You're a good friend... sometimes.

So I got a text this morning from one of my good friends. It was a sentence in Albanian: "ju jeni mik i mirë ndonjëherë." I could read a few words but was struggling with the others. I desperately wanted to impress her by understanding what she said just like she impressed me by texting me in Albanian (with the help of google translate.)

Ok, you can do this I thought... just piece it together.

ju jeni - "you are." Easy, I have that one down and I don't even have to think twice about it.  
mik - mik, mik, mik ??? I haven't learned this word yet. Stop searching your brain, it's not in there.
i mirë - "good" or "well." Mirëmëngjes means "good morning". Unë jam mirë means "I am well"... good or well. Check. Next.
Ndonjëherë - think, think, think. I know this word. Always? No. Sometimes. Yes, sometimes. Ndonjëherë, sometimes I let down my hair -- ok not really, but that's how I remember the word.

You are ? good sometimes... you are ? well sometimes... What is she trying to tell me? I am something sometimes...

Ok. As much as I wanted to I couldn't translate it on my own, now I had to rely on google translate for some help translating it back to English. "Ju jeni mik i mirë ndonjëherë" - "you are a good friend sometimes."

I am a good friend sometimes. Ok cool. Yeah. Sometimes I'm a good friend. Other times I'm not? That's kinda bold though, and doesn't really seem like something she would say, but thanks? I'll take it as a compliment.
 
Naturally I had to bust her chops. I replied to her text saying: "I may be a 'good friend sometimes' but you're a good friend 'gjithmonë' - "always'".

Her reply: "Did it translate to good friend sometimes? what a horrible compliment. I thought it said 'you are the best friend ever.'"

I proceeded to put her sentence into google translate, it came back "you are a good friend sometimes." But when I typed in "you are the best friend ever" it came back with the sentence she sent me. They were both the same though. Why doesn't this make sense? Something is not adding up. Somehow we lost something in translation. Apparently ndonjëherë means both "ever" and "sometimes."

So if there's a moral to this story, here it is: many words, phrases, sentences are going to get lost in translation when I am in Albania. It's just bound to happen. I hope, like this situation, that the outcome is funny and not offensive.