Too Long...

So, since it was the end of FEBRUARY since I last posted, there is a lot to get caught up on. I will point out some highlights...

March Highlights:

Quarter of a century birthday fun - on the 23rd, I turned 25... enjoyed my time with friends

Faculty Follies - a faculty talent show that was put on as a fundraiser. Friends of mine and I did a "Thriller Remix" dance... video and photos to follow.

April Highlights:

SPRING BREAK!! - I had a wonderful visit with Brooke - we travelled to Istanbul and explored around Sofia. Too much time on the overnight train, but we saw some great sights, and had a wonderful time :) It is always wonderful to have friends/family from home visit. It seems to enable me to connect this life to my life I lived in the U.S. thus validating my experiences and the life I have lived here these past two years... weird, I know, but it is a common feeling.

Lil Jon Concert - Lil Jon came to Sofia. So weird. So crazy. And so fun... I am not sure I have had so much fun watching/listening to the worst musical talent (or lack thereof) in my life...

May Highlights (so far):

Long Weekend #1 in Koprivshtitsa - A Bulgarian/American/Ukrainian wedding. Beautiful weather, great fun, and a quintessential experience for my two years in Bulgaria. I now feel that my stay here is complete in my cultural experiences. Now, there are so many more things I would love to do and see here in this country, but there is just no way I will be able to fit it all in before I leave :) That is why I will have to return for a visit in the future. To follow the wedding, my roommates, our friend Jaime and I drove another two hours south to a place outside Plovdiv, called Bachkovo. Here there is an amazing mountain monastery and hiking in a nature reserve. It was absolutely lovely and we had a wonderful time. It was good to have a hike through the Rodope Mountains, getting some fresh air after such a "celebratory" weekend.

Rest of the month - The seniors are ALREADY finished with school (all seniors in Bulgaria are done with school by now). Graduation is in a couple of weekends, followed by another long weekend, where we have planned a return trip to Thassos, Greece. It should be a lovely way to celebrate the spring, the coming of summer, and to enjoy some beach exposure in the meantime before we finish up the school year.

I cannot believe that I am almost done here in Bulgaria. I am still looking for a job in the U.S. but I have some good leads, so keep your fingers crossed! Being here in the Bulg has been an amazing experience, and one that has led me to meet some wonderful people and friends who I hope to stay in touch with and see in the future. Bulgaria is such a beautiful and amazing country with such a unique culture that I have loved to be somewhat a part of and getting to know. Time certainly does fly...

Photos to follow!

Famous in Bulgaria!!

One of my dear friends and colleagues here at the school has been in Sofia for the past year and a half, and this year began working at my school. She has kept a blog of her adventures In & Around Bulgaria. Her blog has attracted many loyal followers, expats and Bulgarians alike. Recently she was contacted by a local TV station who wanted to make a short series about her life here in Bulgaria to show on their morning tv broadcast. It has been hysterical to watch her and our life on Bulgarian television :)

Check out the youtube links as well as her blog here:

Karolinka in Bulgaria

Here is the series that has been appearing on NOVA television. One of her blog followers recorded these mini episodes for her. Unfortunately I cannot find the first episode. Enjoy!

(I love you C!)

Riding on the bus...

Balkan Dance Practice!!

This morning I missed the 5th episode on television, but I will upload it as soon as I can find it! :)

Well done C.!

A Happy New Year - Winter in Sofia

Here in Mladost 2, with the arrival of winter, things have been taking on some crazy transformations. I have always thought that the apartment blocks outside of the entrance to our campus had some very specific degree of beauty in their utilitarian design. At night however, they look spectacular as if part of a New York City skyline...

High Density Housing

New York City. Sofia, Bulgaria.

After the Snow

Jack the Snow Dog :)

The Best of...

Munich, Germany! (Thanksgiving Break)



After an epic evening at the Hoffbrauhaus brewery, where they serve beer in 1 liter increments, we left on an early train (which we barely made even after sprinting through the giant central train station a little worse for wear) to go to the "Walt Disney Castle" near the Austrian border.

A 12 person bike... that serves gluwein. Fantastic! :)

Christmas Is Coming!

It is Official! Christmas is almost here. I don't know where it came from, because last that I knew it was Thanksgiving, and I was on a trip to Munich, Germany. Now I find myself at home, in Maine with the company of my family and all the craziness that is our preparation for our Christmas Eve party.... I have some clutch photos that I want to share with you from the past month or so. Last week, we had our debut with the Balkan Dance group from school, in our school's Winter Concert... We are no where near as talented as our students (who I would say are phenomenal) but we certainly have some fun! Not to mention, the students find it hysterical that their two-left footed international teachers are dressed in traditional folk costume and attempt to dance on stage for the whole school...

A portion of the international teachers in our festive Balkan costumes, post performance!

I Love Biology Lab

I love teaching my students about the stuff that we do in the lab. It is just much more fun to see them get excited about seeing things through a microscope lens. My students just love being in the lab and being able to see things really up close. One of the students took photos in the lab the other day and I thought they were pretty great looking.

Yay for microscopes and biology lab!

