Bulgarian Daze

When we are in Bulgaria, I sometimes help Mark’s employees with their English. Well, while we were gone, one of his employees was trying to explain what a FAQ (frequently asked questions) was. He told the client they get a fah-Q with their website. If you read it right, it’s funny…get it? get it? So, in honor of him, I write this fah-Q to answer the questions we are often asked:

What does it look like over there?

I really need to take pictures of the buildings and city itself so you can see it as it really is. I’ll get right on that next week. It is a city full of tall buildings (like between 7 and 15 floors). The buildings are usually gray concrete and falling apart. The roofs are orange tile and are also falling apart. Nearly all the buildings and even many of the sidewalks have graffiti on them. The streets are lined with trees and there are some parks, but otherwise, there is really no greenery or “nature” type stuff.
Which do you prefer, Bulgaria or the United States?

Well, this one is a bit unfair. In Bulgaria, I live in a noisy, land-locked city. In the U.S., I live in the most temperate coastal city in the nation. So it’s really like comparing apples and oranges. I would either have to compare Sofia to New York or Chicago, or I would have to compare San Diego to the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, and since I haven’t lived in New York or the Bulgarian seaside, I can’t do that.

Given all that, I would say there are charming and alarming things about both places. CHARMING IN BULGARIA: I love the open air markets and buying fresh fruits daily. Yes, we can do that here, too, but we have to sniff out the places and drive all over town. I also like the simplicity of life there. Life really IS just about friends and family and spending time with people you love. There is much less pretentiousness or competition there. No one is trying to be richer than their neighbors. It’s a pleasant change from here. CHARMING IN SAN DIEGO: Clearly the weather and the ocean rank at the top here. I am meant to live near an ocean. The people here are generally very laid back and casual attire is accepted pretty much everywhere. Since I am kind of “chill” myself, this suits me perfectly.

ALARMING IN BULGARIA: Some of this is obvious–the rampant corruption and complete ineptness of the government. Really, they are quite useless. The trash and graffiti and an overall lack of pride in the environment and surroundings. Women are always fully made up in Bulgaria and the tight pants/high heels style just doesn’t do it for me. Oh yeah, and there are a lot of grumpy people. GRRRRR!!! ALARMING IN SAN DIEGO: The cost of living is high and getting higher. I never want to live anywhere else, but I sure do have to work hard to stay living here. The status thing (and this could just be my age)–that ridiculous desire to drive a certain car or have a certain house so that you appear to be rich. The way people spend time–we lose so much time to working to amass “things” and not enough time nurturing relationships.

All that said, and still no clear answer. I would prefer the United States. In general we are safer here and far more protected. Our government usually works for us. (The next time you are disgruntled with the government, try living in a place that really has dysfunction–you’ll see we aren’t doing so bad!) My friends and family are here. Oh…and I speak English WAY better than Bulgarian!

Am I looking forward to going back to Bulgaria this week?

Believe it or not, I really am. When we came here earlier in the spring, I was worn out by the winter there. It was a supremely mild winter for them, but hugely MISERABLE for me. I.DO.NOT.LIKE.COLDNESS. At all. Ever. I don’t even put ice in my water. And I was frustrated with dealing with their government. But now all that has passed. We are returning for the end of spring and summer, which are actually quite pleasant times to visit Bulgaria, should you ever come. I can even see us visiting there annually as long as Mark has this business. I enjoy eating at the sidewalk cafes and reading in the parks. Everyone is in a good mood and laughing. It’s quite nice.

Our families have been so awesome to us. Really. We probably don’t deserve all they have done for us. We have stayed with them for free with nary a complaint. They have taken in our dogs and collected our mail, even moving money around in banks when it was necessary. We have loved living with my nephew and enjoying his antics. All that said, we like living on our own. I could never understand those people who chose to live with their families or friends (chose, as in not having to live there because of hardships). Even if I wasn’t married, I would be living alone…no roommates, just me. I like my solitude.

Are we taking the hound/Der Hund/Vladi?

