach Nate (my nephew) some phrases when he was just a baby -- things like "Pepperoni Pizza", "Mommy likes diamonds" and "Hot babe!", so Sanja asked, "What is 'Hot babe'?" What impressed me was she could do this with a completely straight face, absolutely no body language to tell me she was teasing.

I am quite very pleased to have gotten the chance to know Sanja, and I'm enjoying having Natasha's sister as a friend in her own right.

Their home is an apartment on the 2nd floor of a building in a pleasant portion of Skopje. The building itself was quite non-descript, but I enjoyed the apartment. They've made a home.

When we arrived, Roksanda immediately began to cry. This was deeply touching. We then chatted for some time, Natasha translating back and forth quite readily.

Other than the unexpected warmth we received, I wasn't too surprised by Natasha's parents. I expected to find a powerful, intelligent woman in Roksanda, and that's what I found. I like her.

Branco is quieter. We had to direct questions to him to get him to talk very much. Instead, he is a quiet host. He would sit in his chair, watching what was going on for a while, then pop up and do host things. Fetch drinks, make sure everyone was comfortable, and otherwise flutter around taking care of things.

I think everyone has been looking forward to this meeting for some time. I've wanted to meet Natasha's parents for such a very long time, and I think they wanted to meet us. I would have liked to have had a common language so we could talk more, but such is the reality.

By the end of our conversations, I'm fairly certain I saw smoke coming out of Natasha's ears. We had her working quite hard as translator, but she was very good at it, quite natural. But as the afternoon wore on, she was waiting longer and longer as we said something to translate, so I suspect we wore her out.

Natasha, if you read this, please forward again my thanks to your parents. Thank you for making us feel so very welcome in their home. Thank you for their friendship. And thank you for sharing Natasha with us.

I didn't get to spend enough time with Natasha and Nenad as I would have liked. But what I saw was that he:

• Is intelligent
• Kind and friendly
• Loves Natasha quite intensely
• Treats Natasha very well

I can't imagine wanting more for the woman I consider my daughter.

Next: Roksanda and Branco.

I'm going to do --

• A brief overview of the travel details
• One post for each of the main people we met
• A few posts on individual events I found striking
• A final wrap up with overall impressions

This post will serve as the overview.

---

The trip started almost two weeks ago with an early afternoon flight. We flew via Northwest frequent flier miles, so the flight arrangements were not optimal. Minneapolis to Montreal, then Amsterdam and finally Athens. The return trip yesterday was Athens to Amsterdam to Houston to Minneapolis.

We should have arrived in Athens Monday afternoon. We would stay one night in Athens to give us a little time to see some ruins, then take the train to Thessaloniki in northern Greece. Two nights in Thessa, then the morning train to Skopje in Macedonia. The return trip would be the early Tuesday train all the way to Athens (changing trains in Thessaloniki), Wednesday in Athens for more ruins and a museum, and an early flight home.

That's almost what we did, but our flight to Amsterdam was delayed horribly, which meant we missed the flight to Athens as well. We arrived at 12:30 AM Tuesday morning instead.

---

We were met in Skopje by Natasha and her new husband, Nenad. My little girl is all grown up and so sophisticated! Initial impressions of Nenad -- a decent guy. We met all of Natasha's family that day, an experience I enjoyed immensely.

The trip was fantastic. I met some amazing people I'm pleased to call friends. Tomorrow, I'll start to post about the people I met, I guess in the order I met them. So I guess I can start with Nenad.