Sofia to Aya Sofia...

oh, and i might have forgotten to mention that I leave for Istanbul in a week from tomorrow.
which is, you know, exciting and stuff.
:-)

lately

let's see...
this weekend was good.
i stayed in Zlataritsa because 1) my atm card wasn't working, 2) i'm saving money for Turkey.
but it makes it a lot easier to save when you have no access to your money.
fortunately though it is working once again, which means I don't have to ration out my apples anymore. I can indulge in them freely.
speaking of food, because it is something i love to do, i made rabbit this weekend.
yeah, about a month ago a baba gave me a frozen rabbit that i can only assume she had raised and killed herself, because that is how they do it here. talk about free range organic...
well this was after i declined her offer for chicken, telling her that i don't really eat meat. she goes "oh, you don't eat meat? ok, well then here you go!" and handed me a rabbit. because apparently nowadays rabbits are made of vegetables...
to make a long story short it would have been rude to refuse again, so i thanked her and took my frozen hunk of rabbit meat home with me.
saturday night i had some free time so i thought i'd utilize the dead carcass in my freezer and cook dinner for my friends here.
i made rabbit with white wine sauce and rosemary.
i'm not gonna lie. it smelled so good i tried some.
it was probably the most delicious thing i have ever tasted in my life.
i cooked it for three hour so the meat was really tender (yuck, i can't believe i'm talking about how tender meat is...)
i am definitely not going to make it a habit to eat foods such as this, but....well, it's good to know i have the ability to cook meat if i have to. even rabbit.


things are definitely going better at site now.
i decided to not worry about the jewery thing. we don't have the right material to make the jewelry i know how to make. what to do...
well i thought back to when i was in high school when we made those hemp bracelets and necklaces and stuff.
so i went to the lev store, bought some 50 stotinki twine, and it worked perfectly.
super cheap, and the kids love it.
it's the cool new thing in zlataritsa.
so here is my gratitude to my high school friend, Courtney Chandler, for teaching me how to make them, oh so many years ago. :-)
oh, and i also taught the kids how to make martinitza... which is a traditional bulgarian bracelet for the first of march. funny, an american teaching bulgarians how to make a traditional bulgarian accessory... but i guess they liked my new take on it. (so thanks to whoever taught me how to make friendship bracelets when i was like 7 years old... never knew it would come in handy as a 26 year old peace corps volunteer)

on a remotely related note:



this is a picture of the bracelet one of my 8th graders made me. (i definitely didn't teach this, as i don't know how to knit)
he made it last night at home after jewelry group and gave it to me today during my tuesday english group. how many 8th grade boys knit their teachers bracelets??
super nice.
i love it.


anyway, to avoid any tangents that i could possibly go off on, i will just post a couple pictures from this weekend instead.
it was Todorov Den. which means that it was the name day of everybody with the name of Todor, or any name sounding similar to it.
They have a horse race... I don't know why this is so or the symbolism behind it... i will ask tonight at my Bulgarian lesson and let you guys know if it is interesting enough to retell.

ok, well i have to run, i'm hungry and i have a bowl of yogurt with apples and honey calling to me.

ok. pictures.
чао!

so i've actually been busy lately.

which means i'm roughly 1,000 times happier.

made it to turnovo saturday for some coffee with a few other volunteers.
back to turnovo on sunday to pick up a visiting guest from japan for whom i was, get this...
the translator.
hahahahahaha.
which is extra hilarious considering that half of the people here (the half that i don't talk with) think that i can't speak any bulgarian at all. so the fact that they asked me to translate showed how totally out of other options they were. which is fine, because i knew i could handle it. and even if i couldn't, i was the only one who knew what i was saying, so if i just started making stuff up neither party would know.

not that i would do that.

that would be untruthful.

but i'm just saying.

anyway, i didn't mind because at least it gave me something productive to do.

turned out to be one of my best times so far in bulgaria. Yuri (her name) was great.
she is a 23 year old student from japan studing in Russia who just kind of felt like seeing a little of the bulgarian countryside.
it was a lot of fun, we hung out for two days while i impressed everyone around with my totally crappy translations...but hey, a crappy translation is better than no translation.
we went to Elena and walked around, she helped out with my jewelry class, we went to the parents home of this bulgarian wrestler from the next city over.
apparentally he is now living in japan as a sumo wrestler and is pretty famous there.
yuri thought we were just going to look at the house... but no, we went in, met the fam, took pictures, they gave us some chocolate.
she was so excited. it was like on one of those tv shows when you get to meet a celebrity. she didn't even know what to say.
she was only here two days, but i miss her.
it was nice to have someone else in town to speak english to.
but now i have a standing invitation to visit tokyo anytime i want. :-)

just a little thank you

well, i just looked at my last post and i think i actually had the intention of writing an entry but must have for some reason just posted it with only a title.
sorry.
but yeah, we had snow.
for like two days.
now it's back to spring-like weather.

anyway, the whole point of this is to say thank you to all the people that sent me christmas/birthday/no reason cards and packages.
they really help and bring my mind back to the people i love and have loved for such a long time.
not that i need stuff to be happy, obviously that isn't it. (although the food and music and candles and clothes are nice :-)
it's just that you care to send it.
i love you all.
MUAH!

snow.