My First Ex-Pat Thanksgiving.
Well, last Thursday kind of came and went. It just didn’t feel like Thanksgiving. There was no parades or anything like that. So, to be honest I didn’t really think about it. Thursday night, I went to eat Chinese with the other American in my town. Very patriotic, huh?
The big attempt at recreating Thanksgiving was over the weekend. A bunch of volunteers met up in Plovdiv. I was the first time a big group of us had meet up since we swore in. It was great. We were able to just relax, speak English, and generally get caught up with each other. The hero of the event was Casey (for those of you following this Soap Opera that is my life, he is the one I first went with to Sofia). Somehow, despite communist era equipment, he pulled off a fairly legitimate, traditional dinner. We had turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, spinach salad, a potato pie quiche thing, stuffing, and I am not sure what else. It was a real treat. He also made pumpkin pie from scratch. To get all that together, in Bulgaria no less, was much more than I was expecting. During the day, we just ate and watched DVD’s on a laptop (no football here). All in all, good times had by everyone involved.
As for this past week, it has been interesting. Work wise, everything is even more up in the air. My first meeting with the mayor was great, and everything has gone down hill since. To be honest, I have no idea what will happen. And I am fairly sure that nothing will be resolved by Christmas. Ahhh, Bulgaria. That being said, this week has been pretty good. I was in Sofia for a night and was able to hang out with a couple friends. And I finally spent some time with the guy that lives downstairs (he studies in Sofia and comes home on the weekends). He speaks great English and we had a good time just listening to music in my apartment. And, drum roll please…I had my first crew practice. That’s right, Mark Jackson training with the Bulgarian national crew team. It was really fun. They have a whole setup about forty minutes from my town and I was invited back. We will see just how long they are willing to give free crew lessons. Well, I think that is pretty much it. Hope everyone is doing well.
~~Mark
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The big attempt at recreating Thanksgiving was over the weekend. A bunch of volunteers met up in Plovdiv. I was the first time a big group of us had meet up since we swore in. It was great. We were able to just relax, speak English, and generally get caught up with each other. The hero of the event was Casey (for those of you following this Soap Opera that is my life, he is the one I first went with to Sofia). Somehow, despite communist era equipment, he pulled off a fairly legitimate, traditional dinner. We had turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, spinach salad, a potato pie quiche thing, stuffing, and I am not sure what else. It was a real treat. He also made pumpkin pie from scratch. To get all that together, in Bulgaria no less, was much more than I was expecting. During the day, we just ate and watched DVD’s on a laptop (no football here). All in all, good times had by everyone involved.
As for this past week, it has been interesting. Work wise, everything is even more up in the air. My first meeting with the mayor was great, and everything has gone down hill since. To be honest, I have no idea what will happen. And I am fairly sure that nothing will be resolved by Christmas. Ahhh, Bulgaria. That being said, this week has been pretty good. I was in Sofia for a night and was able to hang out with a couple friends. And I finally spent some time with the guy that lives downstairs (he studies in Sofia and comes home on the weekends). He speaks great English and we had a good time just listening to music in my apartment. And, drum roll please…I had my first crew practice. That’s right, Mark Jackson training with the Bulgarian national crew team. It was really fun. They have a whole setup about forty minutes from my town and I was invited back. We will see just how long they are willing to give free crew lessons. Well, I think that is pretty much it. Hope everyone is doing well.
~~Mark
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