Here be Elly taking up where Stu left off on what we are most looking forward to at home.

8. Ninja! (That’s our cat, by the way.)

Ninja, Ninja, Ninja. Where to start?

We miss cuddling him, conversing with him, chasing him and his skinks out of the house, laughing at him as he sits forlornly outside in the rain he insisted going out in, watching friends’ expressions of bewilderment when he uses his door knocker to announce that he’d like to be let in, blowing his fur off our faces during moulting season, snuggling with him in bed in winter, teasing him, feeding him scraps as we prepare dinner, watching him stalk insects and puddles of water, laughing at him choking down a worming tablet…and more!

Mum took this photo of him at their front gate, calling it the ‘When will they be home?’ photo. Aww.

We hope he’ll greet us with his little ‘hello’ meow when he sees us again… (sounds something like ‘re! re!’ …or does writing that confirm my status as a crazy cat lady?)

9. EFTPOS.

Who wouldn’t miss this glorious piece of technology that allows you to drain your bank account without giving you a statement so you can keep an eye on your spending? Uhh… good point. But it’s convenient, yes? And we love convenience, don’t we? We’ll feel much safer as we walk the streets without pocketfuls of cash.

Relatives of EFTPOS: Direct Debit and Online Banking. Who wouldn’t like to pay phone and internet bills from the comfort of your home and have the leisure to think of more important things instead of wondering when the rent is due? Welcome to the 21st century, may Bulgaria catch up soon!

10. Our Bed.

We’ve heard reports that our huge Queen sized ensemble bed with a sprung base and pillow-top is already waiting for us in our new room at Sam and Dani’s house. We hope so, because we are looking forward to finally sleeping in comfort.

We gave up on our Communist-issue bed here months ago. I say bed; it’s better described as two hammocks side by side with a futon mattress flopped on top. Communist generosity at its finest! Not very good for the back or a full night’s sleep. We’re now on the floor on a foam mattress loaned to us by the Richards, which is slightly better!

This guy knows what we’re talking about. Great blog of his; you should check it out!

11. Quality control.

All the things I hated about working at Target I’ve grown to appreciate here. Smile at the customers! Always offer them assistance! If something has slightly damaged packaging, mark it down! If a customer returns something that’s proven to be faulty, give them their money back! No questions asked!

This doesn’t even include the rigmarole products go through before being allowed to leave the factories. Anyone who has caught themselves staring mesmerised at one of those boring in-store Rivers videos will know what I’m talking about.

I’m not saying that everything in Bulgaria is dodgy, but the following examples certainly were! Humf bought a ski jacket when he was here and it started to fall apart the first time he wore it in snow. We’ve bought more than 20 biros since being here and threw most of them out in disgust after a very short while. Even my big brown sleeping-bag style jacket from Romania has seen early retirement after the zip broke.

12. Cooking for a party.

We developed quite a reputation back home for cooking for large numbers of people. Birthday parties, quiz nights, Synod, Christmas Eve party, ‘just because a bunch of people have rocked up from Hobart’ nights… just say the words and we’ll create a feast and a lot of fun.

We are so looking forward to doing this again, that I’ve already volunteered our services to a friend for her 21st birthday party. When I broke this news to Stu, instead of giving me the withering look he usually awards me when I volunteer him without asking first, he instead expressed great disappointment that the birthday isn’t until late October and he’d have to wait.

If anyone has need of caterers for an earlier time slot (say anyone born on or around April 29th for example) then send us a message and we’ll see what we can do!

13. The Australian Accent.

This kind of sums up Sal’s comment from the last post.

It’s not quite enough that we miss being surrounded by English speakers, because when we talk with the Koreans or the Americans, it’s nice but not the same. It’s the way Aussies talk (ie: lazily). I read a very Australian book to Aydin today – Gala Koala of La Scala by someone named Cheryl. Gala the Koala is accused of telling, among other things, a ‘whopper’, ‘bluey’, ‘tall tale’ and something ‘hard to swallow.’ Australianisms at their finest! Reading this story out in any accent other than Australian would be a crime!

No more laughing at the pitiful Australian accents delivered by American actors on the tv. We want the real thing!

Oh, and ‘skitties’ – we still derive great entertainment from that story! Thanks Sal!

14. Being with good friends.

Road trips, camping trips, post-work coffee, swimming at the Gorge, tennis, coffee after church, tv nights, movie nights, coffee before any organised activity, playing the Wii, competing on Singstar, morning or afternoon tea coffee, barbies, fish and chips, ‘most coffees made in a day’ tally, Monday Night Group, boardgames, ‘introducing someone to coffee’ coffee:  things we did with our friends.

Of course, when with a group of people there’s always that time when the conversation stops and everyone stares around the room awkwardly.

Some could argue that with our group of friends, we should never worry about awkward silences, but when they do happen we don’t care because we’re comfortable with our friends no matter the awkwardness.

And there’s a good lot of awkwardness to be had. We’re looking forward to being back with you guys!

Sorry loyal readers for being absent on the blogging front recently. My blog ideas drought is now over and I am back! I even have lots of ideas stored up in the drafts so I’ll be stealing the limelight from Stu for a little while, mwah haha.

Cheers

Elly xx

ps Read Imogen’s blog. We were racing and she won. I say ‘racing’, what I mean was ‘I was encouraging her using friendly competition.’ You all have something to read now so everyone’s a winner!

Here’s a bit of a photographic suspense-mystery-thriller-romantic comedy* for you.

This is a typical view from our apartment balcony (in summer):

—

Here’s the part of the picture I want to draw your attention to. Our gorgeous disused power plant:

—

Here’s what it looks like at the moment… notice anything missing?

—

Well, of course, I assured Elly that power plant cooling towers don’t just go missing! So of course it had to be a result of the 10cm snowfall we had the night before, combined with sub-zero temperatures, combined with a slight wind blowing against the side of the cooling tower we could see from our apartment. Completely plausible!

But since it was a sunny Sunday and a balmy minus 4 degrees, we decided to go for a walk to investigate. Did you know that it can be quite sunny, yet remain below zero? I didn’t.

Here’s what we saw last time we walked there (with Humf):

—

And here’s what we saw on this occasion:

—

But we weren’t quite sure, so we went a bit closer this time:

They knocked down HOW many tonnes on concreteness??

We can only assume they were able to dismantle and sell it. Check your local Trading Post this week for a bargain cooling tower:

Dale: Dad, someone’s selling a Nuclear Cooling Tower.

Dad: How much are they askin’?

Dale: Mill’yun Leva.

Dad: Tell ‘em they’re dreaming!

—

* = I promised to throw in some romantic comedy, so it’s just as well I can wish Elly a

Happy 4th Wedding Anniversary today! Hi Elly. You’re nice. I kinda like you.

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