No. He would have to be quarantined when we came back and we don’t want him to go through that. We spared him the agony by returning before the year was up. He is enjoying his mates at Mark’s parents house (though not sure if Mark’s parents are enjoying their new four-legged mate).

What wil I do there?

Well….I am not going to go out and get a real job for just 3 months time. I will keep helping Mark with his business and I am taking some work to do for school. Since my teaching teammates are possibly leaving the school next year, I am on my own for planning and preparing. I plan to get a head start while I am in BG. I will need it since when I come back I will only have one week to move into my classroom–from storage–and prepare to teach.

When we move home, will we miss all the friends we have made?

Sure. But not as much as we have been missing our friends and family here. I am sure we will return at least once annually to take care of business and visit, so it’s not like we will never see them again.

Ok, well that’s the FAQ for now. If I missed anything, just post your questions and I will be sure to answer them in the near future. Until then, we are off!!

Ciao, ciao!

Well, I’m down to one more week before we head off. My brother and sister-in-law have gone to Hawaii for next week and Mark is in Canada for the long weekend. So I get the house to myself. heh heh. My plans are highly exciting. I will be sleeping, reading, and doing laundry. I also plan to watch all of Season 2 of 24, since I have Seasons 3 and 4 in Bulgaria. (I borrowed Season 2 from a friend here and I have to return it before leaving.) And I will be shopping for items I MUST have in Bulgaria that I really can’t get over there. Here’s my list so far:

Splenda

Limes

Salsa

Dried Cilantro

Folgers Singles (we have no coffee maker there and the coffee is like Turkish thick THICK coffee….no can do)

Crest Whitening Toothpaste

Cheap Makeup

Books in English

1 sharp knife

You guys got any other suggestions?????

**p.s.  Finances are looking up.  See?  Things have a way of working out!

You would not BELIEVE how 8 months in another country can affect your financial life. Here, I thought I had a foolproof plan to make sure all our bills were paid and our miscellaneous expenses were dealt with. But apparently my plan was anything but foolproof. Just some fun tidbits about our current state of affairs:

* When I set up the online billpay so I could pay the bills from overseas, the car payment was being shorted by $9 each month. You would think, “$9 is nothing. Probably the bank barely noticed”. You would be wrong. In November, when we were home, we got no notification that there was a problem, so we carried on our merry little way. In April, we got a letter saying our car was going to be repossessed. Now, anyone who knows me well probably has their jaw on the floor by now because I.DO.NOT.MISS.PAYING.MY.BILLS ….EVER…EVER!!!! And here I found myself with the threat of a car repo. A CAR REPO, people!!! So we called the bank, explained the mistake, blah blah blah. We apologized, they apologized. Love was between us again.

Until we ran our credit report. And found that they had reported each of those $9 late payments as 60 days late. Ummm……problem!! I had a stellar credit rating, one that most people drool over and here we found out it had dipped into the 600s. Our brief love affair with the bank promptly ended. Until they retracted their mistake and cleared up the credit. Now we are working on our relationship. Maybe counseling would help???

* The post office decided to stop forwarding our mail in February even though I had signed up for the year long service. Our mail is in some warehouse somewhere and we can’t seem to get our hands on it.

* Our home loan…well….we won’t even discuss the disaster that is our home loan, except to say that we must quickly refinance before we are on one of those crazy variable rate loans. This, of course, will raise our mortgage significantly. Which is just what you want to hear when you are now a one-income family until the end of August.

* Do you think our dogs are mad at us? One after another, they keep getting sick and needing substantial veterinary care. Guiseppe needed his hips xrayed and his teeth cleaned. Dakota needed his teeth cleaned. (For those of you who are dog-less, they don’t clean doggie teeth while they are awake. You know…the biting thing…so they put them to sleep. And yep, anesthesia costs extra dinero.) Now Lola has a gnarly ear infection which will require several follow up visits. I guess this is revenge on us??

* Our renter will need an extra month or two in the house. She is trying to buy her own house and the escrow thing…you know. So, we will be “homeless” even when we move “home”.

