Zimata idva.

not much to write about today. ive kinda started work and i think tomorrow ill get these damn english classes started that ive only been waiting since july 25th to start. its cold out and rainy. and i have a little radiator that i drag around with me to the room im in. i wonder what my electricity bill is going to be? i was in moravitsa last saturday night and it was pretty chilly. i got a taste of how the winter will be spent. let me describe it to you.

Cafes will be crowded because it is warm in the cafe and you dont have to heat your own house to stay warm if you are sitting in the cafe. the doors are closed and windows are closed. everyone is dressed warm. alcohol keeps people warmer, or so it seems to the person drinking, so the drinking starts earlier. but not with beer, or not as much with beer, its mostly homemade wine and rakia. and i believe i have told you this before, everyone smokes here. if not everyone, at least 90%. so the rooms become like a cloud of smoke, everything you are wearing stinks and your eyes burn. the stove in the room is burning wood and coal and keeps the room incredibly hot. so a hot cloudy room full of people drinking and laughing and wearing warm clothes. and this is what i foresee winter being. oh, and i ate donkey meat. so in like 2 weeks time i have eaten both animals that i have seen pulling carts around town. donkeys and horses. donkey was gross, horse is better.

so i have a birthday coming up on the 6th of november and if anyone wants to be awesome and send me a little sumthin sumthin than that would be sweet. so here is the shameless plug. SHAMELESS and i feel bad about doing this, but this is the stuff i want/need as of now: http://amzn.com/w/2P9QL1CYSZYJ4 oh, and any types of spices are welcome. Ranch dressing and hot sauce too... :)


I will be indebted to you for anything that is sent. it isnt cheap to ship stuff but its also proving to be difficult to find these things here. especially books in english... and earplugs. which are needed becuase i live above a lively cafe with loud music... 

Dan - Brave Yankee.

So to keep you posted on the situation Dan is a-ok, he is moving towns to a nearby city where he will live, but he will still work at the same place. Dan called me last night because he was at dinner with a family, but he had received a phone call from his host family (from the first 2 months here) wondering if he was ok. They had heard in the news that a 25 year old american thwarted a robbery attempt in his town. well it turns out this is quite a story for the media. An american peace keeper has 3 men break into his house with weapons and the peace keeper thwarts the attempt using "karate and a knife" - good story. well they caught the guys with dans help and it turns out they had quite a criminal record and were suspected of multiple other crimes... here is an article. copy and pasted off a translater...

Pleven. U.S. peacekeeper revealed gang robbers. American Peace Corps, deployed in the town Pordim enter into melee with three dangerous bandits who broke into his headquarters.25-year-old Daniel Baker-Smith was attacked on Tuesday night. Like sitting behind your computer in 21 hours in his room in the balcony jumped up three Roma, armed with poles and a shovel. They climbed in gutters without trying to hide their faces with masks. Gypsies seeking money, but proved karatist Peacemaker. Brave Yankee applied them two or three tricks. He grabbed a kitchen knife and then resting in the throat of one of Roma. Aver onemeli panic-stricken and withdrawn. In their flight they even pulled off the iron fence of the facilities. The alien escaped without a scratch. The next day dark-skinned assailants were caught, but they recognized Smith in the police station. The chief Simeon Alexiev, 19 years Pordim been convicted 6 times. He was suspected for 22 thefts and robberies. Collateral his Veselin Benchev, 20 years from the village of Assen has a file with 15 robberies and three convictions.The third group - Stoyan Velev, 18, is criminals. Three have made a full confession before a judge in his complicity in the abortive attempt. Tiknati are in custody for 24 hours, police said. 
Evgeni Goranov 

pardon the racism and the poor translations... but you get the gist. 

Our new friend, Dan has a native-american name. Brave Yankee.

So yea - exciting times. 

