100 Things I am Thankful for

This is gasp… my 100th post.  This morning I woke up with the best intentions to write a post about the 100 things I am thankful but I decided against it.  Somehow that seemed like a tedious task and I couldn’t imagine that anyone would actually read all of those.  Rather I’ve decided to do [...]

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Buglarian Soap Opera

I just spent way more time than I would like to admit watching a Bulgarian soap opera.  And I really got a kick out of it.  I’ve found that lots of Bulgarian is modeled after western tv shows or are just western tv shows dubbed into Bulgarian and even one Spanish program just has Bulgarian [...]

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Of course, there’re no classes today

I thought I had to teach this morning at 8am. Silly me. It turns out that there are no classes on the last day of the semester. Why would there be classes on the last day of the semester? You might also wonder why no one told me there were no classes [...]

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Sofia and My Йога Studio

I am taking a regular yoga class again at the Bulgarian Yoga Association.  I started practicing yoga about four years.  It’s one of those things that was pretty regular in Washington DC and then I moved to Sofia with the best intentions of being dedicated to my yoga practice.
Ha, ha.  Somehow, there was always something [...]

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Picasso Exhibit in Sofia

There’s a Picasso Exhibit open right now at the National Gallery of Foreign Art in Sofia.  It’s called: “АЗ НЕ ТЪРСЯ. АЗ НАМИРАМ: ПАБЛО ПИКАСО” or in English: “I do not seek. I find. Pablo Picasso.”
The exhibit opened in December and a Bulgaria told me recently that they’d read the exhibit had already attracted 20,000 [...]

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Notes from Sofia: Poverty and Bulgaria

The Sofia Echo ran a short but hard hitting article on poverty in Bulgaria this morning.  The title is a “Quarter of Bulgaria’s households live on verge of poverty.” The numbers are stark.  A new report states that a family of four needs 1895 leva a month to cover basic expenses. They write, “this would [...]

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Member of POEM

A month ago my dAd asked me: what size tee shirt do you wear?
Me: medium.
dAd: OK.
That was the end of our conversation.  Then a week ago I got a package.
I am now a shirt wearing member of POEM… for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym it’s the Professional Organization of English Majors.  Thanks dAd [...]

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Sofia is a big puddle

After three weeks of snow, ice and more snow, Sofia is finally starting to melt.  In practice, it means that this place is a one huge puddle.  And if you didn’t know better you’d think it was raining if you looked to the street or the sidewalk to determine the weather outside.  This is because [...]

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Presidential Inaugural Reception

I am heading out to the Presidential Inaugural Reception that I was invited to at the US Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria soon.  I’ve decided to wear my Barack Obama shirt under a blazer.  It’s a good thing too.  I think my tee shirt has seen the end of it’s regular use–there’s a stain that I’ve [...]

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Official Advice: Snow, Ice and School

I’ve been meaning to post about this funny run in I had with my students at school last week for days but then there were the protests and a couple of things took priority so what follows is a summary of my day teaching last week and the fun I had getting to give my [...]

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