It all started when we needed to see a man about a bee

Not one bee actually, but many. As it so happens, the global bee shortage- yes, there is such a thing- has stretched its long fingers into the rolling farm land of Macadonia. Ten year-old teals,yellows and worn purples make each stack of boxes looks like a sinking house from a decade of pastels, half of them abandoned. So our host, Ljupco was going to stop by the home of his bee mentor to ask some buzzing questions. As usual, we are asked if we want to come along.

This asking is only a formality, like the way our guide in the Sahara would ask us if we wanted tagine for dinner, as if there was anything other than tagine available. Or the time when, with a shy and apologetic no, we tried explain that we would prefer to sit in a cafe and write rather than go on a waterfall seeking adventure with some very nice people. A perplexed look from both mother and son told us we had chosen the wrong answer. They responded by telling us they would ask again later. Apparently giving us enough time to adjust our answer appropriately. "Yes, we would love to see the waterfalls!"

So it was safe to assume when we were invited to go along that our afternoon would be spent listening to two men talk in Macedonian about bees, like it or not. This might have been awesome, actually, if it held any real promise of us getting a peek at the honey making process. But, like Leigh's hopes of milking a cow, a goat, or an ewe (anything that lactates actually) and Leigh's hopes of picking wild mushrooms, this exciting promise to try our hands at rural life was empty. An hour later we are sitting at a table with two uneaten salads and some crunchy snacks staring at an emaciated dog with swollen tits and wondering if it would be socially unacceptable to feed the dog what the humans clearly had no intention of eating. The men are drinking two very small glasses of rakija, luckily we were spared that pleasure and are instead treated with freshly made juice from the red berry no one knows the name of.

Like most farming families in the rural parts of Macedonia, this family has way more fruit growing on their trees than they know what to do with. Actually, I should rephrase that. They have way more fruit than I would know what to do with. Years of experience have taught these people that those trees weighted down with apricots the size of my fists and the color of sunsets might shed too much fruit to eat, but buckets and buckets of them are great for drying. An experiment we tried to replicate in our apartment, only to end up with rotten fruit and an ant problem.

The other solution to a rich harvest is juice. Around this time, bottle after recycled beer bottle is filled up and caped off with juice from whatever berry they have growing uncontrollably in their small plots. Here is the land of raspberry juice, blueberry juice and at this farm, juice from a little red berry that is the perfect bright red color of salmon eggs. The juice looks like fruit punch Kool Aide, and tastes the way fruit punch Kool Aide could only dream of.

Somewhere in my second or third glass of juice, the bee expert announces that he too knows an American! Another trend you might notice anywhere outside of Western Europe as a foreigner- people are really excited to introduce you to all of the other Americans/Australians/Brits in the village. What could be more fun than two Americans? Three Americans! What is less fun than three Americans? An entire country of them. The bee keeper calls Jerry, the local Peace Corp volunteer, drives to his place and has him at our table in less than half an hour.

Considering the bafflement at our previous lack of enthusiasm for going to the discotechs, it is odd that our decision to go out with Jerry and his other altruistic friend is greeted with such bewilderment. Isn't this the family that nightly gave us the shoulder shrug, head tilt, eyebrow raised combo as we proved to be boring anti socialites who would rather sit at home making fresh sour cherry cobbler than go out, drink enough beer to feel bloated but not enough to get drunk, dance to music that leaves our eardrums ringing only to wake up the next day just strung out enough to do it all again? Yes, we are boring old people, but enough is enough people! Once a month I am as wild as the next hormone charged twenty something, but every night? They only laugh at us when we tell them "You people are crazy."

After inviting the 15 year-old and arranging a complicated system of cabs, phone calls and 1 AM curfews (for the 15 year-old, not us) we find ourselves in Jerry's very posh apartment counting in Macedonian for a drinking game I am thrilled to bring home. After six months abroad, many of them learning how other cultures consume alcohol, I was thrilled to ignite my competitive side playing good old American drinking games. If there is anything we can spread to the world, why not competitive binge drinking?

As writing about getting drunk and staying out all night is a little juvenile, I will just say that we got drunk and stayed out all night. The sun was well in the sky when we stumbled into Jerry's flat, Leigh passed out on the couch and I stayed up a little longer. Don't worry, we sent the 15 year-old home at one.

The only complication in our "wild night out" was our volunteered obligation to the farm and the constant criticism of our sleeping patterns. Tired and a little pathetic from the heat, we had been going to bed early (11ish, before everyone else, including the old people) and getting up late (10ish, before everyone else, including the old people). After three days of this, we are informed over lunch that sleeping until 10 not only wastes our days, but apparently the days of everyone in a 5 K radius. We look to the 15 year-old to back us up. Teenage boys sleep all day, right? He is no help, with a nod of his head we find out that we've been wasting his days too. We are instructed to wake bright and early the next morning, to be outside in the bushes at seven so we can pick berries and be on our way to the city early.

An early wake up call would have been fine, except that the morning of our harvesting also happened to be the morning after we spent the whole night dancing, drinking and carrying a girl barely drunker than ourselves home. The same morning we passed out at dawn. Lucky for us, it's way too hard for me to sleep when I'm covered in sweat and it gets that hot here around 8 AM, so I am able to wake up Leigh and the two of us, both still very drunk, pull off the miracle of our lives. We find a cab, tell him where we live and are picking the remainder of the cherries off the bushes by 8:30.

Apparently morning drunkenness is something regular here, considering our friend Pijo could barely walk one morning when he promised to show us how burik is made at his uncle's bakery, but it is still new to us. It felt as if I were coming home to my mom's house, drunk and repeating in my head "act sober, act sober." Ljupco is taking care of business somewhere else, we have the bushes all to ourselves. During the day, cherry picking is a strenuous but gratifying work. But when you are still a little leathered from the night before, it is a whole new challenge. Is that branch swaying, or is it me? I swat at a cherry, only for the entire branch to dodge my grasp and leave me a little dizzy from the lilt of it. Sometimes, I have to focus my attention to the smaller blue berries (not to be confused with blueberries) that are more tedious, but at least they stand still. I can only hope that our 15 year-old friend and his father don't notice how long this is taking, or the fact that I have to sit down every few minutes to remind the world that it shouldn't spin around so fast.

It is eleven by the time we finish pulling fruit off of all of the cherry, red berry and raspberry (turns out, great hangover food) bushes and by then we have the help of Ljupco, Andrej and an older woman. All of whom either have no idea that I would fail a breathalyzer or are just too polite/used to drunks to point out my inebriation. Sometime after a hot glass of fresh goats milk and honey, we are finally sober and in retrospect, very impressed with how we conduct ourselves as drunks.