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.

Merry Christmas faithful readers! If you are reading this on Boxing Day, then you are indeed dedicated, so thankyou!

We hope you all had a good day yesterday with lots of good times and little stress. We’re here in Romania with Jon, Margot and James Nairn and really enjoyed ourselves!

Here’s a short (yeah right) run down of our day:

8am: We wake up and turn on our laptops. Soon the apartment is filled with the joyful tune of ‘boo di doo boop’ as family in Australia – who were by that stage well and truly over-indulged – called us on skype to tell us all about how fun it is to have Christmas in summer and to ask if it snowed. It didn’t snow, but there’s still week old snow out there so we’re not complaining.

9-10am: A batch of chocolate filled croissants emerge from the oven and Team Jon and Stu go hard on the coffee making. Yummo!

11:30am-ish: The other Christmas orphans – Texan Dave and Canadian Andrea – arrive which means we can divvy up the presents and rip into them.

We’ve become severely disenchanted by the shopping in Haskovo, so I was impressed and delighted by how thoughtful the presents were. Of course, we are biased towards Romanian shopping! I love the orange spiral earrings Margot found for me, they’re so fun! We are also very taken by the cute little European-esque Santa ornament, he will definitely be treasured for the rest of our lives. With those and the beautiful candle set and big box of choccies we were really spoiled by them!

We in turn presented the Nairns with a ‘Snowed In Survival Pack’ which will aim (probably in vain) to get us socialising together and not on our computers if we do indeed get snowed in. The pack included the last bag of Humphrey-roasted coffee, Bulgarian wine, home-baked brownies and a 1000 piece puzzle of Sighişoara. Fun times ahead!

1pm: LUNCH!!! Jon and Margot created a wonderful lunch of roast chicken and veggies for us. It was probably the first Christmas where I appreciated hot food! They very thoughtfully made sure to include lots of root veggies (potato, carrot and parsnip) that we’ve sorely missed because of uranium avoidance. Dessert was homemade apple pie and custard with ice cream. I inadvertently started everyone off singing the Happy Birthday song with ‘Merry Christmas’ substituted in. Quite strange.

After lunch: More skyping. The non-Australians were shocked to hear that my brother Fred woke our parents up after midnight just to tell them I was on the phone. It was quite a foreign concept to them that we would treat our parents with such disrespect! The rest of us found it pretty funny and not at all unusual. We continued the introduction to Australian irreverence as we played a game called Dutch Blitz which involved Margot declaring that James needed more alcohol so he would stop winning and James launching a counter-attack against her. How dare a son treat his mother like that! [Dutch Blitz is a great card game, but I think you can only get it from the US]

Now: We just watched a funny little animated movie called Igor together before the parentals went to bed and Andrea went home. The boys are now watching a horror movie ’30 Days of Night’ which I think has vampires in it. The movie is set at night, when there’s snow on the ground and after the viewing, Dave himself will have to walk home alone in the snow in Transylvania – the birthplace of vampires. How fun for him!

Boxing Day plans: I think sleeping in, puzzle starting, left over eating and beer drinking are definitely on the menu.

Hey, we sound like a family!

Merry Christmas everyone,

Love Elly and Stu xx

7:07am – Oops. Woke up early again. After nearly 4 months of being here, there’s still a lingering sense of “oh my goodness we’re on the other side of the world!”. It’s this feeling that drags me the rest of the way into consciousness. That and the fact that 7-9am (which is 2-4pm AEST) is the perfect time to catch up with people in Australia… Early morning chats with people back home are a nice treat – this morning I ask Humf how church was, Thomas how their trip to Melbourne is going, and Sam whether he’s found that fifty dollars yet.

8am – The alarm goes off and I glare at it. It’s mocking me, after all. Since one or both of us generally wake up early, I’d say the alarm actually achieves its purpose no more than once a fortnight! But it does serve another purpose: to remind me to get off the ‘net and go have a shower and breakfast. I made freshly toasted muesli last night and we still have some raspberries so brekky is great. Then it’s coffee time! Unfortunately Elly’s birthday present of some fresh coffee beans ran out yesterday. Sad, I know. Nevertheless, I’ve been experimenting with making our morning coffee Turkish-style (see The Coffee Post for details). Not bad – I’m no Turkish barista yet. It’s quite hard to get right.

9:30am – Time for school! We walk up the road (3 mins away!) to Dave and Kathryn’s place. Today I’m doing a Maths unit on mass so I wander around the house and find a few heavy books, a ping pong ball and a feather. Elly graciously lets me go first (the before-morning-tea shift).

