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.

Today (as long as you’re reading this hot-off-the-press on Thursday!) marks 2 months until we leave Bulgaria! So we’re continuing the list of things we’re not so keen to lose:

The following continues on from this post.

5. Not being understood: why is this a good thing? Well, for two reasons, both of which are devious! Firstly, having the ability to conduct private conversations in public can be quite handy! You know, important matters like: “Darling, you have a large piece of spinach stuck between your front teeth”, or “Don’t you think she’s a bit old to dress like her daughter?”, or “I’m a bit tired and bored, how about we make our excuses and leave?”. Secondly, once you’re used to the fact that no one is speaking a language you can understand, you simply tune them out. It’s great! No need to turn around to see why that dude behind you is yelling… he’s almost certainly not yelling in your direction! And when we go out for a coffee, the many murmurs in Bulgarian mingle together into a strange kind of white noise that’s very conducive to the kind of introspective conversations that Elly and I keep finding ourselves having lately!

We’ve been wondering what it’ll be like when we get back to Australia. Will we cope with suddenly not being able to block out all the noise? Or will we accidentally ignore people? Who knows.

6. Non-processed food: actually, Bulgarians LOVE their nasty, stale, preservative-laden processed foods! The supermarkets here are laden with such wonderful goods as: packets of cooked sausages (hellooo killer bacteria!), individually packaged (stale) croissants piped full of sickly strawberry goo, cheap chocolate bars full of cocoa-less ‘chocolate’, dubious flavours of soft drink (pictured above)… the list goes on. However, it’s also quite easy to avoid all that rubbish and we have really been enjoying doing so over here! Fruit and vegetables are cheap, as are dried beans (our new staple!), white cheese, rice and pasta. Eating out is healthier too – ‘fast food’ doesn’t really exist here, so it’s more likely to be traditional Bulgarian fare (stodgy but authentic). I would say “I hope we keep it up when we go back to Australia”, but the above basically describes what we preferred to eat anyway – except that in Australia there’s no financial incentive to buy non-processed food. I think Coles and Woollies have a secret tax on eating healthily!

7. Europeness: I suspect we Australians subconsciously or otherwise consider Europe to be altogether more authentic, or sophisticated, and truly beautiful than Ausland. If someone had told me that a year ago I would have laughed (bitterly!) in their face(s), but having spent our time here I realise that I came to Europe with that very notion tucked away in my head somewhere. The feeling first showed itself when I first entered this shady pine forest underneath Mt. Vitosha – but other might have experienced it as they walk through the doors of Chanel in Paris or Gucci in Florence*. It’s a feeling that leaves you saying “Oh yeah, I’m in Europe, baby!”. I’m afraid to say that it is cool to be in Europe, after all.

[* An additional example might be drinking cappuccinos in Venice... in saying that, I give "told you so" rights to my sister Sal, who I once mocked for her glowing (and allegedly frequent) reports of the quality of coffee in Italy!]

8. A clear and uncomplicated purpose: this one is a bit more philosophical. Around October 2008 when we made the decision to come to Bulgaria we were filled with a near-euphoric sense of purpose. I’m sure others have felt the same thing at various times in their lives – witnessing the birth of their child; accepting an amazing job offer; buying a house; deciding to follow Jesus, etc. I remember feeling lucky that I knew what the next 18 months of my life would look like (it certainly satisfied the control freak in me! For about 5 minutes).

Something of that feeling has stayed with us during our time here. Which is not to say that we haven’t struggled, or found teaching Aydin or learning Turkish difficult – but we retained the luxury of knowing what we’re here for and how long we’re required.

I have two observations about this; forgive me if they contradict each other. On the one hand, if I were asked to narrow down what I’ve learned from our experience to one thing, it would be this: that we’ve been privileged to see through David and Kathryn (and several other missionary families) what a life lived with a singular sense of purpose can achieve! What we hope to bring home is a sense that ‘we’ (meaning, ‘we mere mortals’) can live our lives with some of the same purpose. Not in the sense of striving to be over-achievers, but in the sense of living intentionally. In other words, I’d like to put more thought into how I spend my time – which includes re-evaluating how much of that time I designate “mine”.