This week there hasnt been much other than the fact that it is getting COLD. and its funny cause its not that cold, its just that there isnt heat. my office isnt heated yet because they have to burn wood for heat, and thats a pain in the bum to get going, so we will just wait till its really cold. and my apartment has 3 rooms, a kitchen, a bedroom and another room with a small bed in it and its where i hang out most the time. well now i am debating which room to live in now. The room that i hang out in most the time is bigger and right above a cafe that plays loud music. so i dont really want to sleep there or heat that big room. I have one small electric radiator that is the size of like a large computer box.... not very big to heat a big room. it heats my bedroom fine. but when the real cold hits, im going to have to just live in one room. the others will be frozen. ive heard that the food in your refrigerator will freeze. so maybe i can save electricity and just keep my food on the table in the kitchen where it will no doubt be frozen. yee haw. im also trying to get used to the fact that my fingers and toes will be cold until...say... May. it makes typing fast no work so well. my fingers are moving slower than usual and my backspace button is getting a lot of use. so yea, summer is hot - no AC. winter is cold - limited heating. dig it. 

i used to be able to only feel cold when i got in my car. but that jeep heated up in just a few minutes. the glory of having a gas guzzler... and i could wear short sleeved shirts to work in the winter because the office was always warm. but now... damn. 

oh wanna hear something gross? my mother sent me another box of contact lenses not too long ago becuase i was running out. well, i think i lost those boxes which totally blows. but i tossed my contacts before i realized that i didnt have anymore lenses.... so what did i do? i retrieved my lenses from the garbage. washed them a lot, and put them back in. they work for now but ill probably only get a few more days out of them. then its time to stop seeing so well too... cold and kinda blind. its going to be a fun winter. 

my coworkers are starting to get on the ball about me teaching and stuff. so thats good. and there is a rumor that a group of kids want to learn american football! so yippie! i might get to play some football!! 

thats all for now. enjoy the central heating.

The weekend that Dan was here.

I find myself compelled to hop on my blog this rainy monday morning and tell you of the weekend. So Dan was with me all weekend. After the incident in his apartment, i spoke to our safety and security officer who advised dan to either spend the weekend in sofia in the "sick bay" at headquarters, or come to my place and hang for the weekend. I think it was an easy choice for our hero Daniel the Lion. So he came in on Friday and we did basically nothing. He got in late, hadnt slept much the night before, and didnt feel like going out. I think we watched a movie, but that was pretty much it. On saturday we went to a nearby town to go shopping and get some food. i picked up a dress shirt that was a XXL but in the states it would be considered a M or a slim L. Its awesome. Dan and I said goodbye to another volunteer that is in the area and finishing up his service next week. He is heading back to the land of the free and the home of the brave soon. i bet he eats some good fast food when he gets there... jerk. maybe at IHOP. wow. IHOP... what a concept. pancakes... coffee... Americans...sorry, i digress.
So dan and i picked up some food at a store and found what we were looking for to make PIZZA. The conversations we had with the women that worked in the store were hilarious, embarrassing, humiliating and memorable. but we finally found the yeast.
We went back - cooked some pizza and grabbed a couple beers (2 liter beers of course) and watched movies all night. It was actually (this is going to sound so odd) really nice to just sit with a buddy, eat pizza, drink beer and watch movies on a saturday night.
Yesterday, we were feeling the effects of the night before and didnt do much until... ohhh... about 7pm. and by not do much, we kinda just sat there and played video games on our computers... so nerdy. but anyways, at 7pm or so we headed outside to go to a cafe in town. we sat at a regular place, got joined by the 2 women that work there and had a couple drinks. it is typical when you sit at a cafe and drink to have some meat or something on the table to pick at. so the women brought a meat on the table and some forks. The meat was dark in color, looked like muscle and was covered in like an onion gravy. we asked what kind of meat it was (can never be too careful) and they kind of looked at us confused and didnt answer. so we shrugged it off and grabbed a piece. it was delicious. we looked at each other, said - "kinda tastes like beef. i like it." so we ate and ate and it was pleasant. at one point, a horse cart was being taken down the road with a guy driving it that appeared to be intoxicated. the horse was confused because the guy was just kinda going crazy with reigns. the horse didnt know what direction to travel in. Dan says, in bulgarian "If horses become aware and smart, then the people are in trouble." basically stating that horses are big strong animals that are too docile for their own good. Well this comment brings lots of laughter out of our friends at the cafe that are still watching us eat this food. after all is said and done, we ask again what kind of meat it is becuase it tastes just like beef! and there isnt any beef here... well, they smile and say the word "horse" in bulgarian. we say, "Horse?!" they respond with a hearty "Da" (yes) and we say, hmm... ok. well, it was good. and we both had another piece and smiled.

So if you ever want to make lasting friendships in this world there are things that help.