Oh dear. Aydin is a little bit excitable today. I know perfectly well that he understands what heavy and light mean but when I ask Aydin, what does heavy mean? he’s staring vaguely into space. I ask again but get little more than a long “ummm…”. I ask a third time and he snaps out of his daydream with an exaggerated impersonation of someone waking up from a deep sleep. Nice acting, for a 6-year-old! Again, Aydin, what does heavy mean? Instantly he tells me and points at the heaviest item on the table.

10:45am – Aydin yells yippee as I inform him that we’ve finished maths and that it’s time for morning tea. Kathryn makes us coffee and then the four adults sit down with a cuppa and bickies while Aydin has some vanilla soy milk (er … yum?). Then Elly and I have a catch up with D+K – we chat about how our Turkish lessons have been going (great!… we think!) and what might be happening this week. Soon it’s Elly’s turn to do English with Aydin.

12:30pm – Elly’s teaching is over and this time we all yell yippee. Sometimes we stay for lunch with Kathryn (and Dave if he’s about) – but today Elly and I have to go home to study Turkish! We have a quick lunch of bread with some awesome eggplant pickle that I made (yum). Then … well we should start studying straight away but instead we have some deserved “chill-out” time. Elly jumps on Facebook (not always! – she got a great selection of books for her birthday but has wisely chosen to ration them!) and I start reading The Shack. Interesting book. I am very impressed with the quality of the writing, which surprises me for such a “#1 Bestseller”-type book (cynical, I know). The content is engrossing and some of the ideas are wonderful, but there’s something about the fact that the author writes as God that makes me uneasy. Hard to explain. Maybe I’ll blog about it once I’m finished.

3pm – Oh no! Our Turkish lesson starts in an hour and we haven’t studied yet! Again! Today’s homework is particularly difficult – trying to memorise the whole Lord’s Prayer in Turkish! I never realised that the prayer was so long! We get up to:

English: give us today our daily bread;

Turkish: bugün bize gündelik ekmeğimizi ver;

Literal: today to us daily bread our give;

After that our brains are fried and it’s quarter-to anyway.

4pm – we buy a kilo or two of peaches for Mirem and walk to the mahalle. It takes about 15 minutes from our house so it’s pretty close. The mahalle (the word means neighbourhood and/or slum) is a section of most Bulgaria cities where the Millet people (a marginalised ethnic minority) live. Haskovo mahalle (also known by the name of the actual suburb: Republika) is a pretty amazing place. Most people in the mahalle are very poor – those who aren’t poor generally move somewhere else! – and it can be quite a contrast walking from our comfortable and distinctly Bulgarian neighbourhood into the mahalle. The conditions there are often akin the the developing world – houses cobbled together and/or falling apart, sewerage water running down the dirt roads, people getting by without hot water or refrigeration. But the community in the mahalle is amazing! Especially in the evenings, the place comes alive – the older people sit on chairs outside their homes and watch the kids and youth play and muck about; there’s always loud Turkish gangster-rap blaring from somewhere; cars hoon through the main street beeping to persuade everyone to get out of their way! Great fun.

Anyway, eventually we make it to Mirem’s, say our merhabas and come inside. She asks us how we are (narsılsınız?) and offers us kahve. She’s a great host! They don’t have hot water, let alone a coffee maker, but Mirem sends one of her kids to the cafe outside their house to buy two espressos, which she then pours into her finest china for us. I really appreciate that effort.

We agreed for our lessons to be one hour long. This one, typically, goes for 2 and a half. After it we are very much exhausted! We mumble out our hoşça kals and head off home. The walk back through the mahalle is fun at this time of night.

6:45pm – we get home, having no desire whatsoever to cook dinner! But after an emergency banana I feel up to boiling some water for potatoes. We got 5kg of tiny potatoes for 1 leva (AU$0.85) – for some reason they consider small potatoes to be worth less per kg! – so they’ve been on the menu a bit lately. But we love potato salad! And the mayonnaise here is perfect for it.

Later in the evening we sit down and watch an episode of Long Way Down – that motorcycle travelogue by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. They go through Ethiopia! But I didn’t see any coffee… maybe next episode? We’re always (always!) completely exhausted after Turkish (and most evenings in general), so we just chill out, reading books and watching TV. Tonight we don’t risk an evening coffee – wouldn’t want to wake up early again!