On the other hand, sometimes desiring to find a purpose can distract us from simpler things. What I mean is that God moves in mysterious ways and we don’t always see what his purposes are – and so our own sense of purpose often has nothing to do with it! Elly and I think that’s true with our trip to Bulgaria. We certainly felt called to be here, and had that sense of purpose that I described. And we know that God used us to help the Richards’ at the perfect time. But what will we take home from it? Well, we’re not returning to missionary college – though that was a possibility before we left Australia. Neither are we returning to Australia to employ our skills in teaching 6-year-olds, or speaking Turkish. In fact, we can’t really pinpoint what it is that we’ll take from our experience here – personal growth, God’s timing, something we may never know. What we do know is that it’ll be good for us.

Eww. And before I get all mushy, I’m outta here!

Cheers

Stu.

Uh-oh.

It’s been too long between blogs! We beg your collective pardon. We promised not to let our blog ‘fizzle out’ so hopefully we can get back on track!

It’s 10 weeks until we leave Bulgaria! That’s an attractively short period of time, to us. One of the other missionary families asked us if we were looking forward to leaving. We diplomatically answered that we were looking forward to getting home, rather than leaving Bulgaria. It’s true; as the time for us to leave gets closer – amidst continuing feelings of homesickness! – we are also beginning to imagine some of the things we’ll miss when we come home.

That’s the topic of this blog: things we’ll miss about Bulgaria, and – on a slightly less upbeat note – things we’re worried about in relation to returning home.

1. The price of things: we normally loathe talking about money with our language helper, Mirem, since it makes us feel so awkward. By which I mean ‘rich’, of course. But today we had an interesting discussion where we started comparing the differing prices of things in Australia and Bulgaria. It started with the price of the internet. We explained that our sharehouse prior to leaving Australia was on a AU$70 per month plan (between 5 people)… whereas we’re paying BGN16 (AU$13) per month here for 4 times the speed and no download limit. Bread is AU$3-4 a loaf compared to 80st (AU$0.65); tomatoes AU$6-10/kg compared to BGN1-2 (AU$0.80-1.65). Mirem was horrified. We explained that people earn more in Australia. I think we gave the figure of AU$1500 per month which, on reflection, would be below the minimum wage. Mirem suggested that the average wage here is BGN240 (AU$190) a month. On top of that, David recently told us that unemployment rises to around 40% in the mahalle during winter. Actually, facts like that kind of put any whingeing I might have had about how expensive everything is in Australia into perspective…

2. The Lada: what can mere words say?

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3. Dodginess! I remember writing about this from Istanbul before we’d even made it to Bulgaria last June. There’s a completely different attitude here to things like safety, efficiency, hygiene etc… Chainsawing firewood in a kindergarten playground during recess? Yup, no worries. Postal clerks going about their business merrily ignoring a room full of people wanting to get their letters stamped? You betcha! BBQ chickens on a set of rotisseries with raw chickens dripping onto cooked ones? Absolutely. We saw equally good examples in both Turkey and Romania, too – obviously it’s just we uptight Australians who worry about such things. Ok, so I’m not about to ignore everything I know about preventing salmonella outbreaks, but there’s certainly something liberating about not worrying so much!

4. Snow: ok, this is more relevant to right now where it’s minus 6 degrees outside and steadily snowing! It’s been cold all week but it’s only just started snowing again. It makes all the frostbite worth it. I went for a (short) walk after dinner just so I could kick around in the crazy stuff. Did you know that when it’s this far below freezing the snow on the ground behaves like very fine sand? And you have no hope whatsoever of making it into a snowball? It’s like dust!

Well, I’ll be uncharacteristically succinct and leave it there for now. I had some much longer and more boring thoughts to share with you, but hey, I’ll leave that for another time since it’s late and you’re all about to start waking up and checking all your favourite blogs, right?

Cheers,

Stu.