1. travel to a foreign country that you nothing about with them. try to learn the language. decide to live there for 27 months.
2. share beds frequently when sleeping on the floor is an option.
3. listen to your friend almost get seriously hurt during a break in while on skype.
4. eat horse together within that week.

Yep. Bonding.

And sorry to those this next comment offends - i kinda wonder when im going to eat horse again. its good.

Floods, Another Let Down, and Unexpected Visitors

ok, i wasnt really planning on posting tonight, but heck - its been quite an interesting 24 hours or so. lets start where i left off. stick with me, this has been quite the day. so last night, after i got home from work, i sit down on the computer and start talking to my lovely sister, Molly, on skype. we get chatting for a while about the joys of peace corps and how she is doing in life. It's her birthday tomorrow, or in less than 2 hours for me, so wish her a happy birthday. anyways, we are talking it up and i start hearing water dripping in my apartment. well, it was a sunny and beautiful day yesterday so i start wondering whats going on. i let it continue for a bit becuase i dont really want to start investigating. i know it only means disaster and as everyone knows, ignorance is bliss. so after 10 or so minutes, i finally decide to see whats going on. i live on the second floor here, in this beautiful soviet concrete socialist blok apartment. It's an architects dream. i leave my second floor apt and start heading upstairs. i know that no one lives above me, so i go to the 4th floor where i find a Baba standing outside her open door. she says, "hubavo li e?" which means, beautiful isnt it? and i kinda chuckle, glance in her apartment and notice the multiple buckets that are under all the leaks. her apartment is like a big shower. i say sorry, and continue to the next floor where i find a significant amount of water coming from under the door and heading down the stairs. i knock on the door a few times and try opening it. its locked. i start calling all the people i know here that can help, but to no avail. no one answers. so i go back to my place on the second floor and continued talking to molly. later i heard people fixing the water while the Baba screamed. everything is a-ok now.

and for today... well, i woke up excited because i was going to be heading to the school to meet the people and start my project of teaching english! what a day! so i got up, dressed in my sunday best, and headed to work. only to find out that today was a day for painting the inside and staining the furniture! i asked why we werent going to the school and i was told that there is a problem with some forms and what not and i might not be able to teach there all year. granted, i was not happy. I was told i needed to help paint. i was dressed in good clothes, and angry about what i recently discovered, and told them i would not help them and i had work to do. so i wrote an email asking for help from my boss here at the PC headquarters. I was not happy. and i think things will work out eventually... I didnt paint, and i didnt do much of anything

sorry if all that was rushed, i want to get to the craziest thing that just happened moments ago. still on a little bit of an adrenaline rush from it. so, im on skype, talking to my buddy Dan who is out here with me and we are using skype like a phone. no video, just talking. after a while, he says, "hey, i think i hear something outside. it sounds like people, but they are being too quite to be close. but they sound close" a few moments later, he decides to check it out. so he says to me, "hold on a second". i start hearing him talking. it sounds like a cell phone call - calm, relaxed, in control. but soon it turns to him saying in english "Get the f@ck out of here!" and i hear another voice. then i hear him repeat this, each time getting a little more urgent. then after a few seconds... nothing... then a few seconds later, a loud crash.... then nothing at all.... then, after what seemed an eternity, i hear dans voice start screaming " GET THE F*CK OUT OF HERE!" and more of the same. the noise drifted off for a bit. then the drifting of the sound became silence. and a bit became 30+ seconds.... i started getting pretty nervous. (not that i wasnt nervous already...) I called dans phone only to hear it ring on the other side of the computer... So i called again, and again. still nothing. after about a minute or so, i heard someone enter the room. i was a "send" button away from calling the PC main security office to get the US Marine Corps out there to raise all sorts of hell. I yelled out, "Dan - is that you?" he said, yea. Anyways, after he called the police and the PC we had a moment to chat. 

I guess 3 guys scaled his balcony, broke in, asked for food and money, and when he obliged to them for the food, they followed him into the kitchen, brought weapons like a shovel and some pieces of wood to beat him with, and dan quickly controlled the situation like the awesome guy he is by grabbing a better weapon, a kitchen knife, to keep them at bay. he demanded again that they "get the F out." to which they started to listen. He actually had to toss one of them on the floor, while wielding the knife, before they actually started moving. He eventually got them to leave.

