There are 7 weekends left for us here. 3 are already taken care of: one in Shipka for the annual ‘field conference’ (I’m sure we’ll know what it’s all about afterwards?), a trip to London to visit Imogen and see the sights commonly seen in movies and a trip to Istanbul because that’s where we’re flying from!

It’s fun weekends like that that make time go fast.

We just enjoyed such a weekend in Kardzhali with ‘the American family’ Vera and Barry and their daughters Ruthie and Deborah. Vera had written on my facebook wall that we couldn’t possibly go to London without making the 40 minute trip south to see them. We realised that if we didn’t act now, we would procrastinate until it was too late and leave feeling slightly guilty. So we organised to spend Friday night…which then stretched into the entire weekend with them and a visiting girl, Erin from Sofia (well, Alabama via Macedonia, but that’s her story). We didn’t realise when we responded to the invitation that we’d be spending Valentine’s weekend with an American family, so it turned into a continuation of a theme of ‘Elly and Stu’s Cultural Adventures on International Holidays.’ (Not that Valentine’s Day is actually a holiday… or even one that Stu and I make a habit of recognising)

Vera and Barry started an English language school in Kardzhali in January and appear to be enjoying moderate success with a beginners’ and a pre-intermediates’ class both held twice weekly. Once a month they have a fun night on a Saturday night where both classes get together to build up their English in a fun and relaxed setting.

The first ‘English Club’ was held on Saturday night and it was Valentine’s Day themed! I have to admit I was a bit excited to be in the vicinity of Americans at this time and see how they spent their day. I won ‘Valentine spirit’ points by suggesting/volunteering to make pink icing and pipe hearts onto the cookies Erin had accidentally baked like normal and not heart shaped. I might have lost my hard-earned points by the message I wrote to Stu in his Valentine, only to regain them by making a disgustingly girly coloured one for Aydin. I didn’t mind putting aside my usual disdain reserved for St V’s and get in on the action!

The result:

The English Club was very fun! We played games and listened to a love song before sitting around a table eating the cookies and making elaborate Valentine’s cards. We also had a bit of conversation practice where us native English speakers bombarded the students with questions. The rule was we weren’t meant to reveal that we knew any Turkish (or in Erin’s case, Bulgarian – very similar to Macedonian) but it sort of came up and we got lots of questions in Turkish that we didn’t really understand. I think I’m supposed to pass on some greetings to the Richards…possibly something else? I just nodded and agreed.

Oh, and Barry makes awesome pancakes. The kind you could use as a pillow if you found yourself falling asleep at the breakfast table.

So we still have 4 weekends free. I’m sure we’ll find activities to fill them up with! We’d like to return to Kardzhali to make another video as request by St John’s’ Stepping Stones group – something we intended to do this weekend, but forgot the camera…

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As a side note: some other people who are experiencing the same countdown as us are the Richards. Yes, for those who do not yet know, David, Kathryn and Aydin will be saying goodbye to their lives and friends here in Bulgaria and returning to Australia in early April so that Aydin can enjoy school and life in an Engllish speaking context and get all the support he needs. All three are quite stressed by the move and anticipation of a new start in life. It is especially difficult for Aydin as he doesn’t fully understand why this decision is so important and every day finds a new reason to stay in Bulgaria. Stu and I are trying to maintain routine by dutifully turning up for school and try to keep him focussed, but it’s hard amongst the busyness of a house being packed up. At the same time, we’re trying to dampen down our own enthusiasm about going home in respect of their feelings (but we’re pretty sure they know just how much we’re looking forward to our return date!).

If readers could pray that the transition back to life in Australia would go smoothly for them (and us too, I suppose) and for all of us as we plan for re-integration. We all need to find employment (well not Stu, but we can’t all be perfect) and housing and the Richards’ need to find a school that is the right fit for Aydin.

That’s about all

Elly xx

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):

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

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

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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):

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And here’s what we saw on this occasion:

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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!

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* = 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.

Hi all,

We had a great time away over Christmas and New Years’ in Romania. We ended up staying in Transylvania – enjoying the Nairns’ excellent hospitality – for nearly two weeks! It took so long to travel there and back that we felt like we needed to make it worthwhile. We spent about 50 hours on buses and trains, and Google Maps tells me that we travelled over 1600km. And we thought BG and RO were neighbouring countries!

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A Romanian phrase we used quite often over our trip was “la mulţi ani!” (pr: lah mooltz ahn) which means “to many years”. It’s quite a pretty phrase, I think, but also very useful. It’s used for Christmas, New Years’ Eve and birthdays.

James went to a village for New Years’ Eve, so it was up to Texan Dave and Elly and me to have/find/create huge amounts of fun for the countdown.

