So….yesterday….I decided to expose Mark’s night crew to the beauty that is Mexican food. You will recall that I brought over a bag of limes and dried cilantro. I had all the ingredients ready to make salsa, except for the hot chile. Mark and I ventured out before our midday walk to his office to find the hot chile, and indeed we found one.

Then, Marko Columbus decides we should walk a new way to his office. A way he has walked with his partner in the past…late at night….while they were busy chatting about business happenings. This should have raised red flags with me. Clearly he had not been focusing on learning this new path on those late, late nights.

But I trusted him. And we set out with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria our finest walking shoes and backpacks. We curved around, looped, walked through trees, up one street, down another, up a large hill, up another large hill, until finally I asked:

“Ummm, Mark??? Do you know where you are?”

“Not exactly”, he replied. “But we are close.”

Mmmm, hmmmm. Sounds just like Columbus when he thought San Salvador was India.

And so we continued our path to circumnavigate the world outer edges of Sofia. And did I tell you how BLAZING HOT it was yesterday (and today, for that matter)? Yeah, so we walked around and around. Mark wanted to go ask for directions. He felt confident that he knew enough Bulgarian to ask. But then I reminded him that he did not know enough to understand what they were telling him.

And so we found the street with the trolley tracks, the one I knew would lead us back to path we always take. We followed it until we got…where? Oh yeah, back to the path we take everyday, only instead of being all the way up the hill, now we were only half way up the hill. So we had yet more hill climbing to do. And then we arrived. Hot, sweaty, stinky….and thirsty.

After drinking a liter of water, I trudged back down the hill to complete my afternoon chores and finish my salsa. I packed it all up and headed…you guessed it!!….back up the hill yet again, all with a slight sneer towards my navigationally-challenged husband.
But the salsa and limes…they were a hit!