Scooter's coming... along with 5 strangers.

Last Friday I went to Sofia to visit the dog. I went with Cveti and she wanted to see some cats while we were down there. Well, while we were looking at cats, at a different shelter than the dog I went to look at, I noticed the dogs they had there. There were about 6-7 dogs hanging out in separate fenced in areas with their dog houses. All of them were either going crazy that I was there, or they were completely uninterested. They were barking and climbing and running and jumping... except for one. He was in the way back and he was just standing with his front paws on the chain link fence looking at me. He had black hair, with a darling face and his ears were kind of cocked-up in curiosity. As I walked around a little, he would lose sight of me. He would quickly find a new spot where he could see me and pop his head back up. I was impressed by his attentiveness, curiosity, and self control (because he wasn't barking or going crazy). I asked if I could see him. When they brought him around, I saw that he was a small black lab mix of 2 years old. He was super cute and incredibly friendly. I fell in love with him immediately. We did go look at the other dog, the one I originally went to see. He was super cute as well, but smaller and more like a lap dog/princess. When I returned home, I wrote to the organization and told them I wanted to foster the first dog I saw on accident. The name they gave him is Bruno, but he looks more like a Scooter to me... They were very happy that I wanted to take him into my apartment and they are dropping him off tomorrow (Friday the 26th). I am super excited! I get to spend all weekend with him. He is really attractive and very athletic. He seems to be really smart. We will see!

I also got news that is really exciting for me. Peace Corps is looking at Koynare to host 5 new trainees from mid May until the end of July! It is not 100% certain yet that Koynare will be a site for them, but they are strongly considering it. I hope that Koynare gets 5 new volunteers! It will be awesome to have 5 more Americans here who are enthusiastic about starting their service as volunteers. If you know me, you know how much I enjoy welcoming people who feel out of place and how I like to assist in their adjustments to their new environment. I am going to have a lot of fun helping and working with this new volunteers with their adjustments to life as a volunteer and living/working in Bulgaria! WOOO!!! 

I'm setting up connections with schools and students in the US to teach them about Bulgaria, Peace Corps, and all the fun that I am having. It's just the beginning of the relationships with the schools, so nothing has come to fruition quite yet, but I envision great things happening! At least I can be a dreamer...

And Britt... I still haven't talked to you on Skype yet... yep. That is a call out. A straight up call out. Even Catherine called me yesterday to talk. On Sunday last week, I got to talk to Mom, Dad, Kelly, Jay, Haley, Emma, and Molly... Yesterday I got Catherine... Still waiting for my big brother to step up and make the call... Ok Ok... Sorry Britt. I'm just messin with ya.

Buuuttt... If you want to meet Scooter, call me on Skype this weekend. I'll be around all weekend with the dog training him on how to live in a house and what not. 

Take care and enjoy the American coffee... I miss it.

Rory

The temperature scale: as according to Rory. and - a new friend?

another entry for the sake of having another entry. winter appears to be giving us a bit of a break here in northern  bulgaria. today is sunny and 4 degrees celsius... i guess thats near 40 maybe? and towards the end of the week the weather is supposed to get up to 11 degrees! which is like around 50? i know that 15 degrees is 60 fahrenheit... so yea. its going to get nice. here is my celsius scale. we will start from Evaporation to Glacier.
40+ = standing in front of a fan in a puddle of sweat, in my underwear, drinking water, taking salt tablets and waiting for the sun to go down.
35-40 = 8 liters of water consumed in a day, sweating from every pore in my body. ice in my freezer turns to water.
25-30 = hey look, im sweating while doing nothing!
20-25 = ahhhhh... i love wearing shorts!
15-20 = THE BEST WEATHER EVER! Rory performs at his best in these temperatures.
10-15= a nice walk around town in a sweatshirt and smile.
5-10 = hey, this aint so bad.
0-5 = hmm, its a little cold out there, i better put on a hat.
-5-0 = walk quicker, but stop to say hello to the familiar faces. carry tissues in my pocket for my runny nose. food is left in the kitchen, as it is basically a giant refrigerator.
-10 - -5= quick walk and a quick wave with a smile. (conversations outside are limited to "studeno li e?" translation: "are you cold?" conversations inside become "are you cold in your apartment?")
-20 - -10 = standing by the fire burning stove to escape the chill and willing my beard to grow faster and thicker.
-20 - -25 = quick inventory check of the amount of wood/inflammable items i have. make a fire, and sleep next to it. also, consumption of red wine increases to warm the fingers. computer usage limited in fear of frostbite. food and toothpaste in the kitchen freeze solid.
-25 and below =  contemplate burning furniture and unneeded clothing for heat. wear everything that is made of cloth and then get in the sleeping bag and wait.

