Corn, cereal, princesses, sausages, the scottish and a friend.

Back again. I put some new pics up on that website http://picasaweb.google.com/Roryjnolan and you can view them. they are from earlier this month when we went to this city called Velikno Turnivo for a conference. It was a really pretty place and they even had their own awesome castle from a really long time ago. And the name of the castle is dangerously close to the word for "corn" in bulgarian, so when people kept asking me if i had gone there, i got really confused. its hard to go to corn. at least here in bulgaria it is, i guess in Illinois, Ohio, Upstate New York or wherever you people are reading this, going to corn doesnt sound so strange... Speaking of corn. i dreamt of corn flakes last night. and special K. it was a pretty disappointing dream because when i woke up, all i was craving was a bowl of cereal and some cold milk. but i dont have any. in fact, i havent had a bowl of cereal since i got here. they dont really eat that stuff. instead, my breakfasts usually consist of a slice of bread, with a pork paste spread on it, and put in the toaster oven for a few minutes. when the pork paste becomes "cooked" i put some kashkaval on it. kashkaval only translates to "yellow cheese" (on a side note, only 2 kinds of cheese here: Cirene and Kashkaval. One means White Cheese, the other is Yellow Cheese. - i know, pretty specific. it always makes for a fun conversation when people ask me if we have "Kashkaval" in the states. they dont really grasp the fact that there are like 10,000 kinds of cheese in the US) but anyways, back to breakfast. so i put this yellow cheese on there and maybe some spice that is green. i dont know what it is called, but its tasty. and then i toss it back in the toaster oven for a bit. This concoction is called a "princess" and i have no idea why. toast, pork paste and cheese. open faced. And it looks just like this.

So something funny just happened... someone from scotland just got dragged to my office with a woman and he needed help translating what he was saying. It was pretty funny. I got to translate! haha that was the first time ever. and the woman understood what i was saying! i feel proud. I guess this guy buys properties here for ridiculously cheap prices, like a house for $3000 with a 3000 sq ft garden... and then he rents them for 120 dollars a month to people from england. pretty good plan i guess. says he owns 12 houses in bulgaria and is making some good money.

Anyways, still not much to do here. i bought new clothes last weekend. I went with a girl from Moravitsa to go shopping. I basically just purchased everythign she said she liked. well, not everything. but damn near close. i didnt have any clothes for winter, so i needed some warmer stuff and some new jeans cause ive lost a bunch of weight here. so i ended up with seriously the tightest fitting clothes i have ever owned. i feel like a sausage. Bulgarians have no shame in big bellies with clothes that hardly fit - in fact, its fashionable. I honestly think its a game to see how tight you can get your clothes without ripping them. and another fun fact is that most clothes here have some sort of writing on them in english. no one really understands english, so it doenst matter if the words make sense in a sentence, or if they are spelled correctly or what. just as long as they look cool. For instance, there was a shirt i was going to buy that i thought looked neat. but when i read closer the sentence on it said "all the boys say this is the highest fashion" which to me sounded a little too much like i was interested in boys, if you know what i mean. especially since it was written in cursive and was all shiny silver. so i had to turn it down. i couldnt wear it knowing the words written on it. the girl i was with didnt understand why i put it down. it made for good times. Maybe there will be some pictures of me rocking the real fashion of bulgaria. All i need next is a chain necklace and new sporty shoes.

Actually, that scottish guy that came in told me i looked more bulgarian than most bulgarians... haha! yes!

Oh, and Tom Pattison from Ridgefield will be in Sofia all next weekend! I'm going to have a friend here! someone that has known me for longer than 4 months... funny to think, not one person within like 5000 miles has known me longer than 4 months... except Alex my cousin who is living in Europe. he doesnt count becuase then it wouldnt sound as cool... :) So yea, Tom is coming and I have no idea what to do with him. there isnt really much to do here other than sit at a cafe... maybe we could go for a walk. i dont have a car or anything to get around. we would have to take buses and trains. and that takes forever. so i dunno. stay posted, ill let you know what we did... or maybe i wont depending on what we do... :)

Well maybe that's enough for now. My thoughts are with my family and friends back home. i wish you all the best of health and happiness and successes. eat a bowl of cereal for me.

Rory