Inspired by rumours of the stoic efforts of Romanian nationals who stay up to watch the dawn on New Years’ Day, we planned to stay out late. We left the house at 11:30pm and made our way to the centre of town, where we could hear loud and decidedly “traditional” music. Sure enough, a swaggering, middle-aged Romanian guy was crooning away with a backing band of clarinet, fiddle and accordion. Sorry Dad, it was nowhere near as good as that sounds. Nevertheless, it felt so authentically Romanian that we quite enjoyed it, even after Elly pointed out that we were probably enduring the Romanian equivalent of John Farnham or someone with equivalent mass appeal.

At 11:55pm, someone was welcomed on stage with sufficient polite applause to convince us that he was the mayor (or someone like that). He gave a rousing speech (probably), but was interrupted by a large projector screen lowering down in front of him. He chuckled and popped around the side of the screen to continue his speech, but before long all the stage lights went out and the poor mayor got drowned out by fireworks.

They started a lesser array of fireworks with a minute to go. This confused us, because all of a sudden, without any counting down, there was cheering and bright lights and explosions! So, of course, we cheered and yelled out “Happy New Year” to everyone… only to see a 30-second countdown display appear on the screen shortly afterwards. Impressively, the real fireworks display after the real countdown was much better.

After the countdown an enthusiastic (ie. slightly drunk) young performer came on stage to sing some traditional Romanian songs. Based on the average age of those who sang along with him, we’re quite sure that the songs being performed were of the Auld Lang Syne ilk. Again, we were blissfully ignorant to the uncoolness. The singer eventually got the crowd to chant “Radul, Radul, Radul…” so we’re fairly sure that was his name.

Radul spoke three words of English: “oh”, “my” and “God”. He had a very strange habit of interspersing his long-winded Romanian banter between the songs with cries of “oh my Gaaad”, as if it was another way of saying “isn’t it great to be in Târgu Mureş tonight?” or something equally inane.

At one stage we spotted a bunch of people our age who we quickly decided were not locals. They were dancing too exuberantly. Some red hair and a Guinness t-shirt made me think they were Irish. I think Dave guessed that they were German (or was it Scandinavian…?). Anyway, it turns out they were Croatian.

There were six of them, and they’d travelled to Târgu Mureş because they found cheap flights there! They all spoke excellent English, which impressed me. I asked how they’d learned such good English and they quipped that they watch a lot of TV and spend a lot of time on the computer! But I think they were being humble – I suspect the language is compulsory there, as it is in Romania.

After the Radul Spectacular finished at 1am, the crowd dispersed and the clean-up began. We followed a large crowd, who turned out to be returning to their cars (and not to party). So we walked back to the main strip and found our Croatian friends again. They were looking for a party, too. Like us, they hadn’t realised that all the bars and clubs are closed for private parties on New Years Eve. Since we hadn’t booked, things were looking grim.

Luckily, we managed to crash a party in a nearby restaurant. We’d walked in to ask if they were open but the owner said “sorry, it’s a private party” and directed us to a Michael Jackson-themed bar up the road (eww). But moments later he caught up to us on the street and said “hey, the people said you can come in if you like”. So we did!

Turns out the party was 100% Hungarian, which made for a very multi-cultural experience: 2 Aussies, 1 Yank, 6 Croats and several Hungarians in a Romanian taverna. (Hungarians make up about half the population of Translyvania, since historically the region was a part of Hungary.) They served us sausages with mustard and crusty bread, which was highly appropriate since: a) it seemed a very Hungarian meal and b) it was 2am and therefore the perfect time for such stodgy cuisine!

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We had a good time. Since then, we’ve returned to Bulgaria after an epic 2-train journey of 28 hours. We’re looking forward to staying right where we are until it’s time to catch a plane to ‘Straya! Here’s the plan until then:

- Start school (term 1) this coming Monday;

- Teach for about 8 weeks;

- Have a week off around my birthday (March 9);

- Teach another 2-3 weeks;

- 2 days after the end of term 1, we fly home (April 4)!

Writing it down like that has really made it seem like no time at all! It’s less than 3 months until we leave! We are of course very excited to be going home, but I think as it approaches our feeling will become increasingly mixed. Stay tuned for our philosophising about that particular experience in later blog posts! For now, suffice to say that we’ve talked about it (what else do you do on 4 x 12 hour train rides?) and set ourselves some goals.

Essentially, we want to make the most of the rest of our time here. It will be very tempting to “tune out” towards the end of our trip instead of allowing ourselves to be stretched and challenged until our last day. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the various cultures (let alone languages) we meet every day, so there plenty more “experience” to be had by us before April. Feel free to ask us how we went with those goals in a few months’ time!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers

Stu.