So we are exiting the frigid scary times of cold and loneliness. and entering the times when the birds sing again in the morning. actually, this morning i awoke at 4am due to a restless brain and i read until it was time for work. the songbirds have actually returned already, and i was pleasantly excited to hear them singing in the wee hours of the morning. it wont be long though before i curse them as the arouse me from needed slumber in the spring and summer...

I recently found a website that is dedicated to rescuing the abused, abandoned and homeless dogs in Bulgaria. The need foster homes for them since they cannot house all of them. I showed interest in fostering one. They sent me a link for a dog who they found in the street a few months ago. the dog was starving because he used to be a house dog and didnt know how to fend for himself on the streets. They nursed him back to health, neutered, vaccinated and dewormed him. He is a small black shaggy dog of about 2 years. he is about the ugliest dog i've seen, which makes him all that much cuter. haha! I am going to meet him on Friday to see if we are a good fit. I am excited to get a dog. The companionship is much needed on both our ends!

I talked to my mom and dad on skype the other day. it was good to catch up and see where everyone is. now i just want to hear from my siblings... hint hint... :) and of couuuursee i want to hear from other family and friends likewise!

be good, be warm and hug your central heating units today.
Rory

SO MANY HOLIDAYS!

Happy Valentine's Day to you all. Yesterday Cveti and I celebrated not only one holiday, or two holidays... but FOUR holidays... all on the same day! Obviously yesterday was Valentines, but that wasn't the most dominant. There is a holiday called Trefon Zarezan. This holiday has a lot of tradition, but basically what it means for the average Bulgarian is that they go out to their gardens, trim their grape vines, and then drink wine all day and dance and play music and all sorts of other fun stuff. The other holiday... Sirni Zagovezni... is kind of like mothers day and fathers day and grandparents day all in one. It's like the beginning of Lent from what I understand too. The people celebrate with their families and the kids ask forgiveness for all the mistakes they made as kids and the parents and grandparents forgive them and what not. It's a nice holiday... Then the last but not least holiday we celebrated is called Kurban. This is a personal holiday for my wonderful Cveti. When she was a kid, she suffered a bad burn on her stomach from boiling water. She was in a hospital for a while and took a long time to recover. February 14th is the anniversary of this event. So, per tradition, when you survive a life-threatening situation or illness, you celebrate the yearly anniversary by cooking chicken and eating it for your health. SOOOOO... lets see. we did a lot of celebrating.

First we wake up, say happy valentines to each other. Then we went and got coffee and breakfast at the cafe. The people there asked us which holiday we would celebrate today. We said valentines cause we are just THAT cute. But I found most people were interested in the wine holiday... of course. So after eating, we went shopping. We got an egg, some ground-up sweet wheat thing, and some other things. We got to the apartment and boiled the egg and cooked chicken that i had. when the egg was done (the egg was for the holiday about the parents and lent and all that stuff) we tied a string around it and hung it from a ceiling light at mouth level. tradition says that whoever can get the egg in their mouth first will be healthy all year or something like that. so cveti and i stood across from each other and without using our hands we had to try to get the egg. i won. i will be healthy for the year. luckily though, you do the same thing with that sweet wheat stuff. she won that time. so we will be healthy together. then we ate the chicken we cooked, and we had wine with that for the wine holiday. Unfortunately we didnt do too much for valentines though. i mean, i couldnt get flowers or anything like that. but we spent the weekend together being "valentine-y"... whatever that means.

Ohh... sorry - i want to step back to Friday the 12th... There was a party in town for the holidays and we went to a cafe/restaurant with like 30 other people. Cveti and i were the youngest ones there, as the others were mostly retired. We drank wine and rakia and ate lots of homemade food. we danced and told jokes and laughed and it was grand. then at the end, one guy decided he should interview me in front of everyone. he was already kinda... well. he had been really celebrating the holidays... so anyways, i couldnt understand a thing that he said. and i just kinda sat there going... uhhhhh..... what? haha it was pretty embarrassing, but funny im sure for the 30 other people in the room. ugh.

and last but not least, Pepi told me that his daughter, who lives in a nearby town, found a scorpion in her daughters room yesterday. just one more thing to worry about. i didnt even know scorpions lived here. the good thing is though, i am bigger than a scorpion and will surely win in if there is ever a battle between us. i just might be sore and slightly sick if the little bugger gets a strike in. and be sure, if he strikes, he wont perish comfortably under the sole of my boot. it will be slow and painful. i think maybe putting him in some cold water on the stove... then letting it slowly get hot... (to all the scorpions out there reading this: take this as a warning, for you will not get a second chance!)