I will say, the police in his town (i had video chat on at this time) responded within a matter of a few minutes and were combing the area. Dan is now at the headquarters filling a report, and helping identify the perpetrators. I also just received a call from our main safety and security officer here to make sure i was ok and to hear what i heard while i listened to this scuffle. We are all happy that dan is ok and was able to not only thwart the attempt, but to control the entire situation. Dan is in fact, The Man. Thank God he is ok and unharmed from what could have turned out very poorly. Good thinking Dan and way to keep control! 

Anyways, hope that doesnt scare anyone out there. I am ok and I don't have any easy to access balconies here. Plus, the quick response of both the local police and the PC themselves was very comforting. Everything is ok and the night turned out well. but it was pretty interesting to say the least. 

On another note, i think i have lived maybe 5 years of experiences in the 4.5 months ive been here. 

I'm headed to sleep. what a day.

Rory

no water and bad "dreams?"

Well it's nice to see that i have like 25ish people already signed up and approved! Thanks! It makes me feel like i got some good followers here, people that actually care! yay :) This blog is giving me something to do during the day. I don't have a ton to say right now though. hmm - I went to bed last night and the water was not running and when i awoke it still wasnt on. i havent showered since sunday... everytime it is more than a couple days without showering, the water runs out! its like they just wait. i think there is a spy actually... someone walks by me or sits near me and takes a whiff... says "hey, he kinda smells. and looks like he will probably want a shower tonight... lets kill the water!" there is a diabolical plan out there. i am sure of it! the water only seizes when i have a sink full of dishes that i want to wash, dirty clothes that i need to clean, or a filthy body that needs some washing. hopefully when i return home this evening, the water will be running and i can smell nice again. i did brush my teeth this morning with a bottle of water i had laying around. but i also needed to use the toilet this morning... that little present is still waiting for the water to come back before he heads to his rightful home down the pipes.... pleasant.

Speaking of diabolical plans, i had a really nasty dream last night. ever seen harry potter? the newer ones? what are those things called that attack harry a couple times? they look like grim reapers and they suck the air out of the room and make everything really cold - they make all the happy feelings go away. well i had one of those visit me last night, i swear. i was having this pleasant dream about my family and we were just hanging out and what not. and i literally remembering thinking, wow -this is a pretty nice dream. well right when i thougth that, the dream went blank. just blank. and i felt something in my room - it was a black figure. and as it came closer to me, i got more paralyzed and scared. i felt the air go out of the room and i couldnt breath. i felt the figure lean over me while i was sleeping and i could see it there. i struggled to gain control of my muscles again as i laid in bed watching this thing and finally i was able to snap my eyes open and take a breath. it was pretty odd. pretty scary. maybe my ghost in the room got angry with me about something. he has only aided me this far, but that was kinda freaky last night. the rest of the evening i had crappy sleep and ended up waking at about 5am to just sit on the internet and email friends from the states becuase it was only like 9pm there.

my toast came quickly today. that was a happy moment.

Pepi is back - he was on vacation (in town) for the last 3.5 weeks. It's nice to have him back because he adds order.

I was told that a local newspaper wants to interview me. i wonder if/when this will happen. ill let you know.

Still havent gone to the school to start teaching. Still doing nothing.

Yesterday I negotiated a cell phone contract without using english. and i got the plan i wanted and talked her out of upselling me other phones/contracts. made me feel like i was in control! not a feeling i have been used to for a while. the first of many future successes, im sure.

I found a funny website that made me miss home. www.peopleofwalmart.com check it out. its so america.

if you know anyone that cant read this that might want to, let me know their email - ill get them signed up. (look, i have control of that too!)

I skyped like crazy last night. i talked to Rita for like an hour, my dad called me, i talked to my mom for an hour or so on there and then Mr. Bill Hilbish of Hudson Ohio, an old customer of mine, gave me a ring and we talked (like usual) for like an hour. Reminded me of our old conversations. i was a sales man then and i think we would talk technology for a whopping 2 minutes during an hour long chat. i wasnt the best sales guy.

Enjoy the states, enjoy the day, eat a cheeseburger with ranch fries for me if youre in the midwest, on the east coast, eat either an eggie or some new york pizza. and if you are near aunt cookies - have one for me ;)

Til another time.

Oh - and you are reading all about me. tell me what you are up to. im interested. skype me at roryjnolan or send me an email at roryjnolan@gmail.com. tell me whatever you want. i tell you whatever i want - its only fair. and i want to hear from you.

Rory