ACS Faculty Thanksgiving... a.k.a. The Great Pie Making Odyssey

Lindsay and I decided that for Thanksgiving dinner, we would prepare pumpkin and apple pie for everyone. I just could not think of having Thanksgiving dinner with the people who are like a family to me, without pumpkin and apple pie. Some people do pecan and perhaps other harvest-y type pies, but I have always grown up with pumpkin and apple.

Now, here in Bulgaria, pumpkin pie does not come easy. There really is no "quick" way to a delish pumpkin pie, since there is no canned pumpkin or pre-made pie crust. Lindsay really wanted pumpkin, so she found a recipe online that told us how to make the filling from fresh pumpkin, tiikveniik as it is fondly referred to in these parts. Roast or boil the pumpkin, mash, add ingredients and spices, pour into pie crust. No problem. We sent our requests in and our recipes so the school could purchase the ingredients for us to start prepping on Friday.

We showed up on Friday afternoon, around 4 to already find some ambitious souls in the cafeteria preparing their ingredients for the feast that was to follow the next day. I was snooping around the back of the cafeteria (which is a sketchy place on its own... circa 1955... pure communist design) and I walked around to corner to find....

... the LARGEST three pumpkins I had EVER seen before. I am kicking myself that I did not run home to fetch my camera because the next three hours were filled with the HILARITY that ensued as Lindsay attempted to get the pumpkins washed, cut into reasonable baking chunks, and then smashed up into puree... I will just describe the situation as best I can using as few sentences as possible...

Image #1: The utter jaw dropping shock in Lindsay's face as I showed her the size of the pumpkins. I am not sure how much they weighed, but they were heavy and around the size of a smallish medium sized exercise ball... like, way larger than your typical jack-o-latern. Plus they are white-ish... the orange pumpkins are not that great to eat.

Image #2: Lindsay wrestling with the pumpkins in the

industrial sized sink to get them cleaned. Turns out pumpkins are slippery when wet.

Image #3: SOmehow the pumpkins made it in one piece from the back room, to the sink, and then onto the table, where they slowly met their end. First a butcher knife... too small and whimpy. We then found a kitchen axe (not sure what the kitchen axe traditionally is used for. for that night, it was for hacking at the pumpkins).

Image #4: Beads of sweat slowly forming on Lindsay and Carmine's foreheads as they take turns with the axe to battle the pumpkins into smaller, more manageable pieces.

Image #5: The hysterical laughter coming from the school cafeteria lady who was there to help us in the kitchen. She was just standing off to the side and laughed as Carmine and Lindsay took turns with the axe. By now there were bits of pumpkin and chunks of the stuff flying all over the place... and the lunch lady just kept laughing.

FINALLY after some time has passed, the three giant pumpkins are into smaller hunks, and are spread out among about 6-8 platters to be put in the over to bake. Pumpkin needs to soften.

Image #6: Lindsay's slow anger and frustration as she realizes some of them are burning in these Communist era ovens but are still remaining uncooked and hard. Didn't quiet realize how hard it was to burn something and yet it still remain undercooked.

Eventually the pumpkin came out of the oven, there were several hands there to help pull the pumpkin apart and into a GIANT stove top pan. There would be pumpkin forever.... soooooo much.

All the while I had been making the pie crusts/dough with the ingredients and tools I was not totally familiar with. It was turning out okay, and we made a few preliminary pies to work out our timing and to familiarize ourselves with the ovens. They came out pretty well so I was happy.

Saturday though, was showtime. We had to make pies enough to feed about 150 people. We decided to make as many pies as we could, and that people would eat them or take home the extra. I think we ended up with something absurd, like 15 LARGE pies.... sooo much. There was still left over pumpkin.

The remainder of the pumpkin has been portioned off into bags.

Some people have already come to pick up some of it to use for their own cooking, but right now we have enough in our freezers to last for quite the long time!

More Adventures

...include Thanksgiving for the entire faculty which was a fantastic time on Saturday afternoon. I think I can confidently claim that I will never again attempt to make homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie (from whole pumpkin to pie) for a large group ever again. haha. It was not so bad, but without certain conveniences like pastry cutters and canned pumpkin, and tools in the circa 1950's kitchen of our school cafeteria, this made for quite the undertaking. THANKFULLY the 14 or so pies we made came out mostly beautifully, with a few exceptions, but it all tasted delicious! Pictures, I promise, will be up soon once I have finished the grades I need to submit for tomorrow... oops!

Another ongoing event in the adventures of the ladies of Pink house: our battle with the washing machine... Here is another follow-up email that was sent by my roommate, which I found particularly amusing:

Hi ---,

Do you have any update or ETA on the replacement washing machine at Pink House? I tried to do laundry today and it didn't go well - it ended with me saying some very harsh words to the machine after it nearly crushed a few of my fingers while trying to run away. It would be nice to have laundry be a non-event again, so anything that you can do to hurry the new machine along to our house would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
A

I certainly hope that our washing machine can be fixed soon... but it does make for some amusing stories! I have not tried using it recently, especially with Abby's stories, however my laundry sitch is getting a bit dire!