So much for my plan. Time to formulate a new one. I’m thinking of that one where you just keep a bunch of cash under your mattress and then when you die, someone finds millions hidden in the springs of your bed. What do you think? Will it work???? And should I hide the money in my Bulgarian bed springs or my San Diego ones?

Yup. That’s right folks! We will be returning to the Land of Cucumber and Tomato at the end of May. With our new, legal visa status, we can go back whenever we want. Even better, we can enter and exit the country as often as we choose, AND I can work. Granted, since we are only going to be there for less than 3 months, I probably will not get a job. But the point is that I could if I really wanted to.

No, no. No job for me. I have enough to do and see without an official job. I will help Mark with his business and write some curriculum for my teaching next year. Oh, and this blog. I will write stunning entries here daily. In my spare time, I plan to buy and eat loads of fresh berries because they will surely be in season again this summer as they were last summer. This is one of my favorite things about Bulgaria. I know I complain about having to shop in eight different stores just for one meal. but really, you can’t beat the fruit stands for fresh produce and during the summer, the fruit is SO SO SO delicious…and my second favoite thing…cheap!

Mark and I are thinking about using our airline miles to perhaps visit Spain or another Western European country. And I have a friend planning travels in the more easterly section of Europe. So, I will also plant a money tree and wait for it to sprout euros so I can do all the traveling I want. Truthfully, though, we will probably make a stop on our way home in mid August, but we haven’t yet decided where. And I may be able to squeeze out one more inexpensive trip to a neighboring country…we’ll see! Maybe all my sub jobs will pay off. *wink wink*

So there you have it. Our summer plans. And perhaps the most exciting plans of all come after we return home. We will live in our OWN house again with our OWN stuff and our OWN dogs, all of us together again. I can’t wait!!!!!! Until then….look for more fun Bulgaria stories here…after a few more weeks of San Diego stories first.

WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!

Visa=Approved.

At the end of our stay. We will finally be fully legal.

Go figure.

No, I’m not talking about Bo Derek here. I am talking about the 10 pounds we seem to gain every time we make our glorious return to the United States. Surely this is a result of our intense craving for all comida mexicana, not to mention all the processed, convenient foods we are so accustomed to here. Things we really don’t have so much access to in Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, our diet primarily consists of:

Breakfast: yogurt, Muesli and berries

Lunch: salad, some form of white meat (chicken or pork, no seafood)

Dinner: see Lunch

Here, our food consists of:

Breakfast: cereal with some type of sugar in it, sugary coffee or tea, or some pastry

Lunch: a sandwich or salad, though Mark often sneaks in rolled tacos or hamburgers

Dinner: Italian food–read:pasta, pasta, pasta!, or mexican food with extra tortillas or, on a healthy night, chicken and rice

So…you can see the problem, no? When we live here permanently, we really eat pretty healthily…more so than that list above. But when we are just visiting here, something comes over us. We eat every meal as if it were our.last.meal.on.earth. And then, after a few weeks, suddenly we realize that it really could have been our last meal on earth because now we can live on our fat stores alone.

Since we have been here so long this time, we had to stage an intervention. Ok, well I staged an intervention on us, explaining to Mark that at this rate, we will have to buy extra seats on the airplane just to get back to BG. We are now on a plan. An organic, lots of fruits, vegetables, fiber, and water plan. Mark loves it. NOT!!! But so be it. It’s working. We are losing some poundage and we are getting back our energy, our mojo, so to speak. We were so lethargic a couple of weeks ago. But now…exercising fiends!

Oh, and a word about exercising….OUCH! I have not run since my big foot operation last year. And let’s just say that my days of marathon and triathlon training are far, far away. I am happy just to get through a couple of miles without dropping dead. Even so, I have a hard time walking the next day. So sad. But it’s coming back. S.L.O.W. S.L.O.W. But coming back nonetheless.

So maybe, by the time we get back to Sofia, we will be able to walk the giant hill up to Mark’s office without too much huffing and puffing. We’ll see…!!!