That said, enjoy the day.
Rory

An Adventure in Sofialand

We have been getting plenty of snow here and the weather has stayed cold. But honestly, it has totally stopped being a problem. I've always enjoyed the cold as long as there is snow on the ground and I'm not having to sit in traffic.

So this weekend is Valentine's day and I will confess... I have no idea what to do for the girlfriend. Honestly. She is coming here this weekend. Typically a nice relaxing evening with a good meal, some wine and a movie sounds like something I would want to do on this holiday, but I live in a single room that is over-crowded with everything I own. We watch movies on my 15 inch laptop screen. It's really not as comfortable as I would like. The chairs I have to sit in are wooden school chairs and my table is about knee high off the ground. And the one restaurant in town to go to has made both of us kinda sick almost every time we go there... so I am at a loss of things to do. But I'm sure I'll figure something out!

This week I had to travel back to Sofia for some stuff with the PC office. Dan and I went down there on Tuesday afternoon. We arrived and decided that some Mexican food would be ideal. When we got to the one Mexican restaurant in town, we heard a group of very loud girls talking in the corner. Dan looks at me and says "That sounds like American English..." I agreed. Dan went over to say hello and ask where they were from and what they were doing here. They turned out to be 4 medical students from America studying in Bulgaria. They invited us to sit with them since it is so rare to meet another American in this country. These girls were (I hate stereotyping) typical American college students. They were so loud with no regard for those around them. Curse words were flung out colorfully as they tried talking over each other. We got into some conversations regarding sensitive topics such as the minority groups in this country and the opinions they delivered were clearly from a sheltered background. It was very interesting. We enjoyed their company and enjoyed being able to speak freely in American English with strangers. After the Swiss Burger with Mushrooms and a few cold beers, we all went our separate ways. Dan and I looked at each other and both agreed - we are glad we are here and we do not miss hearing that group sitting in the bar... It was definitely refreshing.  I experienced "Culture Shock" from sitting with a group of 4 American girls in their early 20s. It was astonishing. It makes me really wonder what it will be like to step back onto my country's soil and walk down the roads paved in gold on my way back home.

How hard will it be to re-adjust to the life in the Home of the Brave where almost every aspect of life is perceived differently?

Be well out there, and keep your eyes and heart open to the lives of the others in the world.

Rory

Damaged Packages and Busted Hands.

I just saw something that made me say to myself "I must share this with my followers."

I work across the street from the post office and I was standing outside just watching people walking around. The postal truck came down the road and pulled into the parking lot next to the post office. The parking lot is covered in snow, so the driver did what used to be one of my favorite things to do when I had my little Nissan... He pulled an e-brake slide. For those that don't know what that is, it is when you are driving, usually in snow, and turn the wheel in one direction and at the same time engage the e-brake. It locks your tires and swings the back end of the car around quickly. Needless to say, it made me laugh. This vehicle is the vehicle that carries those packages I receive from friends and family from the States. This driver is just thrashing that vehicle around and I'm sure those packages are bouncing around all over the place in the back of the car... Good times.

Other than that, I am still struggling to figure out what the heck is going on here. Yesterday I had a meeting with my group set up at 2:15 PM because school ends at 2:05. or so i thought... Turns out that every Wednesday and Friday, school actually gets out at 1pm. You would think this would be a fact I was aware of... But no. No one told me up until yesterday.

I also had the fun experience of getting a big splinter last night while putting wood in my stove. I don't own a needle or tweezers or really anything to remove said splinter. So I just left it in my thumb and went to bed. Needless to say, it hurt this morning. So I came to work, asked if anyone had a needle, and of course there wasn't one. But I was handed a small nail. After much digging with a dull nail on a slightly infected thumb, the splinter was freed! This fire burning stove has resulted in absolutely chewing up my hands. My index finger and thumb on both hands are so calloused from the small burns I get from the stove, that they actually don't feel heat anymore. Which of course I find a blessing because now I can touch the hot stove without worrying about "burning myself"... I have also received many small and one or two good sized cuts on my thumbs and fingers from my hatchet. I have to make the big pieces of wood smaller to get the fire started, and that involved chopping them up with a hatchet. Sometimes the hatchet misses the mark and shaves some skin of my hand instead. Nothing serious and I don't swing the thing hard enough to lose a finger or anything, but it's just making my hands look pretty awesome. Oh, and those burns I mentioned... they have turned my fingers a permanent shade of black that doesn't wash off. My coworkers just say that these injuries and wounds are normal when you have to light a stove to keep warm in the winter. Ohhhh... the price of staying warm....

Ok, a large bag of more wood just arrived for me to take to my apartment. Yay! I gotta go take it there now, on a sled, even though the snow is totally melted on the roads.

Take care
Rory