The Grants' Bulgaria Blog.

Hi all,

I kinda feel bad for talking yet again about going home (6 weeks! Oh, did I say that?), but as you can imagine, it’s been on our minds quite a bit lately.

I distinctly remember sitting in Steve and Marie Pearce’s loungeroom about 12 months ago discussing our expectations for the trip to Bulgaria. (Steve and Marie work with WEC and they generously offered to take us through some of WEC’s “preparing for living OS” material.) Well, recently, we’ve been discussing the opposite – what we’re expecting when we return.

This post isn’t about those gruesome details, but it was interesting to realise that we feel slightly apprehensive that “home” may not feel as wonderful as we’ve imagined it in every homesick moment for the last 9 months! This is irrational, of course. A result of having far too much time to think about it! But it lead to me thinking up a short list of highly important, but little things that we’re looking forward to being reacquainted with.

1. Coffee! It’s not surprising that this is the first thing on my list, right? I wrote about the coffee situation here, suffice to say that the things I love about coffee – fresh roasts, diverse origins, a well-made flat white – simply aren’t found here. I complain about it, but we nevertheless do enjoy Bulgarian coffee, amongst other cafe offerings.

2. Shopping that makes sense! Elly said she can’t wait to be able to go into a clothing store and see things that look nice, and feel comfortable enough to ask to try them on, and to be able to explain what she might be looking for… and so on. It’s a combination of cultural differences, the language barrier and fashion from the ’80s (and not the cool part of the ’80s which is “retro” now).

3. Growing something! Some people think dirt is disgusting. I can’t wait to get it under my nails as I get back into gardening. Okay, so I had a measly pot of coriander and dill during summer, but I’m talking about dirt I can dig in! Eating some home-grown vegies is something I’m certainly looking forward to. Sam and Dani: want me to build you a vegie patch?

4. Texting! After we’d been here long enough to forget some of the details of what life in Ausland was like, we realised that almost all of our social engagements were initiated by SMS. I must have sent less than 5 since we got here. It just seems like a fiddly, unreliable means of communicating, when phone calls are cheap or free! But it’ll be good to get back into.

5. Driving! I haven’t driven a car this hemisphere. I was all for giving it a go – in fact, at one stage we were considering getting a Lada – but then we saw a nasty head-on collision on the highway one night… and that turned us off the idea. Implicit in this list item is that I’m soooo looking forward to drivers who occasionally consider that wanton recklessness could lead to a painful death. Do Australian drivers still know that?

6. High fidelity! We’ve been enjoying a lot of new music this year. It only struck me this week that we really haven’t heard any of it through decent speakers. It’s either been headphones (eugh!), laptop speakers (double eugh!), or the external computer speakers we bought (not bad). I have a feeling that hearing music on some big fat speakers again is going to blow our minds (and eardrums).

7. Rain! It’s mid-Feb, so we’re almost finished our winter, yet we haven’t had a proper soaking for months! We had quite a dry autumn (not sure if that’s usual here; I prefer Tassie’s windy and wet autumns) and then it got cold. Which meant it snowed. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, but when we got caught in a nice early-spring storm last weekend, I realised how much I like (and miss) rain.

Tags: Bulgaria, Coffee, culture shock, food, Lada, music, shopping, snow, weather

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 11:37 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.