Timeout for the Juvenile Delinquent

I wake up with a large metal pot beside me and overly chipper rays streaming in from the open sun room. Outside I hear Genna arguing with Pavle about the Greeks and Macedonia's right to their name. It's 5 o'clock in the morning.

When I get up to use the bathroom the memory of last night's party rises from my quivering vacant stomach and spreads violently throughout the trashed apartment. I barely make it back to bed before my legs give out. Five hours later I emerge once more to find a dozing Genna in pristine flat. Could it all have been just a dream?

No, my Macedonian friends managed to out "hospitalitate" me in my own space right down to mopping the floor while Genna and I dripped punch-flavored dribble down our dozing chins. Now this is an embarrassment.

It all started when our attempt to introduce the drinking game Quarters (which I am good at) degenerated into a perfidious game of low card (which, if it had any skill involved, I would suck at). Not only do I draw the initial two low cards, but also discover that this means I am to drink double - oh, and I can't leave the table until drinking at least 3. In other words I'm screwed.

It takes little more than an hour for us to run out of beer and vodka and for me to be focusing on people's pupils in a lame attempt to appear sober. This is what I get when I try to combine American and Macedonian party tradition: drunk by midnight with a party that intends to be bumping until 4. By 1 AM I am perched on a pitch black landing 2 floors above and hung over a flower pot and wishing for swift death.

Finally I hear Genna sneak out of the apartment in search of me. I let out a weak murmur, relieved and grateful that she is alone and I can admit my plight. The girl is an angel. After failing in her attempt to teach me how to make myself throw up she navigates me down the stairs, through the bustle of hopefully happy party-goers and into bed. As I try to slow down the merry-go-round that has become Pance's air mattress, a trickle of Macedonians come to sympathize. Despite my mortification, one after another offers a empathetic memories of similar moments of inebriation. For my part, I had made it to 25 without betraying myself so egregiously and figured I was in the clear. Wrong.

And so it seems that all hopes to prove to these people that I could be as nice, as giving, as totally hospitable as seems to be their nature have failed. Instead I find myself ever more grateful for their patience with my flailing American ways. Yet I wonder, was it a good party?