Fires, sweat and celebrations!

First let me say that I hope you all had a happy Valentine's Day! Here in Bulgaria, Feb 14th is not only Valentine's but it is also a holiday called Trifon Zarezan. This holiday is basically about the coming of spring and trimming of the grape vines in preparation. The holiday is celebrated by drinking wine (after the trimming of the vines of course). So the question asked on February 14th is, "Which holiday are you celebrating today?" I think it is wonderful. You get to choose between celebrating love, or celebrating the juice of the vine. How many people in the States would love to just say, "today I choose to celebrate wine, not love" and that be a perfectly, if not more accepted, answer?

Cveti and I celebrated both. We were actually supposed to be in Plovdiv for a scouts meeting the weekend before, but it didn't happen, so I kinda wasn't able to really get Cveti a gift. I am terrible and for that I am sorry. But we celebrated our love without gifts and isn't that what it should be about anyways? So on the night of the 14th, we went to Betty's to celebrate. We started the dinner with salad and rakiq per usual. The rakiq was toasted to love, many times. We actually had a teacher at the school propose to another one of the teachers that evening, so we celebrated their future unity. After salad, the wine came out. Homemade of course. This was then poured and we toasted to Trifon Zarezan, many times. The food was amazing but the company was better. The evening, or early morning, was concluded in song as we sang everything from our national anthems to "row row row your boat" to the song that never ends and some Justin Timberlake for good measure. Many laughs and good memories and bad headaches for all.

Koynare actually celebrated Trifon Zarezan as a town on the Friday before. There was a contest for the best homemade wine in town. Here is a link for the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zcfqwETG6w.
As the token American, I was given the winning bottles for my own personal consumption. How lucky!

On Sunday evening, around 6pm, Cveti and I decided that we needed to get to the store before it closed. So we set out together. When we opened the outer doors to the apartment building the dusk sky was enlightened by the licking flames of a fire in the building's yard. A few of my neighbors were hanging around looking at it and a few others were on the move filling water buckets. The flames were touching the lower branches of an old tree and they were spreading on the ground due to the abundance of dry branches, sticks and grasses. Cveti and I, on our way to the store and never missing a beat, shrugged, went back inside the apartment and started filling buckets with water. We went out and just walked up to the growing fire and poured water all over it. The fire gathered some extra spectators and impromptu fire fighters, one including the mayor. After 5 or 6 trips with buckets of water from each of the 10-12 newly concerned citizens, the fire was under control and people were relaxing. We later understood that one of our fun crazy homeless guys started the fire for reasons unknown. Cveti looks at me and complains, "Great, now my hair smells like smoke. I just took a shower." I couldn't have been more proud in that moment, so I showed my growing admiration for her by laughing out loud. The girl just jumps into a random fire armed with buckets of water while on her way to the store. The only thing she needs to say about the situation is how mad she is that her hair now smells like smoke. I couldn't help but find the humor in the whole situation. What a girl. At the end of the adventure, we went to the store and bought ourselves food for dinner. We never quite know what adventure we will embark on when we walk out of the apartment in Koynare.

I started running with the track team recently. I run with the 10 year olds. I can only imagine how funny it must look for people when they see me, all 220 lbs of me, dragging myself at a pathetic pace surrounded by energetic 65 lbs 10 year olds who are laughing and talking and skipping and running the same speed as the towering American who struggles to keep up. I love the statement I hear every time we go on our 3-4 mile runs. "Wow, you are sweating a lot." I know kids, I know.

Winter is almost over and I wish you all a great day!

Rory

Best part about winter

The best part about winter here is that the kitchen doubles as a refrigerator. After cooking, you can leave the leftovers and ingredients on the counter for days. We have been the drinking milk in there for the last 3 days and it still hasn't turned.