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